Desegregation in Sports

The film Remember the Titans centers around the newly desegregated high school football team at T.C. Williams High School.  Throughout the film, the players as well as coaches are faced with the problem of forcing the two races to work together towards a common goal.  From the start, it looks as if all hope is lost for anything positive coming out from integrating the school together.  Before the season even starts, the two coaches, Coach Boone and Coach Yoast seem to be polar opposites of one another.  When Coach Boone goes to the house of Coach Yoast to try to get him to be the Assistant Coach/Defensive Coach, there is a struggle as to decide how best to handle playing time for the football team.  Coach Boone states, "The best player will play.  Color won't matter."  After a slight pause, Coach Yoast says "From the looks of the situation that we got here, it looks like that's about all that does."  It is clear from the get go that there are going to be major challenges in trying to put this football team together.  Coach Boone then asks Coach Yoast to stay as Assistant Head Coach to "help smooth things out for the city."  Yoast: "You mean work under you?" Boone: "If that's the way you see it."  The two coaches are having a hard time seeing the "rank" of one another because Coach Boone, the African American head coach, is not used to being at the top, with a white coach under him.  And Coach Yoast, the white coach, is not used to having to "work under" an African American head coach.  The class divisions that have been previously set up throughout American history up to this point always had whites as being "superior" to African Americans. 

Desegregation in sports came around the year 1947 and is mostly known by the career of African American baseball player Jackie Robinson (lecture 11/1/11).  The sport of professional baseball is a good example of civil rights liberalism that took place in the late 1940s.  Jackie Robinson, a World War II veteran, made his major league debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers.  When Robinson joined professional baseball at first, he knew that his presence may generate hostility.  Robinson promised not to retaliate against racist taunts that were used against him (Hist page 444).  What Jackie Robinson had to go through was very different from anything that professional athletes have to go through now.  Fans threw debris at Robinson, some rival players ever attacked him, and to take it even further, he was often stopped from eating with his teammates on the road (Hist page 444).  In spite of having to deal with all of this, Robinson was amazing.  Robinson "won the National League Rookie of the Year award in 1947 and the league's Most Valuable Player award in 1949" (Hist page 444).  Robinson was later the first African American to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  The progress that Jackie Robinson made allowed for other stars of the Negro Leagues to enter the majorly white leagues.   

In the Major Problems document "Nisei Soldier Honored with the Gold Star--and by Jackie Robinson,1944," it is discussed that Nisei soldiers sometimes received decorations for bravery.  The soldiers were sometimes defended by Americans who opposed racism (Major Problems document "Nisei Soldier Honored with the Gold Star--and by Jackie Robinson,1944").  Jackie Robinson was one such American who honored Nisei soldiers for the courage that they showed.  The fact that Jackie Robinson was helping to decorate war heroes goes to show the amount of publicity that Robinson had even before he entered the all-white baseball league.   

Nowadays, when one watches professional sports, it is clear that many, if not the majority, of professional athletes in almost any sport are African American.  During the time frame of the 1940s when Jackie Robinson entered the all-white baseball league, it was not the norm to see a professional team that was mostly African American.  Even in the time frame of Remember the Titans in 1971, T.C. Williams High School was the only school mentioned in the movie that had African American players integrated with white players.  All of the teams that the Titans played were all-white teams.  The changes that have come to professional sports by today can somewhat be attributed to Jackie Robinson and the desegregation in sports that took place in the mid-1900s.

Who is Herman Boone?

Because three high schools were forced to integrate in order to create T.C. Williams High School, the student bodies and faculty members were forced to integrate as well.  As a result, Bill Yoast, the longtime coach and hopeful Hall of Famer, is asked to step down.  Herman Boone, the school's first African American faculty member, replaces Yoast as coach of T.C. Williams High School.  The Head of the Negro School Board, who is referred to as Doctor Day, recruited Coach Boone to coach at T.C. Williams.  When Doctor Day is meeting with Coach Boone at Boone's house, Doctor says "Folks in Carolina say you marched with Dr. King.  Say you stood toe to toe with the Klan.  Say you're a race man."  When I re-watched the movie for the assignment, I was surprised to hear all of the small comments that were made that had to do with things that we discussed in class about the Civil Rights Movement.  The fact that Doctor Day was able to recruit Coach Boone, a man who marched with Dr. King and fought against the Klan, is something that Doctor is very proud of and excited about.  Doctor Day is excited about this because "black folks have never had anything in this city to call their own except humiliation and despair."

