Football, basketball and race

When I was a young teenager, the boys in the neighborhood used to gather in several yards, including ours, to play football. When we were youngest, we used to play tackle football, when our muscular development didn't allow us to perform much mayhem on each other. Of course, that supposition ended when my brother's collarbone cracked when trying to make a tackle on one of the neighborhood kids. This put a quietus on our tackle football games and changed our games to what we referred to as "two below".

Some might think that this was a retreat from the joy and simplicity and sheer, sweet violence with which we began. But you forget that we still played organized football in addition to our front yard competition. There is still a picture of one of Frank's teams showing Frank in a neck-collar, fit to protect his weakened neck.

This was back in the days when mother's fears didn't hold the sway and boy children weren't forced to play "soccer." This wasn't the time when the games we played weren't segregated so that basketball and football were predominately the games played by the African-American children and soccer and baseball were reserved for the Caucasian children. This is silly and an odd sideshow of what has happened as sports has been "integrated" with the rest of Southern society.

Brown v. Board of Education happened three years before I was born. Perhaps the genesis for that opinion occurred when blacks and whites played jazz with each other and when they fought in the military of this country. But truthfully, Brown was a watershed moment when the adults were forced to allow their children to go to school together. The effort to resist the action required by that series of cases still goes on.

When I played football and basketball in Dekalb County, Georgia in the early to middle Seventies, the schools in Dekalb County were still predominately segregated. The high schools, like Chamblee and Sequoyah which incorporated segregated neighborhoods, were integregated on their teams. The high schools like Dunwoody and Peachtree, which came from neighborhoods which were almost completely white, or some of the South Dekalb high schools which were predominately black, were segregated.

We played each other when we got into the playoffs, but seldom before. That was the way it was in football. Basketball was different, because we played a lot of different schools, including the teams in South Dekalb. The beginning of the re-segregation of the sports was already beginning. I remember playing Cedar Grove in football and basketball. The football team was not predominated by either race, but the basketball team was almost completely black. Already the retreat was beginning.

This retreat from basketball by the white players was just the beginning, because it prefaced the retreat of the families from the neighborhoods in that part of Dekalb County. All of a sudden, these families were moving to Rockdale County and Gwinnett County and Newton County.

When my daughter was born, I hoped that she would want to play basketball. I loved basketball when I was young. I took pride in the fact that I was from Kentucky, a state which placed a premium on basketball for all of its citizens, white or black.

But in Georgia, basketball was segregated. I know that I probably wouldn't have played basketball in high school if Dunwoody was integrated like it is now.

If the goal of integration in sports was to provide an opportunity for the students to play, I am not sure that the end result was indicative of that goal. Dunwoody has won several state championships in basketball, a sport in which the black students made up the great majority of the players on the team. Oddly, Dunwoody also has done well in baseball, a sport which has become one of the sports where whites predominate. But why can't the team pictures be more racially mixed? Why are the individual sports becoming substantially segregated, even in the same schools?

I have been told by some people that whites can't compete with blacks in sports. I think this thinking is as racist as the thinking which said that blacks couldn't be quarterbacks or coaches or owners. There is no reason why anyone can't compete in any sport, if they are gifted athletically, no matter their race.

Atlanta has become a mecca for African-Americans in this country. More and more are moving here. This action began with the interaction of the white business community with the leaders of the black community in the 60's. Now Atlanta is much more of an integrated society, and it is a great thing for our region.

But the fear of integration and the distrust of races still exists here and causes people to abandon neighborhoods and schools and the opportunity to learn more about each other and come to the ultimate realization that we are not that different. I read something recently which said that all of the races of the earth are almost essentially alike from a genetic sense. Sure we look different to each other. But the truth is that our similarities are greater than our differences.

We can learn a lot from each other. Our differences are important, but more so when combined with each other. When I was a thirteen year old boy, our team had white and black running backs. All of us were important parts on a team which ended up being second in the country in Pop Warner league football. When I was a seventeen year old, my last play in high school football occurred when I tackled one of my former teammates from that little league team. How wonderful that he was the African-American member of that team. We had fought together on a team and now were participating together in a high school game. Ironic that we both played college football.

Participation is the key. We need to get rid of the stereotypes and misaprehensions bourne of fear and distrust. We need to realize that we are stronger when we bond together as a unity of different parts.

Here is to Eddie Jackson and Blake Mitchell and George Herbert and Don Crossley. These were guys I played games with in the past. Some were black and some were white, but they played the same positions on teams together. That is a better blueprint than the one we have at this point in time.