NATCHITOCHES -- "All I wanted to do was play football."
 
In a time when race was at the forefront of the nation's collective mind-set, all Melvin Howard wanted to be known as was a Demon.
 
Howard came to Natchitoches in the fall of 1968, a few months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. He came to a place where no African-American before had played football. He came at a time when race relations were sensitive at best.
 
At 17 years old, Howard wasn't interested in being anything other than a football player – one without a proper adjective in front of that title.
 
"A trend-setter or a trail blazer? It never crossed my mind," said Howard, who attended Northwestern State for the 1968-69 school year and played one season of football.
 
"All I wanted to do was play ball. I swear to you, I never had one problem with one of the guys on the team. Not one. Not one."
 
As the country celebrates Black History Month, it is only right Howard's place in Northwestern State history is recognized – regardless of how he feels about opening doors for generations of Demons football players.
 
Four months ago, Northwestern State took a step toward that, honoring Howard during its football game against McNeese State as the Exchange Bank "Demon Great of the Game."
 
It was a gesture that made quite an impression on Howard, who worked for and retired from the New Orleans Police Department before taking his current position with the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Department.
 
When Assistant Athletic Director for Development and Marketing Haley Blount informed Howard he would be honored during the McNeese State game, she told him, "I hope this makes your day."
 
Howard was quick to point out just how much of an understatement Blount's comment was.
 
"I said, 'My day? You're talking about (making) my life, back when I was 18 years old,'" Howard said.
 
Howard was overcome with emotion when Blount informed him of Northwestern State's intentions. Howard's stature as the Demons first African-American football player carried plenty of weight, especially since he played just one season in Natchitoches before returning to his native New Orleans.
 
Since leaving Northwestern State, Howard had not returned to Natchitoches in more than four decades before making a detour on his way to Shreveport last year. What he saw triggered a flood of emotions.
 
One of those feelings was a pang of regret from more than 40 years earlier.
 
"It made me sorry I didn't go back," said Howard, who played just one season at Northwestern State. "(The coaches) called me and said, 'You coming back here?' I said, 'I don't think so.' I was raised in a family where it was five kids, my mom and my dad, and we were very close. I was so homesick. Man, I was running home on the weekends after football season. Mom and Dad used to come to the games. I just didn't go back. I ended up getting my degree (from Loyola University in New Orleans), but I didn't go back."
 
Howard did not leave Natchitoches because of any racial issues. In fact, he felt at home on campus as he did inside his tightly knit family home in the Crescent City.
 
Howard held scholarship offers from Missouri, which was coached by Dan Devine, and Michigan State, which was helmed by Duffy Daugherty, who had a strong track record of recruiting and playing African Americans. He drew attention from historically black colleges Grambling State and Southern.
 
Howard had options, and he chose Northwestern State.
 
"I wanted to stay close to home, but I didn't want to go to Southern or Grambling," Howard said. "LSU wasn't offering scholarships to African Americans. I said I think I'll go to Northwestern. I drove up here, and the campus was beautiful."
 
There was still a question of whether all the pieces involved – the school, the team, the coaching staff – were ready to add an African-American player.
 
A visit to New Orleans by then-NSU assistant coach Gene Knecht assured Howard – and, equally importantly, his high school principal – there was no reason to worry.
 
"When Gene Knecht came to (St. Augustine) to talk to the principal, who was Fr. Robert Grant, I remember sitting there in his office," Howard said. "Fr. Grant was a big 6-foot-6 Irishman. He looked over and said, 'Coach, are you ready for my guy? Are the people ready for him? If you're not ready, I'm not going to send him to you.'
 
"Gene Knect said, 'Oh, Father, we're ready. We're ready for him.' At 17 years old, I just didn't think that way. All I wanted to do was play football."
 
 
Whether Knecht could or did speak correctly for the Natchitoches community, he certainly knew the pulse of his roster.
 
Howard was welcomed right away, with his band of brothers rallying around someone they saw not as an African-American football player but as just another Northwestern State football player.
 
