Champion of racial equity & housing access, Roger Clay (’66) on college football, his career trajectory & decades of service to Stanford
BY PERLITA R. DICOCHEA
As we enter an atypical Super Bowl LV weekend, we revisit our interview with Roger Clay (’66), who met with us virtually in Spring 2020 to reflect on his experiences as one of Stanford’s first seven Black students, known as the “’62 Seven,” the third Black player in the history of Stanford’s football program, his career trajectory and university service.
A CCSRE board member since its inaugural year, 2000, Roger Clay has been a steady leader for the Center, the wider Stanford campus, and broader community remaining focused on housing, community development, and racial inequality — interests that drive his professional and volunteer commitments.
But before Clay became a champion of racial equity, he made a critical decision to join Stanford football as a “walk-on.”
“There were six people from my high school football team who were offered scholarships to come to Stanford and I was not,” recounted Clay. “The football coach said that Black people couldn’t get into Stanford. But since I was already admitted, that, of course, was not true. And it did become an important part of my life because I played freshman football and I enjoyed that. I did not play my sophomore year and since I was not on a football scholarship I didn’t have to. And that was the most miserable year of my life, for a lot of reasons…So when I did start playing, again, my junior year, I really did enjoy it and one of the changes was that it was a new coach and he had recruited a number of Black players and we were all in the same dorm and they’re still some of my closest friends. And so that did change things for me a lot. I still thought the coach had some race problems but [I would see that] everywhere so it wasn’t that different from every other part of my life.”
As for his thoughts on the sport today, particularly the information we have now regarding brain injuries. Clay admitted, “I’m very ambivalent in the sense that I really did enjoy playing and if I had to do it all over again, would I play? And I don’t know the answer to that. If I were younger and my son was going to play, I would probably discourage him. Even though I have season tickets, I tend not to watch it on TV. I tend not to watch pro football because it’s like I know too much so I don’t enjoy it as much.”
One thing that people don’t realize is it’s not just the brain. I only know of one player that I played with who doesn’t have injuries that have lasted a lifetime. One. All of us — you know they may not have bothered you so much in your twenties and thirties and forties, but at some point they come back and bite you. You know, back, legs, knees, shoulders, you know, because I don’t know anybody who I played with at Stanford who has obvious brain issues. But everybody except one person has all these other kinds of issues. And I don’t think people realize that. People just think of the brain. But most injuries in football — when someone is out for an injury it’s usually knees, hips, ankles and those things don’t usually heal totally. And for me one of the biggest problems I had was my big toe. It got kicked. Twenty years later I had to have surgery and the surgery froze my toe, which meant it through off my back and my knee and so it’s just the little things.”
What is Clay’s advice for student athletes of color at a place like Stanford?
“Well Stanford is different from a lot of place because student athletes actually graduate and go to grad school. And that was true in my days, too. Every black player I played with went on to get graduate degrees. But most of the people on the team went on to get graduate degrees, but that is not true most places at all. I guess my advice would be that remember that the classroom is just as important as the football field and that’s what is going to last you a lifetime so keep the priorities straight. But I also think that people ought to understand more about the injury part. Again, it’s different because in my day most people weren’t trying to go to the pros. Going to the pros did not pay you any more than doing something else. Now, going even one or two years to the pros can really make a huge difference. So you don’t want to play long term. You may want to do it for a year or two because, frankly, you can make so much money that it can set you up for life” he explained.
Upon graduating from Stanford, Clay earned his MSW at UCLA then pursued his law degree at UC Berkeley. What followed is a line-up of trailblazing achievements. These include his role in designing and implementing community development and housing programs for the County of San Mateo and City of Richmond. While Vice President of the Corporation for Supportive Housing, a non-profit based in New York, Clay directed the national policy agenda on housing and services for the homeless and those at risk of homelessness. As president of the Insight Center for Community Economic Development in Oakland, CA, Roger Clay created the national Experts of Color Clearinghouse for the asset-building field, which fosters community prosperity. Additionally at Insight, Roger Clay developed the first national initiative to address the racial wealth gap in the U.S.
As an active volunteer throughout the Stanford campus, Clay was a part of the 2004 Task Force on Minority Alumni Relations and a related conference. He is a founding member of the Black Alumni Association at Stanford, which began in 1982, and served for 20 years on the Humanities and Sciences Council (1987–2007). Having held a seat on the Board of Trustees from 1990 to 2000, Clay partook in the Minority Emeriti Trustees’ Proposal for Bold Disruption in Faculty Diversity submitted in 2017. Currently, Clay sits on the National Advisory Boards for CCSRE and the Institute on Research in the Social Sciences, where he was a visiting scholar.
As a result of his Stanford service and impact on community development, Clay’s accolades include the Gold Spike Award, Stanford’s highest honor for volunteer leadership, the Multicultural Hall of Fame, and the Michael Scher Award for outstanding contributions to housing and community development law.
In case you were wondering about his life outside of work and Stanford, Roger Clay has been able to balance a full family life with his professional activities. “I always tried to involve my family in whatever I was doing in any way I could,” Clay said. As an example, his family attended Stanford Camp from the time his eldest child was three years old until she graduated from high school.
Through the many years of service in the community and on campus, equally remarkable is the way Roger Clay has championed cross-racial collaboration, which he affirms has been “a strong theme in my professional life.” Regarding the multiracial coalition efforts in which he has shown leadership, several of which are mentioned above, he states, “This is the way it should be.” Particularly in terms of work on the Minority Emeriti Trustee’s Proposal he reflects, “[The minority emeriti trustees] were very pleased in how well we all worked together and our work products.” The proposal concludes with a list of recommended action steps for the university including that each department and school develop an annual short-, medium- and long-range written plan on the recruitment and retention of minority faculty. This and other actions items, if embraced, would direct the university to commit to racial justice on campus. However, he laments, “We have been quite disappointed that there has not been a lot of progress on our requests and recommendations.”
For the last two academic years, Stanford’s underrepresented minority (URM) faculty has remained stagnant at seven percent. “…the faculty in many ways control much of the operations of the university and what happens. And so the key to making substantial change is changing the faculty,” Clay explains. He furthers, “The faculty does not have much to do with undergraduate admissions. But the faculty does hire it’s own, it hires other faculty. And the faculty is the one who decides to admit graduate students. And the faculty is the one who decides who gets tenure. And the faculty is the pool of people that the administrative people come out of like provosts and deans and vice provosts…if you go back historically, many if not most of the presidents of Stanford have come from the faculty.”
Seven percent (URM), he asserts, shows little change. “That’s not enough people to have any influence.” Moreover, for the Center, he notes, a major challenge continues to be the absence of faculty dedicated to CCSRE. Evaluating the changes CCSRE has faced throughout his tenure on the board, he states, “Over time the issue has become about how we get people throughout the university to not just appreciate CCSRE, but also understand that the subject matter we deal with, race, is really important to the entire university and is not something to be studied off to the side.”
Current national tides might put racial justice and CCSRE in a more impactful position. Indeed, Clay believes we can be encouraged by the public discourse related to systemic racism and the Black Lives Matter movements. “I’m hoping that the rest of the university appreciates the important role that [CCSRE] can play and is playing. I think one of the issues has always been for much of the campus race is set aside so CCSRE is not seen as central to the mission of the university as it should be. But now maybe people will begin to see not just CCSRE as being central but the whole question about race and racial justice being central to every part of the university.”
We look forward to continue working with Roger Clay as the Center embarks on a new era of collaboration, building on its undergraduate program and transdisciplinary research and fellowship initiatives.