One of the first organizations created after the war in the South was the Ku Klux Klan which was founded in 1865 by white Confederate soldiers who were concerned about the racial implications of black freedom (Hist page 276).  One of the Klan's main interests was the restoration of white supremacy.  In order to intimidate Black and Republican voters, southern Democrats used violence to attempt to control southern politics.  The Ku Klux Klan used violence to harass black and white Republicans and physically block black southerners from casting ballots in elections (Hist page 286).  The goal of groups like the KKK was to stop Republican support in the South to ensure election victories for the Democratic Party.  A good example of the violence of the Ku Klux Klan can be seen in the Major Problems document "Lucy McMillan, A Former Slave in South Carolina, Testifies About White Violence, 1871."  The former slave testifies with the Joint Select Committee her experience of the Klan burning down her house (Major Problems "Lucy McMillan, A Former Slave in South Carolina, Testifies About White Violence, 1871").  An interesting point about the Ku Klux Klan was that the organization died down in the late 1800s but enjoyed a revival in the 1920s.  The resurgence of the Klan was partly inspired by the film Birth of a Nation, in which the Klan was positively portrayed (lecture 10/6/11).  The Klan of this time period saw itself as "the embodiment of old Protestant and southern virtues" (Hist page 383).

In Remember the Titans, Doctor Day also makes the point that Coach Boone marched with Dr. King.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Baptist minister who was at the forefront of the African American Civil Rights Movement.  King became a civil rights activist early in his career by leading the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and by founding the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (Hist page 445).  The reason that King has to found this group is because his own religious denomination, the black Baptists, will not join.  They are fearful of direct assaults and direct challenges to white supremacy (lecture 11/8/11).  It is clear that the black Baptists have every right to be fearful because Southern white supremacists would do anything to stop desegregation and black voting.  Martin Luther King, Jr.'s iconic moment was his effort to lead the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (Hist page 454).  In the Major Problems document "Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Defends Seamstress Rosa Parks, 1955," King gives the sermon in response to Park's arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white person.  This sermon helped to launch the Montgomery Buss Boycott as well as King's career as a civil rights activist (Major Problems "Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Defends Seamstress Rosa Parks, 1955" document).         

The fact that Doctor Day made the point that Coach Boone fought against the Klan and marched with Dr. King is very prevalent to much of what we discussed about the Civil Rights Movements of the 1960s.

Black/White Violence

As Sheryl continues to narrate the events of 1971 in Alexandria, Virginia, she explains that a white store owner killed a young African American and that "the town was on the verge of explosion."  Violence between whites and blacks can be seen all the way back to the 1880s and 1890s.  Violence between the two races was used as a form of political intimidation and was especially effective in areas where whites and blacks competed for jobs (lecture 9/8/11).  The most common form of violence that was used in this time period was lynching, in which a white mob gathered to murder someone (usually by hanging) who they believed had committed a crime.  Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, nearly 2,000 black men were lynched in the South (Hist page 322).  A good example of violence against African Americans can be seen in the Major Problems document titled "Lucy McMillan, a Former Slave in South Carolina, Testifies About White Violence, 1871." Lucy McMillan testifies that the Ku Klux Klan came and burned down her house while she and her child were there (Major Problems "Lucy McMillan, a Former Slave in South Carolina, Testifies About White Violence, 1871" document).  The violence between the white store owner and the young African American was not new to the United States.  It was a problem that had been escalating for over one hundred years.

