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LITTLE NOTE WAS MADE at the time, but John Davis was the first Black quarterback in Washington State football history. Coaches, teammates and fans treated it matter-of-factly in 1967. So did Davis, who tells Cougfan.com that distinction was but a footnote in his WSU career and life. 

Ask him about his three years in Pullman and his most cherished moments don’t begin with football. They begin with the people he met, the degree he earned and the successful broadcast journalism career launched from Murrow Hall on College Hill. 

His path to the Palouse started in the segregated south. Davis grew up in Wichita Falls, Texas, graduating from Booker T. Washington High in 1966. He was a multi-sport athlete who quarterbacked his team to a state football championship. His personal accolades included an invitation to the Oil Bowl, a high school all-star game pitting the best football players in Texas against the best in Oklahoma. In track, he excelled as a sprinter.

Division I scholarship offers should have poured in. But, this was the segregated South in the 1960s, where many schools adhered to strict racial quotas. Opportunity for Black players, particularly quarterbacks, ranged from limited to non-existent, especially in Texas. The state’s marquee football program – the University of Texas  – was not fully integrated until 1970, a year after Davis’ college career was over. 

For Davis, that meant his best route to Division I was through the junior college ranks, where, proving himself at a higher level, he might draw genuine  D-I interest. Davis’ choice was Henderson County Junior College, 215 miles from home, in Athens, Texas. 

While Davis was recruited as a quarterback, his coaches felt he was a better fit at running back, alongside another speedster, Linzy Cole from Dallas. The fleet backfield combo of Davis and Cole led Henderson County to the 1966 national junior college championship.

Four-year schools now began to notice, but only cautiously. Most recommended a second-year of JC ball for Davis to hone his skills. WSU Coach Bert Clark saw no need to wait. He offered Davis a scholarship on the spot, plus the opportunity to play quarterback again.

Davis thought long and hard about whether to accept the offer (moving more than 1,800 miles from home) or stay another year in junior college. SMU Coach Hayden Fry (later famous at Iowa) made a tentative offer for the following year, but that seemed a risk when Clark offered a guarantee with no contingencies or delay. 

Davis sought consultation from one of the wisest men he knew. “It was my grandfather, Albert Davis, who didn’t have much education at all, who convinced me to at least consider Washington State. If I stayed another year at Henderson, he said I could get hurt or unforeseen things could happen. He encouraged me to visit to see if I liked it. 

“So, I took his advice and he was right. I got there and loved it. The people were very nice, very genuine. I toured the campus and met some business people and boosters in Spokane who made me feel very special. It felt like I chose Washington State and Washington State chose me.”

Davis, known in those days as Johnny, arrived in Pullman in early 1967 and quickly nailed down the Cougars’ starting quarterback spot. Clark recruited the fleet-footed, 5-10, 170-pound playmaker to run his newly installed “Houston veer” offense, the rage in college football in the late 1960s and early 70s. 

Unlike today’s pass-heavy offenses, the veer prioritized quarterback speed and mobility more than arm strength. Three run options were available on every play – fullback up the middle, pitch to the tailback on the outside or quarterback keeper. The triple-option produced boatloads of yardage, excitement and high-scoring shootouts – but equally large numbers of fumbles and injured quarterbacks. 

Davis’ arrival in Pullman didn't occur at a fortuitous time in WSU football history. Clark needed a bounce-back year following a disappointing 3-7 season in 1966, but the scheduling gods had other ideas. The early slate was downright frightening, with the first two on the road: USC (eventual national champion) and Oklahoma (3rd in the final poll), followed by UCLA (4th ranked the week of the matchup) in Spokane. 

Spokane served as an alternate home base in those years and the only true home games in Pullman, just two, were not scheduled until November. By then, the season already was a train wreck.

Clark, meanwhile, also had deep dissension festering in the locker room. While his harsh coaching methods were typical of that era – Davis described them as “raw” – players of the late 60s, a time of deep national polarization and protest, were no longer responding well to them. 

