The quotes used in this piece are verbatim from "Cloddy" by Kim Clodfelter, a biography about Dwane "Cloddy" Clodfelter, a coach at USD from 1954 to 1967.
 
Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1940s and 50s, Jimmie and Cliff Daniels were no strangers to integrated schools and neighborhoods. Being black had little effect on their desire to achieve success on and off the court.
 
It was one thing that didn't matter to Dwane "Cloddy" Clodfelter either. Cloddy wanted to win. And to win, you had to look beyond the surface at talent. Cliff and Jimmie had talent.
 
This was during a particularly difficult period in history and some marquee moments in black history hadn't yet happened.
 
Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech was delivered in 1963. Texas Western beat Kentucky in the national championship game with five black starters in 1966. Cliff and Jimmie becoming the first black student-athletes at USD – 1955.
 
Cloddy began recruiting the pair of brothers to come to USD in 1954. Four years later, the South Dakota Coyotes brought home the NCAA College Division National Championship trophy.
 
 
How did Cloddy help get us there?
 
After he had played a baseball game with Satchel Paige in high school and competed against and beaten the integrated Harlem Globetrotters while earning his teaching degree, the concept of integrated sports wasn't foreign to him. Cloddy understood the competition field was meant to be inclusive.
 
Getting the Daniels brothers to Vermillion was not an easy task. Initially, the duo headed south to Lincoln University, to play basketball there. After one semester in the south, the brothers called Cloddy.
 
"I guess racism is the best way to sum up how we ended up at USD." said Jimmie. "The transition of going from New York to Missouri at that point in history wasn't the best for two northern blacks. We didn't feel that the community there accepted us."
 
After one semester at Lincoln College, Cliff and Jimmie decided to seek a more hospitable and healthy environment. They contacted Coach Clodfelter at the University of South Dakota.
 
"He was honest with us and explained what he could and couldn't do for us under the NCAA rules." said Jimmie. "That was important to us as we had gone through two recruitments that did not work out." (page 101)
 
At the time of their arrival to USD, there was only one other black student enrolled. It's not to say that the brothers escaped racism altogether by wearing a Coyote jersey. Road games took the team south. One example included a tumultuous trip to Missouri.
 
USD could not protect them from everything, especially in Missouri in 1956. After the game, an 81-71 loss to the University of Missouri in Columbia, Jimmie Daniels, along with four of his white teammates, went to a hamburger joint near their hotel for a burger and fries. Roger Nelson and Jim Truelson sat down at the counter to the left of Jimmie. Clayt Kiewel and Maury Haugland sat to his right. The white players ordered, and the waitress soon brought out their food. Jimmie thought her behavior was odd. She ignored him. "Excuse me," he said to the waitress. "Can I give you my order?"
 
She replied, "I'm sorry we don't serve colored folks here."
 
Jimmie's four white teammates overheard the waitress' refusal to take his order and became very upset. Maury Haugland slammed his milkshake on the counter and left part of it on the ceiling… Jimmie knew they had to leave or there would be trouble… and they'd probably get arrested. They had just started to eat, but now they walked out without paying and headed to the hotel.
 
"By that point, we were all brothers." Jimmie said. "We were ready to go to war together. It meant a lot to have teammates who would stand by you like that, outside of basketball." (page 122)
 
The USD and Vermillion community believed in the Daniels brothers. As senior day was approaching, it was clear that their mother wouldn't be able to make the trip from Brooklyn for financial reasons. The Coyote community stepped in.
 
The idea that the Daniels brothers would not have their mother in attendance on Parents' Night did not sit well with their teammates. The idea to fly Mrs. (Daniels) Singleton out to South Dakota originated with Coyote team members, but townspeople also chipped in and raised the money to bring her to Vermillion. Jimmie and Cliff were not told of the plan to fly their mother to South Dakota for Parents' Night. Cloddy recalled an incident which exemplified how the university stood behind the Daniels boys:

"There was a group of people who wanted to contribute money to fly the boys' mother for parent's night," said Cloddy. "One individual went to President I.D. Weeks and complained that they thought it was wrong. Weeks stood up and said, 'If that's wrong, I want to be in on it,' and tossed some bills on the desk. That was the end of that." (page 182)
 
After a few seasons of being a Coyote, Cliff, Jimmie and their teammates were poised to reach the pinnacle, and it remains the program's lone national title. The Daniels brothers were a key component of that with Jimmie being named a first team Division II All-American that year.
 
Cloddy was a pioneer in the integration of college sports. As a white, South Dakota native, he chose to be an ally and mentor to these young men. It's a foundation Coyote athletics continues to build upon.

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Special thanks to Kim Clodfelter, Cloddy's son. Kim's book "Cloddy" offers a biographical peek inside this dramatic period of Coyote basketball history with great detail. Stories of rowdy student sections, supportive Vermillion community members and a change that led the way are very well put together. His book is available for purchase at GoYotes.com/Cloddy.