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How James Cash Forever Changed TCU

He has authored a pioneering career on TCU’s basketball court and beyond.

By TCU Magazine

August 10^th, 2023

by Brandon Kitchin

A new addition in front of Ed and Rae Schollmaier Arena towers over almost anyone who stands beside it. At 6-foot-6, TCU basketball legend James Cash ’69 is the tallest person to be honored with a life-size bronze statue for his contributions to the university.

Cash broke the university’s athletic color barrier when he became the first Black student-athlete in 1965. He was also the first Black basketball player in the Southwest Conference.

When announcing that the statue would be built, Jeremiah Donati, TCU’s director of intercollegiate athletics, shared high praise. “Dr. Cash is one of our biggest and brightest stars,” he said. “He is a trailblazer, a visionary and an icon. His achievements on this campus were merely the start of an extraordinary career as a humanitarian, philanthropist and business leader.”

The statue’s installation ceremony took place Nov. 11, 2022. Among those present were Cash’s family, his high school and TCU teammates, Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker, Tarrant County Commissioner Roy Charles Brooks and Mark Johnson, then president of the Board of Trustees.

With his wife, Clemmie, at his side in 2022, James Cash '69 unveils the statue in his honor that stands outside Schollmaier Arena. Photo by James Anger

That day was declared Dr. James Cash Day in Fort Worth and Tarrant County, and Chancellor Victor J. Boschini, Jr., presented Cash with an honorary Doctor of Science degree.

“Through your courage and determination, you used your experiences and perspectives to move TCU — and other organizations you touched — forward,” Boschini said. “For TCU students, you are the ultimate role model for ethical leadership and responsible citizenship.”

Emanuel Miller, a senior forward on the men’s basketball team, led the prayer at the dedication and later reflected on what Cash means to him. “Without him a lot of young Black athletes — and a lot of young Black students — would not be attending Texas Christian University right now,” he said.

For Cash’s sister Pamela Cash, the statue is more than a tribute to a stellar athlete. “I just kept thinking about how proud our parents would be to be part of a ceremony like that,” she said. “That statue means so much … just for the curiosity there will be for students who will see it and wonder, ‘Who is this?’ They will take the time to really go back and read about the attention he brought to TCU, the excitement in the basketball season, and certainly the kind of person that he was and what he represented.”

Cash acknowledges the village of supporters who helped him progress from his Fort Worth childhood to tenure at Harvard to boardrooms of global titans the likes of Microsoft and Walmart.

“This will take me to a different level of recognition,” he said of the statue and its permanence on TCU’s campus. “All the thoughts of people who have supported and helped contribute to my success are flooding into my mind. I’m just so extremely overwhelmed and wish they could be there with me.”

James Cash, right, helped I.M. Terrell High School win the state championship in 1963 and 1965. Courtesy of UTA Special Collections

Upbringing

A native of Fort Worth, Cash attended I.M. Terrell High School, which was established as the city’s first Black school in 1882. As a senior, he led Terrell to a 1965 state championship in his school’s division of the Prairie View Interscholastic League; he was also a member of the 1963 state championship team.

He excelled in the classroom as well. At Terrell, Cash earned honors as the outstanding math student and graduated magna cum laude. His love for math was strong; he let everyone know by wearing a tiny slide rule as a tie clip.

Cash credits the Terrell environment for instilling the structure and encouragement necessary to succeed in a world that did not mirror the all-Black neighborhoods he grew up in.

At Terrell, “the assumption is you’re going to achieve and you’re going to do your best,” he said. “Today, if you are above average, the social bullies tend to try and pull you down to the norm, and you aren’t socially acceptable unless you’re failing to some extent. I was blessed with teachers with advanced degrees who required absolute excellence from all of us.”

Cash said that growing up in an all-Black space, not being exposed to racial discrimination, was a blessing because he received the kind of care that transforms into confidence.

But he knew at some point he would have to exist in places that were less familiar and potentially hostile.

“It’s a requirement that you ignore context and keep moving up,” Cash said. “How could I let anything discourage me with all the support I was given? It’s all about perspective, and you can’t let fear and challenges defeat you.”

"My high school coach, my parents and others clearly communicated to me that I was going to have to withstand the kinds of things that we could clearly see were going on in lots of other places.”

Shifting Perspectives

Perseverance runs deep in the Cash family. His mother, Juanita Cash, taught elementary school in Fort Worth and wanted to pursue a graduate education at TCU in the 1960s. The university initially denied her the opportunity on account of her race.

“Her and several other Black elementary school teachers wanted to get advanced degrees and felt that TCU had the best school, but they were not permitted on campus,” Cash said in a February 2022 Black History Month panel discussion sponsored by TCU Magazine.

