Dobyns Bennett Basketball Salutes Douglass High School 

Douglass High School served Kingsport's black community for almost four decades, closing in 1966 with the completion of integration in the Kingsport schools.
Over those four decades there were parallel programs of excellence with both schools winning state championships in football and basketball. In 1946 Douglass basketball went a step farther, competing for a National Championship Tournament for all black schools.
This Saturday, Feb. 1, D-B Basketball will pay tribute at its game to all those great teams and great athletes who competed for Douglass. Many, many Douglass alums are expected to be on hand to participate in the celebration.
That 1946 basketball team was a special group. Because Douglass was a small school most athletes played basketball and football. The next year, the Douglass football team won the state championship for black schools.
Vernell Allen, the star of the '46 team, returned to Kingsport ten years ago when Douglass' trophies were returned to the old school, now V.O. Dobbins Center, and installed in a special trophy case.
I wrote about that ceremony.

It was the first week in March 1946. Dobyns-Bennett had just been knocked out of the regional basketball tournament by Friendsville so the eyes of Kingsport basketball fans turned to the scrappy bunch from Douglass High.

The Big Tiger, as the Kingsport Times called the team, was on a roll. The team had won the Appalachian tournament in Bristol and the Regional tournament in Knoxville and was heading to Nashville to take on Woodstock High of Memphis for the Tennessee Negro High School championship.

The Tigers were led by Vernell Allen, nephew of Douglass principal Van Dobbins, and a recent arrival in Kingsport. Vernell’s father had died the previous summer and Vernell, his mother and his two sisters came to Kingsport to live with the Dobbins family.

Vernell was back in Kingsport in 2010 and he recalled how he was immediately indoctrinated in the Dobbins ethic: “to stay out of trouble, to be a positive example to the other Douglass students, and to excel at everything thing you do.”

And he did, especially the excel part.

He was the leader of the Douglass team that jumped out to an early lead in the state championship game and coasted to a 32-26 win.

Allen was named to the All-State team and was also named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player. He had averaged 12 points a game over the season.

That Douglass team didn’t excel at first. It had been slow to jell, probably due to integrating a new player – Allen – into an established squad. They lost four of their first ten games and certainly didn’t look like a district champ, much less a contender for a state title.

The team seemed to turn its season around in late January when it got revenge – and how – for an earlier loss, pounding Bristol (Tennessee) Slater 54-8. That began a string of 12 wins, including a convincing 45-35 victory over traditional power Alcoa Hall High. A close loss to Bristol (Virginia) Douglass was followed by a six-win run that culminated in the state championship.

But the Tigers season wasn’t over.

In 1945 the athletic director at Tennessee A&I State College – as Tennessee State was known then - had created the National Negro High School Basketball Tournament to decide a national champion for all-black schools.

Kingsport’s Douglass was invited to represent the state of Tennessee. The 16-team tournament included teams from Florida, Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Virginia, and the defending champion, Oklahoma City Douglass, which was placed in the same bracket with the Kingsport squad.

Kingsport Douglass Coach C.C. Kizer took a ten man squad to Nashville:

Vernell Allen, Grant Banner, Ralph Banner, DeArmond Blye, Wallace Blye, Wendell Brown, Bobby Graves, Bobby Joe Johnson, Johnny Johnson and Andy Watterson,

Bobby Joe, a reserve on that team, told me in 2010, “We thought we were good. Till we got to the national tournament.”

They faced St. Louis Vashon High in the first round.

The Kingsport Times story told the tale. “The Tigers could not match the smooth-working St. Louis club, and fell behind early.”

The final was 41-17, dropping Douglass into the losers’ bracket, where they faced the defending national champs.

It was the same story. Oklahoma City raced out to a big lead and won 34-18.

Two days later Booker T. Washington of Cushing, Oklahoma defeated Middleton High of Tampa, Florida 44-40 for the national title.

But the story doesn’t end there.

The trip gave Vernell Allen exposure to the Tennessee A&I staff, who offered him a basketball scholarship. After graduating with a degree in education in 1950, he taught in Shelby County for three years then moved to Michigan to work on his master’s degree at Wayne State.

He and his sister Augusta were featured in a 1955 Kingsport Times-News story about distinguished Douglass graduates. “Augusta and Vernell were outstanding students at Tennessee State. She is now teaching English in Lexington, Tennessee.” The story noted that while working on his master’s, Vernell had a “recreational job that pays $3,600 a year.” That was a nice salary in 1955, especially for a student working on a degree. He received his master’s in education in 1958 and spent his career as an educator in Detroit.

 Vernell returned to Kingsport in 2010 for a ceremony dedicating the new trophy case at the V.O. Dobbins Center, which had been Douglass High in 1946. His basketball MVP trophy had been discovered in a storage room at D-B and he smiled broadly as he placed it in the new trophy space.

He smiled even more broadly when asked about his daughter Geri Allen, a well-known jazz composer and pianist, who has worked with everyone from McCoy Tyner to Ornette Coleman. If you Google Geri, almost every story includes this sentence: “She cites her primary influences to be her parents, Mount Vernell Allen Jr, and Barbara Jean Allen.”

Vernell had taught her that Dobbins family ethic: stay out of trouble, be a positive influence and work to excel.

In 2010 I wrote this about the return of the Douglass High athletic trophies to their rightful home:

The trophies finally came home.

After more than four decades the sports trophies that the students at the old Douglass High School won have been returned to their rightful home, in a trophy case in their old building.

When Douglass, Kingsport’s historically black high school, closed in 1966, all its trophies, including a state basketball championship trophy and a state football championship trophy, were moved, along with all the Douglass students, into Dobyns-Bennett.

Some of the trophies went into Dobyns-Bennett’s trophy case but because of a shortage of space, many of the Douglass trophies, along with a number of the D-B trophies, were packed up in boxes and forgotten.

Well, forgotten by the people who packed them up.

But not by the students who won them.

Last Friday, after a ribbon cutting ceremony dedicating the former Douglass building as the V.O. Dobbins Senior Complex, a number of Douglass’ graduates gathered in the community room for another ceremony, the return of the Douglass trophies.

Among those in attendance were Vernell Allen, the star of the 1946 basketball team that defeated Memphis Woodstock to win the state basketball championship, and Bobby Joe Johnson and Jack Pierce, who were members of the 1946 and 1948 football teams that won state championships.

Jack Pierce, who played tackle, remembered the trip to Chattanooga to play the powerhouse black school Howard. “We drive up in our ratty old bus and look up at this school. It was as big as D-B.”

Douglass had only fifteen players and after all 15 had piled off, a pair of Howard students wandered over to take a look at their opponents.

“One of the fellows looked us over and said to his friend, ‘If I’d known the circus was coming to town, I’d have stayed out of school today.”

Howard soon learned that this was no circus team. Douglass ran over, around and through the Howard eleven, winning 26-13 and moving closer to the state championship game against Knoxville Austin.

They topped Austin for the state championship 14-13 on a halfback pass from Buddy Bond to quarterback Bobby Joe Johnson. “Although covered Johnson picked the ball out of the air,” this newspaper reported.

That marked Douglass’ third state championship in three years, two in football and the one in basketball.

But over the years those trophies got misplaced – and there never was a 1946 football trophy. But last Friday they were brought back together, shined up, repaired and in the case of the ’46 trophy replaced.

And returned to their rightful home.

Douglass trophies back where they belong.