"I don't remember anyone not treating him nicely," said Gil Gilson, who was a sophomore running back when Howard arrived in the summer of 1968. "We had some stuff with outsiders that went on, but we never had any conflicts with him. Thinking back, we didn't allow any trouble or anything to happen. As a group, you control what people do around you, and we kind of controlled it."
 
That mentality extended past Turpin Stadium and the NSU campus as a whole.
 
"The big thing was the coaches would take us to the show on Friday nights," Gilson said. "The theater was downtown, and it had an upstairs (for black patrons) and a downstairs (for white patrons). He'd come with us and say, 'OK, I'm going upstairs to watch.' We said, 'No, you're not. You're sitting with us.' We didn't accept that he was going to be different than us. We'd gather around him and bull our way in. He was a part of the team."
 
In some ways, Howard was an ideal candidate to become Northwestern State's first African-American football player. At St. Augustine, itself a traditionally African-American school, Howard played in the first game where an all-black team competed against all-white St. Aloysius.
 
Even then, race wasn't on Howard's mind. He was focused on the game at hand.
 
"That was my senior year, 1967," Howard said. "We played at City Park Stadium. The stadium held 26,000 people, and it was packed. People were standing around the field. It was so crowded. Even when St. Aug and St. Aloysius met that night, it just didn't appear to me to be as important as maybe it was to some adults."
 
Howard kept that same focus and mind-set when he arrived in Natchitoches. He reiterated how welcome and at home he felt. He joked with new teammate and former high school rival Kenny Hrapmann about who was faster.
 
Howard said he eventually coaxed Hrapmann, who played at New Orleans' Holy Cross High School, into a race despite Hrapmann's protests that he could not outrun Howard.
 
Howard won the race against Hrapmann, who scored two touchdowns against Howard's Purple Knights in high school.
 
"He told me he wasn't faster than me, and I told him, 'You sure looked fast when you beat us that night,'" Howard said. "We ended up racing and he said, 'I told you I couldn't outrun you.' I said, 'Well I feel better now.'"
 
Aside from nearly breaking a kickoff return for a touchdown against then-University of Southwestern Louisiana and catching a touchdown that was called back, one of Howard's most endearing memories of was simply the camaraderie that enveloped the 1968 Demons.
 
"I never heard anything derogatory from them," Howard said. "I was being treated, from where I sit, just as equal as everyone else. If there was some backroom stuff going on, I didn't know anything about it, and I was fine with it.
 
"I remember they brought in a guy, a transfer. I can't remember his name, but I can see his face. He came in to play split end with me and Al (Philips). All I was concerned about was him outdoing me."
 
Part of Howard's acceptance came from the collective personality of the 1968 squad. An equal part was Howard's own personality, one that didn't focus on race.
 
"He was such a funny guy, and he didn't let things bother him," said Gilson, who would loan Howard his car to drive on dates. "He'd keep you laughing the whole time on road trips. He was such a nice guy, a nice personality."
 
Howard said NSU coach Glenn Gossett was equally welcoming, allowing Howard to branch out from playing split end to return that one kick against USL and to play some running back in practice.
 
Howard's post-Natchitoches life is filled with tales fit for a Hollywood screenwriter. As part of the New Orleans Police Department, Howard went undercover on three occasions.
 
One of those included being embedded within a sector of the Black Panther Party. In another case, Howard lost something dear to him, something that kept him connected to Northwestern State, something that was replaced in November when Howard returned to Natchitoches.
 
"I had a car when I was undercover, an unconventional-looking police car," Howard said. "I had a yearbook from Northwestern State in the car. When they blew my cover, they pushed my car over and set it on fire, and the damn book was in there. I kept thinking, 'Why did I keep the book in the damn car?'"
 
While Howard does not like to admit it, his presence in Natchitoches helped open the door for the likes of Joe Delaney, Mark Duper, Terrence McGee and Jeremy Lane – all of whom went from Northwestern State to the National Football League.
 
And, regardless of whether it was one of the aforementioned African-American players or Bobby Hebert, Jackie Smith or Gary Reasons, each time Howard heard Northwestern State mentioned, it stirred feelings of pride within him.
 
"If I heard of an athlete, or anyone, from Northwestern, I told people I went there," Howard said. "Northwestern has never, ever left my mind and my heart."