Several TCU education professors were willing to leave campus to teach the women.

They met at the former Carver Elementary School, which now operates as the Fort Worth Housing Solutions administration building.

“That was one of the first exposures I had to the fact that TCU was willing to violate social norms,” Cash said. “Doesn’t mean that everybody was lined up that way, but at least there were people like Dr. Sandy Wall, who thought that depriving Blacks of advanced education was inappropriate for a whole range of reasons. He couldn’t overcome the constraint of having people come on the campus, but he did his part.”

TCU desegregated in piecemeal fashion, eventually allowing Juanita Cash official entrance to her desired graduate program. She earned a master’s in education the same year her son signed an athletic scholarship to attend TCU.

“After TCU became integrated, many of the Black students returned to the campus and completed their master’s degrees, among them Mrs. Cash and Mrs. [Reva] Bell,” Wall told the Skiff in 1977. “At the time of official integration, I was associate dean of the graduate school, and it gave me great satisfaction to shift the records of the Black students from their segregated niche to the regular alphabetical files; it gave me more satisfaction to follow my students of those segregated years to the completion of their graduate degrees.”

DID YOU KNOW?

Alongside his sister, Pamela, James Cash ’69 established the Juanita Cash Fellowship for Graduate Education in 1987. Their mother’s race had prevented her from enrolling at TCU in the 1950s. While working as a schoolteacher a decade later, Juanita Cash (1922-2011) earned a master’s degree in education in 1965 from a then-integrated TCU. Today, the Juanita Cash Fellowship provides tuition and fees for students who follow in her footsteps by teaching elementary school while pursuing a graduate degree in education. “Juanita Cash and her son were pioneers at TCU,” said David Ferrell, director of development, foundation giving. “They shared a passion and a vision for touching the lives of students.”

Breaking the Barrier

Cash said he knew being the first would bring challenges, but he was not deterred.

“The march on Edmund Pettus Bridge [in Selma, Alabama] … was literally a few weeks before TCU offered me the scholarship, so what was going on in the country was a lot of civil rights activity,” Cash said. “I felt like it was my responsibility to do my part. My high school coach, my parents and others clearly communicated to me that I was going to have to withstand the kinds of things that we could clearly see were going on in lots of other places.”

Cash went on to have a stellar TCU career both on and off the court. Playing center, he averaged 13.9 points and 11.6 rebounds per game during his collegiate career. He is one of 38 players in the Frogs’ 1,000-point club and currently sits fifth all-time in career rebounds. He is 1 of 5 players in program history with at least 1,000 points and 800 rebounds.

He earned Academic All-America honors and helped TCU to a 1968 Southwest Conference championship and NCAA Tournament berth, where the Frogs advanced to the regional finals. In 1982, he was inducted into the TCU Block T Hall of Fame, and in 2011, his jersey was retired into the rafters.

Cash dealt with racism multiple times while traveling with the team. A 1965 visit to the University of Arkansas required a police escort just for him to get into the gym. During a tournament in Mobile, Alabama, the team stopped to eat at a restaurant, and Cash was told he needed to enter through the back door. His teammates refused to subject him to that treatment, so they all left. Similarly, when a hotel did not permit Cash to stay, the team opted to look elsewhere.

Cash said his faith was key to his persistence. He also stepped back to see his experiences in a national context. “In the mid-’60s, people were being beaten, run over by horses, attacked by dogs and water cannons. I wasn’t exposed to any of that,” he said. “I was basically being asked to be the first and to go into an environment where other Blacks had not been before. I wasn’t being subjected to [violence], so how could I let anything else discourage me? That doesn’t mean you don’t feel fear, that you don’t feel anger from time to time though.”

Cash’s academic ambitions were high — and not universally encouraged. When he declared as a math major at TCU, his academic counselor said he could not fathom Cash flourishing in the field.

“His honest comment to me was, ‘Are you sure you want to do this? You know you people aren’t good in this discipline,’ ” Cash said. “My first instinct was that I wanted to rip his arms off his body, but everyone in my village had prepared me for the fact that a lot of people I would run into hadn’t been exposed to African Americans before.”

Over time that counselor would end up becoming a totally committed Cash supporter, who, Cash said, “taught me one of the most important lessons for later life — pay more attention to what people do than what they say.” And offering advice to current and future students who encounter doubters, Cash said, “if you are a person who suffers from imposter syndrome, you can’t succumb to it; you have to demonstrate and show them you can do it.”

Cash graduated with honors while picking up a bachelor of science in mathematics with a minor in physics.

During his TCU years, Cash met the love of his life, Clemmie Warren Cash.