Another example of white/black violence that occurred in American history is the story of Emmett Till in 1955.  The violence that was used against Emmett is argued to be some of the most racist violence in American history.  Emmett Till, a fourteen year-old Chicago African American boy, was beaten and murdered for whistling at a white woman who worked at a grocery store.  The white woman's husband and half-brother were arrested for kidnapping and murder (Hist page 445).  The outrage that was present in the Emmett Till case among both African Americans and whites, is closely mirrored by the responses in this movie's opening scene.  There is no reason given in the film for why the white store owner killed the young African American boy.  The audience is allowed to wonder what reason could be given for the young boy to be killed.  However, what I began to think about was the possibility of whether there was even a reason at all.  In this time period, it seems that there was such hostility between whites and blacks that maybe there was no real justified reason for the young African American boy being killed.  The responses from African Americans in the film made it seem like there was no possible justified reason for the boy to be killed.  

Such white/black violence continued to occur throughout the 1960s and beyond.  In spite of the civil rights victories, violence continued to escalate.  Many homes of civil rights activists and the churches that they were associated with were bombed.  Because the civil rights activists were beginning to fear for their lives, some began carrying weapons to arm themselves (Hist page 456).  In the Major Problems document "Army Veteran Robert Williams Argues 'Self-Defense Prevents Bloodshed,' 1962," Williams argued that African Americans had as much right to self-defense as every other American (Major Problems "Army Veteran Robert Williams Argues 'Self-Defense Prevents Bloodshed,' 1962" document).  In the document, while Robert Williams is driving a car full of African Americans, his car is run into by a white driver pulling out of a restaurant.  The white driver and white mob that was created around the scene started to shout about killing the African Americans and burning them.                  

Integration of Schools and Brown v. Board of Education

The film Remember the Titans centers upon T.C. Williams High School, the newly desegregated school in Alexandria, Virginia.  Prior to 1971, schools in Alexandria had not been forced to integrate.  After a court ruling, three high schools, two white and one African American, were forced to integrate for the first time.  An African American head coach, Herman Boone (played by Denzel Washington), was hired to replace the previous Caucasian head coach, Bill Yoast, for the school's football team.  As the film opens, Sheryl Yoast, coach Yoast's daughter, narrates that "Up until 1971, there was no race mixing."  As the film progresses, we learn that many other schools in Virginia remained segregated as Caucasian schools. 

The major conflict that is brought up throughout the film is the forced integration of T.C. Williams High School.  Many years earlier, in 1954, the NAACP's legal team, led by attorney Thurgood Marshall, made one of the most important legal challenges to segregation, overturning around sixty years of legal segregation that began with Plessy v. Ferguson (lecture 11/8/11).  In the case of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that separate educational facilities for white and black students was "inherently unequal" (Hist page 444).  Being that the film takes place in 1971, one might at first question as to why there is a time difference of around twenty years before schools in Alexandria, Virginia were desegregated.  The point needs to be made that although Brown v. Board of Education was passed in 1954, it was slow to trigger changes at first.  One of the reasons for this was because President Eisenhower thought that states, rather than the federal government, should deal with civil rights (Hist page 444).  Because of this, it is clear to see why some states desegregated later than others.  Another reason why Alexandria, Virginia, schools were desegregated twenty years after the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education was because the Court decided that desegregation of southern schools should proceed "with all deliberate speed" (Hist page 444).  This allowed southern states a greater amount of leniency in enforcing the law.   

In the 1960s, African Americans rose up and coordinated into a bunch of different Civil Rights struggles.  This happened at the level of the federal government in the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education where the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of schools was unconstitutional (lecture 11/8/11).  The Major Problems document "The Supreme Court Rules on Brown v. Board of Education, 1954" shows that the Court ruled that separate was not equal.  In the ruling, the argument is made that a child can not be expected to succeed in life if they are denied the opportunity of an education (Major Problems "The Supreme Court Rules on Brown v. Board of Education, 1954"document).  The document goes on to explain that "Such an opportunity, when the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms" (Major Problems "The Supreme Court Rules on Brown v. Board of Education, 1954"document).  The argument is made that you do not even have a chance in life if you do not have a proper education.  If you do not have an equal education, then you do not even have the opportunity to succeed in life (lecture 11/10/11).

The above video, by PBS highlights the issue of desegregating schools of K-12 in relation to Brown v. Board of Education.