By Tracy Gupton

Columbia Historical Museum

On December 19, 1953, something occurred in West Columbia, Texas, that has never been duplicated. For the one and only time in history West Columbia, site of the first capital of the Republic of Texas, hosted a state championship high school football game.

Old Griggs Field, at one time adjoining historic Columbia Cemetery between Loggins Drive and Gray Avenue, was the site of the Class 1A Prairie View Interscholastic League state championship. In December of 1969 Baylor University’s stadium in Waco was the scene where the Columbia High School Roughnecks appeared in the only football state championship game in school history.

The 1953 state championship battle pitted the hometown Charlie Brown High School Tigers, then West Columbia’s school for Black students, against the Livingston Dunbar Leopards. The racially integrated Roughnecks football team of 1969, led by future NFL stars Charlie Johnson and Charlie Davis (both gifted Black athletes who started elementary school in segregated schools in Brazoria County), were undefeated until losing the Class 3A state championship game to Brownwood in Waco.

Likewise, the 1953 Tigers of Charlie Brown High School were undefeated until dropping a close 14-12 decision at Griggs Field in West Columbia.  The Leopards of Livingston Dunbar won PVIL state championships in 1953, 1954 and 1958. But the hometown Tigers fought hard and gave Polk County’s superb football players a run for their money 70 years ago when the two all Black teams met in West Columbia.

In 2010 the Columbia High School Athletic Booster Club honored members of Charlie Brown High School’s 1948, 1950 and 1952 state champion boys basketball teams with induction into the Roughnecks Hall of Honor. Three years later the 2013 Tigers football team that played for the 1A Texas state championship received the same honor, joining former Roughnecks greats like the two Charlies – Davis and Johnson – in Columbia High’s Hall of Fame, even though those great Black athletes never got the opportunity to suit up as Roughnecks due to racial segregation.

By the mid-1960s, Black students were being integrated into the formerly all-white schools in Brazoria County and the history of the Charlie Brown Tigers became just that … history. Clark Woodson Jr., husband of Columbia Historical Museum board member Kathleen Jones Woodson, was the last Charlie Brown High School student/athlete to play quarterback for the Tigers. The year after his graduation from Charlie Brown all Black students were attending classes at Columbia High School due to America’s desegregation of public schools.

Clark Woodson Jr. and his son, Clark “Trey” Woodson III (who was inducted into the Roughnecks Hall of Honor the same night the 1953 Charlie Brown Tigers football team earned induction 10 years ago, recognized for winning a state championship in boys singles tennis), as well as Trey’s younger brother Clint Woodson who also competed at the state tennis tournament his senior year at CHS, are descendants of former slave Charlie Brown who donated the land for the Charlie Brown School to be built on in the early part of the last century.

The late Frank Flannel, father of former Roughnecks standout Marvin Flannel Sr. (Class of 1977), was the quarterback for the 1953 Charlie Brown Tigers.

Coach Morris Richardson’s Tigers who played for the PVIL 1A state championship included Charles Cravens, William Crawford, Leroy Donley, Robert Randon, Johnny Donley, Andrew Eason, John Paul, Bernard Williams, Harry Crawford, Thomas Donley, Clement Boxley, Samuel Goodwin, Randolph Hobbs, Ernest Thompson, Johnny Brown, Leroy Gibson, Harold Penn, Clarence Brown, Chester Davis, Harvey Johnson, Albert Dixon, Thurman Gillis and Waymon Wesley.

Richardson began coaching and teaching in Luling in 1949 after closing out an impressive sports career of his own at Prairie View A&M University. The longtime coach at Charlie Brown High School in West Columbia and later at Sweeny High School received conference and national honors in 1948 as a Prairie View Panthers wide receiver. Coach Richardson was honored in 1989 with induction into the Prairie View A&M University Athletic Hall of Fame. He played college football for the Prairie View Panthers in 1943, 1946, 1947 and 1948.

Morris Richardson and his wife Lois, who both formerly served on the Columbia Historical Museum board of directors, were teachers at the Charlie Brown School in West Columbia during days of racial segregation.

His Tigers football team went undefeated during the regular season in 1953 after a loss to Boling was overturned due to Boling playing the game with an ineligible player. In the bi-district matchup, Charlie Brown High School beat Lockhart Carver 21-14. The Lockhart high school had won the PVIL 1A state championship the year before in 1952.

In the next round of postseason play, Coach Richardson’s Tigers defeated Sugar Land 32-6 before setting up the 1953 state championship matchup with Livingston Dunbar by edging past Taylor, Texas’s Black high school 6-0 in a heavy rainstorm.

And although Charlie Brown High School’s football team came up short in securing the football state championship 70 years ago on old Griggs Field in West Columbia, the local Black school’s boys basketball teams experienced more success. Morris Richardson coached football, basketball and track while teaching agriculture classes at Charlie Brown School in the 1950s and early 1960s.

It was E.S. Myer who coached the Tigers basketball team to Charlie Brown High School’s first state championship in 1948, but Coach Richardson also experienced the sweet taste of success as the Tigers basketball coach in the 1950s.

Reverend Felix Bumry Phillips, who passed away in 2019, was one of the best players on Charlie Brown High School’s 1948 state championship team. In addition to Phillips, other members of the 1948 championship team were Frank Gibson, Herman Lewis, Jessie Fields, Gus Order, A.D. Bufford, Clyde Jackson, Willie Armstead, A.J. Jones and Robert Gibson.

“We held the area basketball tournament here that season,” Phillips told the late Teena Maenza in an interview for a story in The Brazoria County News many years ago. “It was in the gym at the junior high (now Heritage Hall in West Columbia), which used to be the high school. That was the first time we had ever played ball in the gym. Our other games were all played on the ground.”

The gym was packed with spectators, Phillips recalled, but the Charlie Brown Tigers finally claimed the area championship in a game that didn’t end until around 2 a.m.

“We had to play three or four other games that day before we got to the finals,” Phillips said.

He recalled the state meet was a three day event, with the West Columbia Tigers playing one basketball game Thursday, two on Friday, and the championship on Saturday.

Phillips, who was nicknamed “Ugi” and “Pop” (because he was so popular), also collected some track championships for the school, Maenza’s story revealed. He graduated from Charlie Brown High School in 1950.

Like Morris Richardson before him, Phillips served a tour of duty in the U.S. Army. He played baseball on a military team in Japan before shipping out to Korea. Richardson served in the Army in the Philippines and England during World War II. When his military service was over, Phillips came home and enrolled at Texas Southern University where he resumed his baseball career and earned a Bachelor of Science degree.

After graduation, Phillips attended a professional baseball camp, but his hopes of playing pro ball ended with an injury, so Phillips enrolled in Prairie View A&M University and earned a Master’s of Education degree.

Phillips, who was born in Damon in 1931, came home to West Columbia to utilize his teaching degree, teaching math and coaching at the Charlie Brown School.

When desegregation happened, Phillips said, he moved to Van Vleck to teach and continued to coach. Phillips also taught and coached in North Forest ISD, TDC’s Windham ISD, and at schools in Crosby, Houston, Pasadena, Kendleton and Living Waters Christian School.

Phillips, the son of Lannie and Madora Phillips, was an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church since 1980 and pastored 12 churches.

Coach Richardson was a native of Texarkana, Texas. He retired from coaching and teaching after 35 years in the profession. Morris and his wife Lois, a retired home economics teacher at Columbia High School, have both passed away.