Listen to David F. Dixon's account of the All-Star walk out below. David F. Dixon Sr. (1923–2010) was a New Orleans art and antiques dealer who was largely responsible for the concept and construction of the Louisiana Superdome, and for the establishment of an NFL franchise in the city: the New Orleans Saints. A transcription of this account appears below. You can access Dixon's full oral history here. 

Transcript:

Anyway, so we decided to put on the AFL All-Star game, and we were promoting it pretty well. We had about 20,000 tickets sold, maybe even 25,000, which was pretty good in those days, and the AFL was really pleased. When players arrived in town, we were expecting a nice juice-up for ticket sales and nice gate sales, so we figured we’d be 35 to 40, and that was about 20,000 more than the AFL had ever drawn for an All-Star game. It was about the third season or whatever it was. Maybe it was fourth or fifth season, I don’t know. So anyway, this was really about two years before we eventually got the NFL franchise, so we brought the AFL in here. We had integrated virtually everything in town, but some of the taxi drivers wouldn’t pick up black people. Well, they do that in New York right now, you know, they drive right on past them. Matter of fact, there’s a joke always about it. A black guy knows that he doesn’t call for a taxi into those areas. It’s a different area, you know, or whatever. Or he calls for it and uses his best white voice, etc., etc.

But anyway, Cookie Gilchrist and a bunch of guys went out to the My-O-My Club. The My-O-My Club, as the name infers, was really a gay bar, but they had great entertainment. For example, they had guys who could sing opera as well as a diva, you know. So it was really good entertainment. I’ve been there a couple times. It was kind of a laugh sort of situation.

So a bunch of players went out there, and they had a nice time and were welcomed and so forth, but they couldn’t get taxis back to town. So they got taxis at the hotel, you know, and the hotel would be tough on them, taxi drivers. They’d be mad if he wouldn’t accept a fare that was a hotel guest. So that was the one little area that I held my breath on, was if these guys get out in some remote area, would they have a taxi problem. Well, they did, and so it became a cause célèbre, and all the players were sorry. Cookie Gilchrist apologized to me years later. He said, “Dave, I’m sorry as hell. You know, you all were going through a tough period, and we shouldn’t have raised a big fuss about it. Hell, we knew we could get some other taxis, probably, but it just pissed me off at the time, and I’m sorry I did it, but I think you probably understand.”

I said, “Yeah, Cookie, I really do understand. Forget it forever. It doesn’t bother me. I’m with you guys. I’m on your side, so don’t worry about that. We’ve had restaurants integrated. We’ve had everything integrated except a few taxicab drivers, and that’ll be gone in another year or two. Your odds of getting a good taxi were 80 percent in your favor. You got one in the 20 percentile.”

He said, “Yeah, I believe that.”

So anyway, we didn’t receive a permanent black eye, but we cancelled the game, you know. I mean, the players walked out, and we refunded our way through this same process for weeks and months refunding the tickets.