Commentary: Sam Donaldson on Don Haskins' Sports and Civil Rights Legacy

Sept. 9, 2008 -- The following is a commentary by ABC News' Sam Donaldson. Click here to view a video version of his latest essay.

Coach Don Haskins died Sunday, and I'd like to say a word about him. I went to the college in El Paso where he coached long before he was hired. It was named Texas Western then; it's now called the University of Texas at El Paso. But it's not the old school tie that makes me want to say a word about Haskins. It's what he did as the school's basketball coach in 1966.

He had come to Texas Western from coaching boys and girls basketball teams in high schools in small Texas towns. When he got to Texas Western he found trying to recruit good players was very difficult. What young rising star wanted to come to a school no one had ever heard of in a town that was in the middle of a hot, dry desert?

So Haskins rounded up players wherever he could find them, many of them African-Americans who back then couldn't get in the best schools.

By 1966, he had his team and it swept through the other colleges until suddenly, unexpectedly, it found itself playing for the national championship, playing against the seemingly invincible Kentucky Wildcats, coached by the legendary Adolph Rupp.

But even that is not why I wanted to say a word about coach Haskins…No, it's because against Rupp and his all white Wildcats, Haskins fielded five African-American players. Never before in a national championship had that happened. Adolph Rupp was contemptuous…until the final bell.

Texas Western had won 72 to 65, but the victory went far beyond the score.

Pat Riley, head coach of the Miami Heat, who was a guard back then on the Kentucky team, put it this way: "I felt this game was probably the emancipation proclamation of 1966," said Riley.

Yes, coach Don Haskins pitted five African-Americans against five white players ... and they won.

And thanks to the late Don Haskins, we all won.

Sam Donaldson, a 41-year ABC News veteran, served two appointments as chief White House correspondent for ABC News, from 1977-1989 and from January 1998 to August 1999, covering Presidents Carter, Reagan and Clinton. Donaldson also co-anchored, with Diane Sawyer, "PrimeTime Live," from August 1989 until it merged with "20/20" in 1999. He co-anchored the ABC News Sunday morning broadcast, "This Week With Sam Donaldson & Cokie Roberts," from December 1996 to September 2002. Currently, Donaldson appears on ABC News Now, the ABC News digital network, in a daily show called "Politics Live."