The first two games resulted in lopsided losses, with the USC opener being particularly ugly. The Trojans, stacked with All-Americans and future pros including a JC running back making his college debut (O.J. Simpson), battered the Cougs 49-0. 

“USC was practically a professional football team at that time,” Davis recalls. “They had Ron Yary, Tim Rossovich, Earl McCullouch, O.J. Simpson, Steve Sogge and others. 

“Rossovich (consensus All-America defensive end and future first round draft pick) , told me during the game that his job was to kill the quarterback. He picked me up a couple times after beating me to death and said, ‘I don’t care whether you pitch the ball or hand the ball off, my job is to take you out.’ He was a mean guy; very tough.”

Tough also was a good word to describe Clark’s implementation of the veer. When the new offense struggled out of the gate, Clark pulled the plug on it almost immediately. “We never came close to running the veer offense the way it was designed,” Davis says. “I believe it should have been given a bit longer to prove it was a good fit.”

But Clark, perhaps a bit impatient, a bit desperate, or a little of both, was not willing to wait. Change and churn ensued the following week at Oklahoma and continued all season. The quarterback position became a carousel, with Davis, Jerry Henderson, Hank Grenda and Mike Cadigan all taking snaps. 

Davis’ honeymoon period at quarterback was about as long as the proverbial cup of coffee in major league baseball. After logging a stat line of four completions in nine attempts for 42 yards and one touchdown – he was made a starting flanker.

For the team, the season was anything but successful. The collective psyche was battered by eight straight losses, uncertainty over who would start and the criteria for determining lineups. 

Season-ending wins over Idaho and Washington were not enough to save Bert Clark, who was fired after the Apple Cup. His fate was likely sealed in week five, after a loss to Stanford, when he went public with disparaging comments about his team.

For Davis, the season was a disappointment to be sure, but not one without personal highlights. One highlight was the warm welcome he received in Pullman. Asked a half-century later if being WSU’s first Black quarterback produced undue pressure, racially charged comments or even threats, the answer, he says, was an emphatic “no.”

“I was not aware of any big deal made of me as the first Black quarterback. Therefore, there was no added pressure from that. And no, I never received any negative comments and certainly no threats from anyone.”

What about his change in position? Even that he considered a positive. “I loved the receiving corps. It was generally me against one other guy and all you had to do was beat him.” 

The following year, 1968, he beat a number of guys. Now playing for Coach Jim Sweeney, Davis logged 23 receptions for a team high 421 yards. While his rushing numbers were modest, 10 carries for 52 yards, his 5.2-yard average also led the team, as did his 473 yards in total offense.

The season ended on the sweetest of notes. Remember the four-quarterback rotation from the year before? Well, one of those QBs, perhaps the most unlikely of them, was about to etch his name into Apple Cup history.

The night before the 1968 rivalry game, played in Spokane, Sweeney had a wild hair. What if he started Hank Grenda, the third-string QB who doubled as the Cougars’ kicker? Grenda was a tall, steady, reliable senior for whom there was no film the Huskies could study. His placement in the lineup would be a complete surprise.

It was a brilliant, legendary move by Sweeney, as Grenda turned in the performance of his life, personally accounting for all of the Cougars’ 24 points. He ran for one TD, passed for two more, kicked a field goal and added two extra points. Final score: Grenda (Cougars) 24, Huskies 0. 

It was the Cougars’ largest margin of victory in series history; a record since broken two more times, including last year's 40-13 victory in Seattle.

Sweeney’s offense in the first year was relatively balanced with a 57-43 run-pass ratio. It wouldn’t last, however, as Sweeney also became enamored with the run-heavy veer. But, unlike Clark, he stuck with it (sometimes painfully) until his last season in 1975.

Related: Ricky Turner and Ed Blount broke barriers at Washington State

In 1969 – Sweeney’s second year and Davis’ senior year – the Cougars moved full-on to the run. WSU quarterbacks attempted 78 fewer passes than the year before, as run plays comprised two-thirds of the new offense.

