‘Finest QB prospect we’ve ever seen’: How Jack Pitts made SEC football think twice

“There were things written in those days that may have had some influence on what happened in the South,” said Pitts, who has been called a catalyst to SEC integration. “But in those days, you knew that it was segregated. You knew it was highly unlikely you’d get invited to visit the campus, so you really didn’t think that much about it. It’s just the way it was.”

Pitts is among 30 former high school stars who will be honored at ceremonies at the College Football Hall of Fame downtown. Most of them are more widely known. They include University of Georgia legends Thomas Davis (Randolph-Clay) and David Greene (South Gwinnett) and former Georgia Tech stars Jonathan Dwyer (Kell) and Demaryius Thomas (West Laurens).

Pitts is one of four inductees from the old Georgia Interscholastic Association, which governed athletics for the state’s African American high schools from 1948 until 1970. The others are Silas Jamison from Washington in Atlanta, George Atkinson of Johnson in Savannah and Tommy Hart of Ballard-Hudson in Macon.

Atkinson and Hart had long NFL careers, but Jamison and Pitts might be soon forgotten for their football glory if not for this hall of fame, which has honored nine former GIA stars in its three years of existence.

Jamison led Washington to a 1958 GIA title. He turned down several college football opportunities, including one from Indiana, when he signed with the Philadelphia Phillies and played four minor league seasons. Jamison is being inducted largely on the recommendation of a contemporary coach, Raymond “Tweet” Williams, who at age 98 last year called Jamison the best all-around GIA high school football player to come out of Atlanta.

Pitts, another all-around athlete, who could throw a football right-handed or left-handed, led Decatur’s Trinity High to a 1965 GIA title. Trinity High School sat across from the city’s white high school, Decatur, separated by a wall, until their student bodies merged in 1968, when Trinity closed.

Pitts’ 1965 team also featured Clarence Scott, who would play 13 years with the Cleveland Browns. Scott was inducted into this Hall of Fame in 2022. Pitts was the bigger high school star of the two, the unquestioned leader of that ‘65 team.

Pitts signed with Michigan State and won the starting job on the freshman team, beating out five other quarterbacks. The AJC wrote about him again that November, when Pitts threw two TD passes in the freshman game against Notre Dame in a 30-27 loss.

“In a football-happy state like Georgia the alumni would normally be asking some questions as to why Tech and Georgia let such a promising quarterback be recruited out from under their noses and exported to perform for the top, or next-to-top, team in the country,’’ Atlanta Constitution editor Eugene Patterson wrote. “But there are few questions asked (though many are raised) since Jack Pitts, like his fellow quarterback Jimmy Raye of Fayetteville, N.C., is a Negro. ... The day Georgia college teams really want to be No. 1 they can stop these Daugherty-type Northern raids on their good Southern material.’’

Pitts would not have much longer to play, though. He suffered a broken neck as a sophomore, ending his career. Pitts remained at Michigan State and got a degree. He has lived in Michigan since 1976 and resides in West Bloomfield, about 25 from Detroit.

One of Pitts’ guests Saturday night will be Jimmy Raye, the man Pitts calls his hero. Raye was Michigan State’s quarterback on the famous 1966 team that tied Notre Dame 10-10 in what was called “the game of the century.” Rae was the first Black quarterback from the South to win a major national title.

Pitts recalled meeting Rae for the first time.

“I was on a trip to Michigan State, and we were playing basketball,” Pitts said. “I was blown away that these football players were such good basketball players. Jimmy comes over and says, ‘You need to be here with us.’ I’m thinking this is some of the best players in college football. They’d just played in the Rose Bowl, and they want me to play with them? I couldn’t wait to tell my mom.”

So maybe Georgia and Georgia Tech never had a chance, anyway. Pitts said he never took great offense to their slights.

“My youngest son went to Central Michigan as a football player, and Central Michigan came to Athens to play Georgia,’' Pitts said. “This was like 2008 or 2009. And the Georgia football team runs out on the field from the locker room. About 75% of the players on the field are Black. I thought, wow, what would’ve happened if I’d gone to Georgia or Georgia Tech? Because Wake Forest was recruiting me. They said they wanted me to be the first negro quarterback in the ACC. I don’t know. But I’ve learned this. If you can play, you can play. That should be how you’re defined in recruiting.”

So now Pitts is home again, touched that his home state will remember him in this way. He had a similarly warm homecoming in 2015, when chosen for the Decatur Athletics Wall of Honor. Saturday’s recognition tops even that, he said.

“It’s 50-something years later, and my name will be flashed up, and people are writing about it, and all my kids are going to be there, my wife,” Pitts said. “It’s like my oldest son said, ‘You’re a Hall of Famer now.’ This is pretty special, man.”

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