It’s a dramatic scene in a great football movie. In “Remember The Titans”, Coach Herman Boone (Denzel Washington) leads his recently integrated T.C. Williams High School football team out of the Gettysburg College dorms, through the woods, and into a Gettysburg graveyard. There, he urges his diverse team to come together and avoid the fate of those around them.
The scene was filmed at Berry College in Rome, GA. The dorm, the woods, and the graves are all a part of Berry’s campus. Its been consistently ranked as one of the most beautiful in America. At 27,000 acres, it is also the nation’s largest. The campus of Berry College is larger than the city of Sherman.
The struggles at T.C. Williams were the norm. The end of American apartheid was painful throughout the south. Austin College and Berry College were no exception.
The arrival of the first student of color at AC led to the resignation of one trustee. An incoming student de-enrolled when he learned of his new neighbor in Baker Hall. That first non-white student rarely left campus for the city of Sherman out of fear. This was, after all, only 3 decades removed from the infamous and disgraceful events at the Grayson county courthouse.
Integration at Berry College, which lies just a stone’s throw from Stone Mountain, was equally difficult. The first three African American students to arrive were burned in effigy. Out of safety, none of them chose to live on campus. Just before their arrival, one Berry College administrator suggested that they not be allowed to dine at the Ford Dining Hall. He was overruled.
Oh yeah. Ford Dining Hall at Berry College. The site of another scene from “Remember The Titans”. While the team dines, Coach Boone demands that each member of the team spends time with a teammate of a different race, with 3-a-day practices to occur until they report back.
The reversal of racial injustice was likely less painful at AC & Berry compared to society at large. Athletics deserves a significant amount credit for the positive, race-transcending role at both schools. Equally deserving of praise, however, are the institutions of faith associated with the two colleges. Religious leaders at the Grand Avenue Presbyterian church in Sherman and Berry’s Inter-denominational church in Rome worked closely with administration officials to facilitate integration. They also provided a refuge for those students bearing the burden. The first African Americans at AC & Berry lived restricted lives in many ways, but they were always welcome on Sunday at the houses of worship.
This is not surprising. After all, the strongest advocates of ending separate and unequal were men and women of faith. This was a movement organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and headed by a man named “King” who was in reality a “Reverend”.
As the years went by, change became accepted at the two schools. At Berry, the students who had integrated the school began to return at the invitation of the college to assist those who followed. In Sherman, the first student of color had been reluctant to travel off campus as a freshman. By his senior year, he and white students were actively teaming up to successfully end “whites only” businesses practices around town. In 1970, just a decade after the end of campus segregation, Darwin McKee was elected student body president of AC. His election was historic; it was the first instance of an African American winning such a post at an historically white college in Texas.
If race and politics are the wounds of America, sport is a balm. Sport has been one of the most successful American vehicles to soothe the original sin of this good nation of ours. And the reason for that is simple. When our men and women suit up, they become one unit regardless of background or heritage. And we fans in the stands? We only see Berry blue and silver, or AC crimson and gold.