While Davis caught 14 balls and logged a touchdown, he and his fellow pass-catchers were more often blockers than receivers. Still, he enjoyed his association was Sweeney, whom he described as likable and fair. “I liked Sweeney quite a bit. They had a nice cohesive coaching staff that was a welcome relief.”

Following the season, he received interest from Edmonton of the Canadian Football League. But, because professional football never had never been his goal, a better choice was to get on with life. 

In the classroom: From the get-go, Davis considered himself a student first. Football was just the vehicle allowing him to pursue his primary dream – becoming the first person in his family to graduate from college. Arriving as a sophomore, he initially focused on a business major.

Then came his first television interview before a game. He was instantly intrigued by the hands-on work of the TV crew; the creative elements of production and the relative “immediacy” of the product. By 1967 technical standards, same-day production and dissemination of video (then 16mm film) was considered fast.

A visit to the WSU Communications Department (now the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication) sealed the deal on changing majors. “I loved that you could instantly see the results of your labor – whether it was setting up the lights to make the subject look good, or getting the sound right on the mics, or the right exposure on the cameras – it was actual, practical work I enjoyed.”

Hugh Rundell, a Communications professor Davis described as “one of the greatest human beings on the face of the earth,” added additional fuel – and possibility – to the young man’s dreams. “He (Rundell) told me my voice was a tool that could take me a lot of places and that you can’t talk well unless you listen well.” 

Similar inspiration and guidance came from communications professors Cal Watson and Jim Dunne, plus long-time WSU alumni director Eugene “Pat” Patterson, mentors he still remembers fondly. Dunne later become mayor of Pullman; Patterson, a state legislator. 

Music: Little grass grew under Davis’ feet. If not studying or playing football, he was playing music. He and teammate Terry Durst, a linebacker from Bremerton, were part of a rock-pop-soul quartet that played events around campus, at the then-legendary Rathskeller Inn in Moscow and even occasional gigs in Coeur d’Alene. Davis was the lead singer; Durst, in Davis’ words, “a sweet Hammond organ player.” 

“We went by a couple different names, but the one that really stuck was the Jazz Church. We made a little money, but mostly got a lot of free food. We were basically paid in pizza, but we had a great time.”

The love of his life: Where would a man from Texas most likely meet a woman from Greece? Perhaps Athens or New York? Or maybe a more neutral site like Paris?  

No to all of the above. Davis met his future wife, Maria Ioannidou, in Pullman, Wash., on the campus of Washington State University. Maria, who had never left her home country, came to WSU in 1967 at the recommendation of one of her teachers, an American, who had a contact at Washington State.

It was an arduous trip that began with a train across Europe, a boat to England, a flight across the Atlantic and another from Chicago to Spokane. Landing in Spokane, she was stranded when the person assigned to pick her up didn’t show up. But, just as Davis had been embraced by Spokane on his recruiting trip, the Lilac City similarly rallied around Maria. Good Samaritans at the airport gave her a place to stay, then a ride to Pullman the next day.

The rest, as the saying goes, is history. She moved into Perham Hall, met John Davis, they fell in love and were married in 1969 while still in school (more on their family below).

Pullman in the 60s: WSU was a calmer place than many campuses in the 60s, but not immune to strife. “There were some troubled times in 1968-69, with incidents – not overly racial – but enough to kick up some anxiety and anger on both sides,” Davis recalls.

“But, by and large, Washington State University was like a clinic – a place that is small and intimate that forces you to rub elbows with everyone,” he says. “But once you start talking, you find you have more in common than conflict. I really enjoyed that environment. In the end, I didn’t really want to leave Washington State, but, like everyone, we had to move on and make room for the new folks.”

Graduating in the spring of 1970, Davis needed a job, but admits he didn’t have a firm plan, or even a resume. Enter again his WSU mentors Hugh Rundell and Cal Watson. Sensing Davis’ talents belonged in front of a camera, not behind, they recommended him for a reporting job at KMJ-TV in Fresno, where another WSU alum, George Cooper, was sports director. 

After a day of interviews and introductions, “John Edwards, the general manager of the station, called me in for a very sober talk and said, ‘Look, we want to hire you. But I want you to understand something – if we do, you will the first Black reporter we have ever hired.’”

