By ABC-7 Reporter Darren Hunt

EL PASO -- Days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., eight Black Texas Western track and field athletes decided not to show for a track meet at Brigham Young University as a form of protest.

Instead of supporting their cause, then coach Wayne Vandenburg decided to cut the athletes from his track team, including the great Bob Beamon.

"We lost the scholarship completely," said Beamon, "the cry for dialogue and support for what Dr. King worked so hard for was not there."

The protest came two years after Don Haskins guided the Texas Western basketball team to an NCAA National Championship by starting five black players against an all-white Kentucky team.

Legendary El Paso Sports Journalist Ray Sanchez, 81, told ABC-7 it is a chapter the University of Texas at El Paso is not proud of. "It was perhaps the saddest chapter in the history of UTEP," said Sanchez.

He remembers what happened in 1968 like it was yesterday. He said King had just been assassinated and the eight black athletes did not want to participate in a track meet at BYU. "In those days, BYU held some very bad ideas about blacks," said Sanchez, adding Mormons believed blacks were inferior in that era.

Still, the move did little to halt the flow of history. Beamon would go on to the 1968 Olympics and set a world record in the long jump that stood for 23 years. Despite his dismissal, he was inducted into the UTEP Athletic Hall of Fame in 2004.

"I've never really had a bad feeling for the university, but sometimes you have to take a stand and we took a stand," said Beamon.

-------------------

Written for KVIA.com by News/Web Producer Joe Villasana