10 Questions

As a journalist, Hypoluxo Island’s Malcolm Balfour has pretty much done it all.

Associate editor of the National Enquirer for eight years when the tabloid was based in Lantana. Miami-based correspondent for Reuters and the now-departed United Press International. Weekend producer for one of Miami’s best-known TV stations. Longtime correspondent for The New York Post. And contributor to several nationally syndicated TV shows.

And Balfour, 85, hasn’t slowed down. His latest project is Mississippi Escape!, a book published in 2021. It reached back to his own history as a student at Mississippi State in the early ’60s, during a major turning point in the way colleges in the South dealt with Black athletes.

Coached by Babe McCarthy, the all-white MSU Bulldogs basketball team won the Southeastern Conference title four times in five seasons from 1958 to ’63, but the “unwritten law” at the time forbade any Mississippi team from playing a team with Black players.

Then a member of the track team, Balfour was affected as well. “I was eligible to compete in the NCAA championships but was not allowed because they knew Black athletes would be there,” he said.

During the 1963 NCAA basketball tournament, MSU President Dean Colvard went against the wishes of the governor and defied an injunction. The Bulldogs essentially sneaked out of Starkville to travel to East Lansing, Michigan, where they were matched in the second round against Loyola of Chicago, which had four Black starters.

“The Mississippi State guys were getting letters from the Ku Klux Klan saying they better not play against the Black guys,” Balfour said, “and the Black guys were hearing from the other side saying they shouldn’t play against the white guys. So, it was a frightening experience, but they went ahead and played and it changed everything about recruiting in the South.”

Loyola won what became known as the “Game of Change” by a 61-51 score and went on to win the NCAA championship. Meanwhile, “almost overnight,” Balfour said, Southern schools began recruiting Black athletes.

“I spent two days interviewing Dr. Colvard back in 2004 and went up to northern Kentucky to interview the captain of the team, Joe Dan Gold,” Balfour said, recalling the MSU story. “I had to get off my butt to finally put it together.”

Balfour, who served on the Lantana Town Council for nine years, and Ilona, his wife of 55 years, remain active in local politics and were major