He wouldn’t just be the station’s first Black reporter. He also would be the first Black reporter or anchor in all of Central California, from Bakersfield to Sacramento. 

Fresno was a relatively large market for his first job out of school, but Davis says the larger draw was the station’s commitment to him. “I had no real experience as a reporter, but they promised to train me. I said yes, we shook hands and I was off to the races.”

Reporting duties eventually expanded to the weekend anchor chair and a highly successful seven-year run in Fresno. Along the way, he also became re-acquainted with his old coach, Jim Sweeney, who took over at Fresno State after leaving WSU. “In fact, I went to Sweeney’s first news conference at Fresno State.” Davis says. “We laughed -- John Davis and Jim Sweeney, together again.”

In 1977, Davis was lured back to the Pacific Northwest with a reporter-anchor position at KGW-TV in Portland. Then in 1982, the most momentous opportunity of his career came in an offer from WBBM-TV, a CBS-owned station in the nation’s third-largest television market. 

There he spent 20 years, again in a dual reporter-anchor role. For eight of those years, he also doubled as a radio news director and anchor at three stations including WLS-AM, one of Chicago’s oldest and most legendary stations. 

It was his television work, however, that brought him the story of a lifetime.

In February 1990, while working at WBBM, Davis became the first American television reporter to interview South African anti-apartheid icon, and future president, Nelson Mandela, following his release from prison.

While it was Davis who convinced CBS brass to let a Chicago-based reporter join Dan Rather and the network team for Mandela’s impending release, his success in getting the interview was owed to two other people, both unlikely candidates to be involved in international news-gathering. 

The first was a teenager, Davis’ own son, Ioannis (nicknamed Yianni), who had started an underground newspaper at his high school in Evanston, Ill. 

The paper, Amandla, named after the warring cry of the African National Congress (ANC), wrote extensively about Mandela and the ANC, the organization fighting to end apartheid, South Africa’s policy of racial separation and discrimination. Mandela, one of the ANC’s most important leaders, spent 27 years in prison for his efforts to end apartheid.

“My middle son, who had the audacity to start a student newspaper, is the one who basically introduced me to Nelson Mandela’s life and history. I had covered other historic stories and, thanks to Yianni, I really wanted to be there for the release of Nelson Mandela.” 

Once there, Davis depended on a second key person to put him in, what the musical Hamilton would call, “the room where it happened.” That person was a hotel bellman named Jacob (who never shared his last name). “When we got to Johannesburg, I talked to some of the black folks working in the hotel. These were people not allowed to live anywhere near downtown. They had to live in Soweto and other shantytowns.

“One day I got on a jitney and went to Soweto with the workers from the hotel who really schooled me. Little did I know that one of them (Jacob) was part of the ANC hierarchy in Johannesburg.”

While it was widely assumed Mandela’s release was imminent, few knew the exact day, time and place. Jacob, the diminutive, unassuming bellman, knew everything.

“I guess Jacob was impressed with my sincerity because he called me on a Friday night and told me I had to get to Cape Town (nearly 900 miles away) as soon as possible,” Davis recounts.

The world press was caught off guard. Only South African reporters were present when Mandela emerged on Sunday. Davis was the only American television journalist on site for Mandela’s celebratory speech from the balcony of the Cape Town City Hall.

“After the speech, I saw Jacob in the crowd. He was walking in a back door to City Hall and motioned me and my two cameramen to follow him to the mayor’s office.” Inside, Davis stood face-to-face with Mandela himself. “We talked and talked. I told him about my son and his newspaper. He smiled and then got a little emotional, I got a little emotional, and we embraced each other. That was a photo seen far and wide.”

Video: Davis discusses his first meeting with Nelson Mandela

Two days later, this time joined by CBS anchor Dan Rather, Davis was invited to Mandela’s home in Soweto for a second interview. Davis also returned to the country four years later for the election and swearing-in of Mandela as South African president. 

“We were there to see the election and the horrifically long lines to vote. People patiently waited, some without food and water, for up to seven hours. But the people were patient and respectful of each other and there were more smiles than frowns,” he says. 

