Don Coleman - Michigan State Coach and Administrator

Michigan State Coach and Administrator

In April 1968, Coleman left his position as a school principal in Flint to join Duffy Daugherty's coaching staff as an assistant coach. He was the first African-American on Michigan State's coaching staff. That same month, a group of African-American athletes at Michigan State had announced plans to boycott all sports at the university in protest against the lack of African-Americans in coaching, counseling and administration positions. According to a report in the Washington Afro-American, Michigan State was forced to leave its "lily-white hiring" by the "quiet but firm demands of a militant, forward looking student organization. Coleman resigned his coaching position at Michigan State in January 1969 and accepted a new position in the school's residence hall program. At the time of his resignation, Coleman said, "Frankly, I found football coaching was not for me ... During the years I had been out of football, the game had changed so drastically that I feel lost." After his resignation from the coaching staff, Coleman held ten different assignments at Michigan State, including assistant dean of the graduate school, counselor and director of minority comprehensive support programs at the Michigan State College of Osteopathic Medicine, and professor emeritus.