Before he was president, Gerald R. Ford was a young lineman at the University of Michigan with a future as promising as his best friend and teammate, Willis Ward. Ward was one of the most gifted athletes in the country, a star in both football and track, and the only Black player on Michigan’s roster. In the fall of 1934, when Georgia Tech agreed to play Michigan only if Ward was benched, the decision cut to the heart of the team and the campus.
For Ford, the demand struck even deeper. He told his coaches that if Ward could not play, he would quit the team in protest. Ward urged him not to walk away but to channel his anger into the game. When the two teams met in Ann Arbor that October, Ford played with a ferocity that left no doubt where his loyalties stood, helping Michigan secure its lone victory of a troubled season.
The 1934 game left a mark on both men. Ward, discouraged by the racism he faced, eventually walked away from athletics and built a career in law, where he focused on civil rights in Detroit. Ford carried the memory of that game throughout his life.
When he served in Congress and later as president, he often thought back to what happened to his teammate and friend, and it helped shape his support for civil rights legislation. Author and historian John U. Bacon tells the story of that moment on the field and how it forged Ford’s lifelong convictions about loyalty, fairness, and equality.