“When we met, it was after basketball season his senior year, so I didn’t know him as a TCU basketball player,” said Clemmie Cash, who also hails from Fort Worth. “I did know that he played basketball, but I didn’t know the significance at that point in time, and it didn’t mean what it means now.”

TCU honored James Cash, who was joined by wife Clemmie and daughter Tara Wilson, in 2011 by retiring his jersey number. Courtesy of TCU Athletics

Networking, never not working

Cash loved learning, so after graduating from TCU, he went on to earn a master’s in computer science and a PhD in management information systems and accounting, both from Purdue University.

His passion for education led him to employment at the nation’s oldest university, Harvard, where he joined the business school faculty in 1976.

Clemmie Cash said she wasn’t a fan of the idea of moving across the country. “I wanted to stay and raise my kids in Texas, and oh boy, going to some place where it’s cold and snowy, that was not my first choice,” she said. “But he saw the value, and I went along and supported it.

“I love the expression ‘You play the hand that life deals you,’ and you don’t often know what an opportunity means,” she said. “If you take the challenge and you just give it the best you got and you play that hand as best as you can, then you cannot know what your rewards will be.”

The pair has now been married for 52 years.

Cash taught in every business program Harvard offered: MBA, management development, global leadership and advanced management. In 1985, he became the business school’s first Black tenured professor. He served as chair of the MBA program from 1992 to 1995 and senior associate dean and chair of Harvard Business School Publishing from 1998 to 2003. He now holds the title of James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus.

In 2020, one of the original buildings of the Harvard Business School was renamed in his honor. The Cash House now is home to the school’s office of diversity, equity and inclusion and executive education program staff, as well as a painting of Cash that is part of the school’s art collection.

“True to his humble nature, Jim will not broadcast the many ways he makes a difference to individuals and institutions,” said Angela Crispi, Harvard Business School’s executive dean for administration, in the school’s announcement of the honor. “More than anyone else I know, Jim genuinely believes in helping others realize their full potential.”

Cash has been a strong contributor to academia with over 70 publications in books, journals, presentations, business cases and other teaching materials.

Outside of the university scene, Cash served on the boards of too many organizations to count. Past board positions include Walmart, General Electric, Knight Ridder and Microsoft.

“Normally, I don’t remain on a board too long — there have been too many for me to do that,” Cash said. He has a self-imposed board service limit of 10 years. “I always accept [positions] because in many instances it’s the first time a Black person has ever sat on that board, and it establishes a precedent that others can follow. Whether it’s token or whether it’s well intended, you take it and you turn it into something that permits you to serve others.”

Currently he runs the Cash Catalyst, which provides development programs for executives interested in the intersection of technology and business strategy. He is also part of the ownership group for the Boston Celtics and an adviser for Grain Management and General Catalyst.

James Cash joined the faculty at Harvard Business School in 1976 and became the first Black professor at the business school to gain tenure in 1985. Courtesy of University of Texas at Arlington Libraries Special Collections

One of the original buildings of the Harvard Business School was renamed The Cash House in 2020 in James Cash's honor. Courtesy of University of Texas at Arlington Library Special Collections

James Cash served as chair of the MBA program and senior associate dean and chair of Harvard Business School Publishing. Courtesy of James Cash

Chancellor William Tucker presented James Cash with the Distinguished Alumni Award in 1986. Horned Frog Yearbook

James Cash is one of only five players in TCU men's basketball history with at least 1,000 points and 800 rebounds. Courtesy of TCU Athletics

Leading On Into the Next 150

Cash said he appreciates that TCU continues to take steps in the right direction in terms of embracing diversity, equity and inclusion.

“[The Race & Reconciliation Initiative], if it continues with the candor and insight that it does, what I’ve learned as a result of that work is what I’m most proud about,” he said. (The initiative is an academically based and historically focused effort designed to investigate and document TCU’s relationship with slavery, racism and the Confederacy.)

The initiative has inspired faculty, staff, students and alumni to research and raise awareness of racism and inequality, helping ensure the campus culture is one where everyone is respected and valued.

Cash also expressed pleasure in seeing TCU continue to invest in “becoming an exemplar for 22nd-century thinking.” From raising its academic profile by advancing research to introducing the Burnett School of Medicine and ensuring the campus experience remains fresh and unique for all students, Cash said he hopes the university will continue to evolve into the next 150 years of existence.

“Your undergraduate institution labels you, and you want the currency of that institution to remain high,” he said. “TCU has maintained a solid reputation.”

Cash reflected on how his time on South University Drive shaped the person he would become as TCU’s 1994 commencement speaker. His words are now inscribed under the statue bearing his likeness: “TCU helped me accomplish more than others thought possible, by teaching me to care more than others thought wise, which empowered me to take more risk than others thought was safe.”

© 2026 TCU Magazine

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