Abner Haynes, a fast, exciting and elusive halfback who integrated his college team in Texas, and who later became an early star of the brand-new American Football League as it battled for recognition against the established NFL, died July 17 in Dallas. He was 86.
His sons Abner Jr. and King David confirmed the death, in a hospital, but said they did not know the cause.
Playing for the Dallas Texans, Mr. Haynes rushed for a league-leading 875 yards and nine touchdowns in 1960; he also ranked fifth in the league in receiving, with 55 catches, and first in punt return yardage. He was voted Rookie of the Year and Player of the Year.
The Texans moved to Kansas City and became the Chiefs in 1963.
“He was a franchise player before they talked about franchise players,” Hank Stram, who coached the team from 1960 to 1974, told The Kansas City Star in 1991. “He did it all: rushing, receiving, kickoff returns, punt returns. He gave us the dimension we needed to be a good team in Dallas.”
In one of his greatest games, Mr. Haynes rushed for four touchdowns and scored a fifth on a 66-yard pass in a 43-11 romp over the Oakland Raiders in 1961. The five individual touchdowns remain a franchise record, shared with Jamaal Charles, who tied it in 2013.
In 1962, Mr. Haynes ran for 1,049 yards, the most in his career and second in the league. He also scored a league-leading 19 rushing and receiving touchdowns.
He had two touchdowns in the AFL championship game, but at the end of regulation time the Texans and the Houston Oilers were tied at 17.
Mr. Haynes made a potentially costly gaffe when he won the overtime coin flip and chose to kick off — he famously said, “We’ll kick to the clock” — rather than receive. But the Texans’ defense held, and they won, 20-17, on a field goal.
Mr. Haynes had his worst season with the team in 1963, the Chiefs’ first in Kansas City, but he was named the league’s comeback player of the year in 1964, when he rushed for 697 yards, the fifth-best total in the league.
But that was his last season with the Chiefs. In January 1965, he was a leader of a group of 21 Black players who threatened not to play in the league’s All-Star Game in New Orleans, where they had been refused admission to some nightclubs and where some cabdrivers refused to pick them up. They successfully forced the league to move the game to Houston.
“We were the last athletes — the last guys — you want to try to intimidate,” Mr. Haynes recalled in the 2009 Showtime documentary series “Full Color Football: The History of the American Football League.”
But his stance had consequences. He soon received a letter from Jack Steadman, the team’s general manager, telling him, as he recalled, that “a football player’s role is not to help his people” and “all I’m supposed to do is play football and keep my mouth shut.”
Four days after the game, he was traded to the Denver Broncos.
Abner Haynes was born on Sept. 19, 1937, in Denton, Texas, the youngest of seven children of Fred and Ola Mae (Alexander) Haynes. His father was the bishop of the Texas Northeast jurisdiction of the Church of God in Christ and the pastor of the Saintsville Church of God in Christ, where his mother worked.
After playing football at Lincoln High School in Dallas, he and Leon King, a classmate who also ran track with him, broke the college color barrier in Texas when they joined the team at North Texas State College (now the University of North Texas).
In a 2019 interview with a local television station in Tyler, Texas, Mr. Haynes recalled that the team judged him by what he could do on the field.
“Will you block, will you tackle? Can you run, can you catch?” he said. “And that become more important than what color you are. We didn’t know that before we played football.”
But he was the victim of verbal and physical abuse from opposing teams and their fans.
“I had to go through so many scary moments at North Texas that I learned how to trust God and put things in his hands, instead of trying to deal with all of those problems,” he told The Kansas City Star in 2003.
He led the North Texas Eagles in rushing in his three years on the varsity squad. In all, he gained 1,864 yards on 345 carries, for a 5.4-yard average. In 1957, he averaged a stunning 39.3 yards per punt return.
Mr. Haynes was drafted by teams in both leagues — the Raiders of the AFL and the NFL’s Steelers. But he signed with the Texans.
After being traded from the Chiefs to the Broncos, Mr. Haynes was no longer a starting halfback, but he led the league in kickoff returns in 1965. He was traded to the Miami Dolphins before the 1967 season; late that year, he was waived and played briefly for the New York Jets. He retired soon after.
He was still physically healthy but no longer as potent a running back. His son King David said that rather than continuing to play, he took a “refreshing” option and went to work for Zales, the jewelry retailer, starting as a personnel administrator.
He later became an agent, representing dozens of players through the 1990s, including Mean Joe Greene and L.C. Greenwood of the Steelers and Harvey Martin of the Dallas Cowboys, said Jean Fugett, a former Cowboys tight end who became a partner in the agency with Mr. Haynes.
In addition to his sons Abner Jr. and King David, from his marriage to Anne Fitzpatrick, which ended in divorce, he is survived by his wife, Guadalupe (Gonzalez) Haynes; another son, Byron, from his marriage to Margie Anderson, which also ended in divorce; and his daughters, Olivia and Maxine Haynes, from his third marriage. He is also survived by a sister, Maxine Kyle Haynes; five grandchildren; and one great-grandson.
In the Dallas market, where the Texans competed for fans’ attention with the Cowboys, The Dallas Morning News once called Mr. Haynes the “Most Popular Athlete in Big D,” Bob Moore, the Chiefs’ historian, wrote in an appreciation on the team’s website, adding that a song was written about him and “made the rounds on Dallas radio stations.”
“How big a star was he?” Mr. Moore asked. He cited the words of the sportswriter Dan Jenkins: “There ought to be a law. Once a week a writer has to rave about Abner Haynes.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
First Published: July 27, 2024, 7:32 p.m.
