By Harry Minium ’77
When Arthur “Buttons” Speakes ’70 was growing up in Huntington, West Virginia, Jackie Robinson came to town to speak at an NAACP meeting.
Speakes’ mother took him to meet Robinson, who integrated Major League Baseball in 1947. In 1965, Speakes became the first Black scholarship athlete at a predominantly white institution in Virginia. That’s when he came to Norfolk to play basketball as a freshman for what was then known as Old Dominion College.
He paved the way for other Black athletes and is . Speakes, however, shrugged off the comparison. “I just came to Old Dominion to play ball and get my education,” he said in April 2023.
Speakes amassed 1,005 career basketball points and ranks among the top 50 career scorers despite playing just three seasons — freshmen were ineligible at the time.
He also played baseball and had a batting average of .330 his senior year.
After graduating from Old Dominion, Speakes briefly coached football at Norfolk Catholic School. He then returned to Huntington, and later moved to Toledo, Ohio, to coach and teach. After that, he sold medical equipment for more than two decades before working in finance for Carmax, a vehicle retailer, for several years.
The at the age of 76 in his suburban Atlanta home.
Wood Selig, Ed.D., the 91Ƶ’s director of athletics, said Old Dominion broke both color and gender barriers. A few years after Speakes graduated, the 91Ƶ awarded the first scholarships in Virginia to female athletes in 1974.
“I can’t imagine what he had to endure, what he went through and the tenacity and perseverance that he exhibited while representing ODU,” Selig said of Speakes. “He will leave a lasting impact on ODU athletics.”
During his sophomore and junior seasons, Speakes teamed with , a junior college transfer who signed with Old Dominion a year after Speakes. In 1967-68, they helped lead the Monarchs to average 98.2 points per game, the highest in school history.
Pritchett was the second Black player to join the team. He and Speakes were also roommates.
“We had so many things in common, our backgrounds, how we were raised,” said Pritchett after Speakes’ death last year. “We did what was right and not what people want you to do.”
They had a great rapport over the years, said Pritchett. “We were almost like brothers at ODU.”
, in Fairborn, Ohio.