One thing the Belton resident knows is that his long, speedy legs didn’t make him rich.
At the same time, Morton wouldn’t trade anything for the experiences he had running stride for stride with the most historic track athletes of the late 1960s and early ’70s in some of the glamour meets of the day. He also had an intimate view of some of the most significant events - socially and athletically - during a time of much upheaval in America.
Morton was holding the blocks for Jim Hines when he became the first man to break 10 seconds in the 100 meters in the Olympic trials of 1968.
He watched with sadness when two of his teammates and friends - Tommie Smith and John Carlos - raised black-gloved fists on the medals stand at the Mexico City Olympics that year as a show of Black Power unity.
Morton, who is white, would also find out later that he might have been the target of an assassination threat because of the color of his skin.
Morton was a member of the Houston Striders, a track club that featured the likes of Smith, Carlos, Hines, Bob Beamon and Lee Evans. And he wasn’t just an afterthought on that star-studded squad. In high school, he went from a gangly teen to a nationally recognized speedster seemingly overnight.
“God’s hand was on me,” he said. “It was really a workout for cross-country my senior year in high school and all of a sudden something just snapped and I was just propelled forward ability-wise. I could suddenly work out twice as hard as I could before. I can’t explain that.”
In 1967, Houston Memorial’s Morton was one of the most highly sought high school track athletes in the nation. He had just won the state championship in the 880-yard run and was scooped up by the Striders a couple of weeks later and found himself on relay teams with Smith, Carlos and Evans. He also committed to Texas.
As a senior at Memorial, Morton, who was then 6-3 and 170 pounds, was the national leader in both the 880 and 440. He ran on two national record-setting relay teams. As a Longhorn freshman in the spring of 1968, he posted a time of 45.5 seconds in the open quarter, which stood as the Southwest Conference record for 13 years - an eternity for most running events. He said he set a world record as a 14-year-old in the 660-yard dash in California, a race he still considers best suited for his talent.
He belonged with the world-class athletes of the time.
Morton made fast friends with those greats as a key member of relay teams and traveled across the country with them. He calls Smith “the most beautiful runner I think I’ve ever seen.”
He was holding the blocks for Hines on a soggy day in Sacramento in an early heat that saw three watches clock him in 9.7 seconds in the 100. It was disallowed and knocked down to a 10.1 because the judges didn’t believe anybody could run that fast. In a later heat he ran an official 9.9. “But I know he had a real 9.7 because I was holding the blocks and he didn’t false start. And he was real good at false starting.”
The fact that he was one of the few white athletes with the Striders mattered little.
“(Race) was no big deal,” he said. “I got asked for dates by black girls in the stands. It wasn’t a big deal. It really wasn’t. That’s why all of this stuff that we ran into on the West Coast was so bizarre. It didn’t go with what was going on on the field.
“In ’67 we were all friends,” he added. “In ’68 there was trouble all over the place.”
Indeed, 1968 was one of the most tumultuous years in modern American history. The continuing rage against the Vietnam War led Lyndon Johnson to not seek re-election to the presidency. The Rev. Martin Luther King and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy were assassinated within two months of each other. Racial tensions were thick and athletes were not immune.
Racism was not a particularly major issue when Morton’s team was training and competing in Texas, he said. It was when they went to meets on the West Coast that they incurred blatant prejudice. The ongoing agitation began to affect Morton’s relationship with other athletes.
“We went out to California and all these black guys who had been friends and acquaintances the year before weren’t having anything to do with me or any other white guys,” he said.
Morton found himself on an elevator one evening with Evans and Smith.
“They said, ‘Man, we just can’t talk to you this year. You’ve got to understand it’s just one of those things.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I understand.’ I understood the pressure they were under.”
He didn’t realize he was under some pressure as well. Some of the social activists in California were hopeful for an all-black quarter-mile team and, he said, there had been talk of killing Morton and a white coach to supposedly ensure that.
“I didn’t know my life had been threatened while at Cal-Poly,” he said.
Morton said he was pretty well used up for the season by the time the Olympic trials rolled around and didn’t make the team, but he watched from home while his teammates made Olympic history.
Beamon famously flew 29 feet, 2½ inches to set a long jump world record that held up for 23 years and is still the Olympic record 40 years out. He saw Evans earn gold medals in the 400 meters and the 1,600 relay. Hines’ gold medal-winning time of 9.95 seconds in the 100 stood for 15 years.
Smith and Carlos won gold and bronze, respectively, in the 200. The image of the pair with heads bowed and clenched black-gloved fists raised during the medal ceremony is arguably the most enduring snapshot from those Olympics. Their action led to their being suspended from the national team and banned from the Olympic Village.
“It broke my heart at the time because I knew what was fixing to happen after that,” Morton said. “I know they were under a tremendous amount of pressure from their community to do something. I know that it hurt race relations in Houston for them to do it. It hurt me to have them kicked off the team.
“Those are guys I really respected and I continue to respect them.”
Morton continued to have a successful career in college. He was runner-up to Texas A&M’s Curtis Mills in the quarter at the SWC championships the next two years before winning the conference title in the half-mile his senior year in 1971.
The Olympics were never to be for Morton, though. He tended to be either ill-prepared or under-funded during Olympic years. He was in the Army in 1972 and had only a few months to prepare for the qualifier meets and narrowly missed out in the 400.
He said he was in the best shape of his life in 1976.
“I was driving a truck in Midland, Texas,” he said. “I couldn’t get anybody to pay my way to a track meet. You could say God didn’t intend for me to do that.”
Morton saw his pal and former Strider teammate Fred Newhouse, a Prairie View A&M great, captured the silver in the 400 and the gold on the 1,600 relay in Montreal.
“1976 probably would have been my year,” he said. “Fred Newhouse went. I never lost a race when I was in shape to Fred. He and I were friends, longtime friends. In fact, I’m convinced he would have run better if I had gone.”
Nevertheless, he has no regrets about his days on the track circuit.
“I feel really blessed,” he said. “I was always in the right place to have seen a number of world records and have gotten to know a lot of these great guys. I got to meet a lot of these coaches and run in some legendary places. It was fun, but when it came time to quit it wasn’t real hard to walk away from it.”