They smiled because the historic 1994 election marked the official end of apartheid. It was the country’s first truly democratic election in which all persons of legal age were allowed to vote. 

The list of people Davis has interviewed, or met, reads like a veritable Who’s Who of America in the 20th century. The short list …

Farm workers’ leader Cesar Chavez; Black Panther Party leaders Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale; singer, songwriter and activist Joan Baez; cult leader Jim Jones; sports luminaries Sparky Anderson, Daryl Lamonica and Gary Matthews; journalistic icons Mike Royko and Studs Terkel; actor Redd Foxx; the Pointer Sisters R&B group; assorted Chicago “machine” politicians; notorious mobsters and the list goes on. 

“The high end assassinations of mob bosses and mob leaders, I covered nearly every one of them.”

In 2014, Davis’ achievements earned him a place in the nation’s largest African American video/oral history archive, which contains a series of interviews about his life. The collection includes more than 3,300 biographies. Davis is included with other media inductees including Pulitzer Prize winners Leonard Pitts and William Raspberry.

He's also a member of the WSU Murrow Hall of Achievement, an Emmy award-winner for news reporting in Chicago, and the recipient of at least 50 community service awards. 

Davis left television in 2004, but makes clear, he did not retire. He just transitioned to new projects that included, and still include, media and political consulting and even documentary film production. 

His documentary credits include co-production of Lethal Nationalism: Genocide of the Greeks 1913-1923, a documentary (on Vimeo) that chronicles the death of nearly one million Greeks by Ottoman and Nationalist Turks during a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Today, nearly a decade beyond customary retirement age, “I’m still doing,” Davis says. “It’s important to keep reinventing ourselves.”  

His ongoing volunteer commitments include membership on the boards of the Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center in Chicago, the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie, IL, and numerous projects with the Greek Orthodox Church, which he joined after marrying Maria. 

College, career, Chicago, Cape Town … all high points in an impressive life. Yet none top Davis’ list of favorite moments in his 74 years. That spot is reserved for countless, treasured family moments; moments that began in Pullman when he met Maria, his wife of 53 years.  

And his focus on education – his goal to be the first in his family to earn a college degree – that  dream didn’t stop with his WSU diploma in 1970. He just passed the torch, which now burns even brighter.

While the birth of the Davis’ first son interrupted Maria’s studies at WSU, she later completed a bachelor’s degree at Fresno State University and a master’s from the Chicago Art Institute.

Their three married sons – Symeon (born in Pullman), Ioannis (Yianni) and Mario – have followed suit.  

Symeon is a graduate of Princeton University and the CEO of real estate firm in Los Angeles. Yianni graduated from the University of Illinois-Champaign and is now an architect in Chicago. Mario, another Princeton graduate, is a music executive in Los Angeles.  

The Davis’ five grandchildren are on a similar track with graduate and post-graduate affiliations, thus far, at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois (both Champaign and Chicago campuses). But stay tuned – this list will likely grow, as the three youngest grandchildren are not yet of college age.  

“Maria and I could not be more proud of our remarkable family which has its very roots in Pullman and WSU,” says Davis. “It’s an amazing family that literally grew from two students from opposite sides of the world, who found love, harmony and strength in each other.”

Though raising successful kids was a team effort. “Maria,” John says, “is the rock of our family.”

More than a half-century after graduating from WSU, Davis sums up his affection for the university very succinctly:  “Any time you talk about Washington State University, I start smiling right away.”

Davis wore jersey No. 1 in his first year at WSU – the same number now worn by current WSU quarterback Cameron Ward, another transfer from Texas. The following season, deeming too much focus on that unique number, he requested a new jersey, switching to No. 41.

Was the blurring of his first name and middle initial – John E. – the reason he was known, through college, as Johnny? “No,” he says. “My name at birth was Johnny, but as I got older, I thought it sounded too much like a little kid’s name. So I shortened it to John.”

From the archives: Duke Washington, the Jackie Robinson of Cougar football, is gone

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