LARAMIE, Wyo. — Curt Jimerson never had visions of being a racial pioneer.

He just knew how to play the game.

The former University of Wyoming basketball standout went face to face with Jim Crow during the late 1950s and early ‘60s and ended up playing a role in establishing race relations wherever he went.

He was among the first eight blacks to integrate the all-white Austin High in El Paso, Texas in 1955; was one of the first black basketball players at the University of Wyoming in 1960; and was among the first 20 black agents hired by the FBI in 1968.

His story is worth retelling as part of Black History Month.

Jimerson was born in El Paso, Texas, one of 10 children raised by his stepfather, Alex Carlisle, and mother, Lucille.

“All my parents wanted was a better life for their kids than what they had,” Jimerson said. “And they knew it would come through education.”

In his early years, he attended an all-black school that went through the ninth grade.

Then came Brown vs. the Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that led to the integration of schools in 1954. He spent his last three years at Austin High.

“But there weren’t any problems like there were in some other places. I think that had to do with the fact that there are a lot of Hispanics in El Paso. Also, there was the big military influence there.”

Still, Jimerson knew what it meant to be black.

“We couldn’t go to any of the drive-in restaurants or the drive-in movies,” he tells the Laramie Boomerang (http://bit.ly/weO9a8 ). “We went to the black parties and (the white students) went to the white parties.”

He does recall a time when his teammates stood up for him.

“We were over playing a game in Isleta, a small town close to El Paso,” Jimerson said. “We sat down at the counter and everybody got their food but me.

“I asked, ‘Where’s mine?’ They told me they couldn’t serve me. I got up to leave and all the rest of the guys got up and left too. They left all those half-eaten hamburgers sitting there. That was a great feeling.”

Jimerson turned out to be one of the top high school players in El Paso. His chief rival was Nolan Richardson, who went on to earn his fame and fortune as the basketball coach at Tulsa and Arkansas.

Jimerson was so good that he earned high school All-American honors.

The one thing he wanted to do was go to college at the University of Colorado. He ended up being recruited by longtime coach Sox Walseth, who sent him to Pueblo (Colo.) Junior College to play for legendary coach Harry Simmons.

Jimerson made All-American and was later inducted into Pueblo’s Hall of Fame.

So why didn’t Jimerson end up at CU after that?

“One day I was in (Simmons’) office studying and noticed a letter to him from Walseth laying on top of the desk,” he said. “Walseth said in the letter that he was ready to bring me up, but he already had two Negroes — that was the word they used at the time — in the starting lineup.

“If he had three starting, there would be trouble with some of the boosters because they were a little uncomfortable with that.

“Walseth went on to say that he would leave me on the bench for three minutes to start the game and then put me in and everyone would be happy. I never told the coaches I saw that letter, but that’s why I didn’t go to Colorado.”

Jimerson first committed to Texas Western in his hometown but couldn’t get into a dorm.

“With 10 kids in my family and living in a small house, I knew I wasn’t going to survive.”

There were plenty of other schools interested, including Arizona State, Arizona, Pepperdine, New Mexico and Wyoming.

“I visited all (of them) over the Easter holidays, and I can tell you that Wyoming wasn’t my first choice,” he said. “I went to Wyoming right from Arizona, and when I got to Laramie, it snowed three inches. I remember saying to myself, ‘There’s no way I’m coming back here.”’

But UW ended up offering Jimerson a three-year scholarship, something the other schools weren’t willing to do.

“Wyoming gave me exactly what my parents wanted me to get: an education and a degree,” he said.

Jimerson arrived at UW during the fall of 1960. He was joined by another black player, Ron Bostick, a forward from Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

They most likely were the second and third blacks to play at the UW. The honor of being the first went to Taft Harris, a reserve on the 1932-33 UW team. That was Harris’ only season at UW, and it was never documented when and why he left.

Like Taft, Bostick also spent only one year at UW. He, unfortunately, was caught up in a race issue.

“Ron started dating a white girl and got called on the carpet for it,” Jimerson said. “He came from a more diverse background in New York and didn’t like it, so he left after the season.

“I came from Texas and I knew what the boundaries were. I knew what I could do and what I couldn’t do. That’s not to say I didn’t do some of the same things. I was just a little more discreet.”

There were other things about Laramie that didn’t quite fit the black lifestyle.

“There was no place for me to go to get my hair cut,” he said. “I had to go to Cheyenne for that. There was a black barber over there that knew how to cut our hair because of the Air Force base.

“I never had any trouble in Laramie though. The people were all very nice, but not a lot of them had ever been around a black person before. They hadn’t been exposed, and it was new for them.”

Jimerson played two seasons for UW - 1960-61 and 1961-62 - under Coach Bill Strannigan. He scored 289 points and averaged 11.6 points as a junior. As a senior, he scored 454 points and averaged 17.5 points.

He was an honorable mention All-Skyline Conference selection as a junior and a first-team pick as a senior.

Jimerson returned to UW for his third year and got his teaching certificate in education. He then returned to El Paso to teach.

About that time the FBI sent out a notice that it was looking for blacks to become clerks, and he was hired.

Even though Jimerson was with the FBI, he was drafted into the military in 1966 and spent 18 months in Vietnam. He returned to El Paso in 1967 and became an FBI agent in 1968.

Jimerson went on to become involved in some of the FBI’s biggest cases — the Patty Hearst kidnapping in 1974 and the infamous Jonestown mass suicide in Guyana in 1978.

Jimerson spent most of his FBI career battling organized crime.

Jimerson’s travels brought him back to the UW in the mid-1980s when Fennis Dembo and Eric Leckner played for the Cowboys.

“They invited me back to put on a program for the entire athletic department,” he said. “That was the first time I had been back, and I really enjoyed it.”

He also returned in 2005 during UW’s 100-Year Basketball Celebration, an event announcing its 10-member All-Century Team.

Jimerson retired from the FBI in 1995. He then worked as a security representative for the NBA and eventually became head of security for the Golden State Warriors.

He was also part of the security force watching over the 2005 NBA All-Star Game festivities in Denver.

He gave up his NBA stint two years later and went into full retirement.

Jimerson and his second wife have been married for 32 years and live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Jimerson said life has been good to him and he wouldn’t trade any part of it.

It has been especially good since he discovered its secret.

“It took me until I was 50 years old to discover (that),” he said.

And what is it?

“I just lowered my expectations, and everything got a whole lot simpler,” he said with a laugh.