DR. EARL CARROLTON CROMWELL was eulogized by Pastor Kenneth Green as a unique man, who lived a full and productive life with gusto, during his June 24, 2002 homegoing services at Trinity East UMC, Nevertheless, African-American News&Issues would be remiss not to recognize him as the true history maker that he was, although his persistent and oftentimes disappointing contributions to breaking through barriers facing Black sports agents have never been formally noted.

First, however, it is incumbent upon Fiesta’s Black History 24-7-365 to set history straight. Earl Crom-well, who was born in Norfolk, Virginia on April 17, 1931 to Leigt Bosley Cromwell and Hattie Rebecca Crom-well, was a genius. He was a scientist, who not only experimented with industry chemicals, professions and various enterprises, but life itself. You might say Cromwell was an enterprising Black man who was born before his time. Even so, he was more than willing to play the cards that life dealt him. Cromwell had the nerve and verve to take on any challenge that confronted him, in spite of a health problem that bedeviled him for most of his adult life.

Like most brilliant Black men of his era, Cromwell enlisted in the military as a very young age and by the time he was honorably discharged, he decided to become a chemist. As difficult as it is to imagine a people -person like Cromwell spending hours fiddling with test tubes in his make-shift laboratory, he was vastly proud of having developed several products ranging from household aids to hair conditioners. Insofar as Cromwell had to start his own distributing company for his products, he became infatuated with the nuances of the legal process involved in business, therefore he entered TSU’s Thurgood Marshall’s School of Law at age 36 and became an attorney in 1967.

Evidently blessed with a renaissance man’s nature, Cromwell immediately recognized the opportunities awaiting a sharp lawyer, who enjoyed wheeling and dealing when athletes first started hiring agents to represent them. Soon after delving into the sports agency business, Cromwell signed up a gangly kid from Louisiana named J.R. Richards, who turned out to be his biggest client. Sadly, Richards was his biggest disappointment. The J.R. Richards story was popular lore at Cromwell’s “Sporting Life Club.” Cromwell actually opened the mixed drink club (long before the Sports Bar concept became popular), under the freeway on Caroline at Wheeler, for the expressed purpose of creating a place for his clients to hang.

To make a long story short, suffice it to say that Cromwell treated Richards like a son before he started making the big bucks, but was unceremoniously dumped when the great pitcher signed his