About integration of two different various stories of the integration process in nashville. Its triumph and its failures and to all of you at home watching us on cspan, welcome as well. And i know youll enjoy our authors talks and well have questions well save until end of the presentations. Both of these deal with integration and education. And we in nashville take a lot of of pride in our history and we see ourselves as a moderate progressive Southern City and we also like to present the story of integration as almost a triumphant story with the success of the sitins. We didnt have the violence of other southern cities. And unfortunately, weve chosen to craft that narrative and forget some of the painful parts of our story. And today, were going to hear some of the painful parts as well as some of the successes. Our presenters today are Andrew Maraniss who lives in nashville now and went to vanderbilt. He has written a book about the integration of athletics at vanderbilt and the book has a tremendous amount of national and local lift in history in it as well. I know youll enjoy his book, strong inside about abouterry wallace, another nashvillion who crossed from pearl high to vanderbilt to be the first africanamerican on the vanderbilt basketball team. Followed by ansley erickson, a fine book called making the unequal metropolis. This is the history of metro public schools, but its much more than that, just like andrews book which covered a lot of different aspects, in her book, you see the story of nashville pursuing urban renewal money after world war ii, the Model Cities Program and how ultimately this ties together into our educational stimen systems. Andrew is going first and hell tell you about the Perry Wallace story and vanderbilt. Thank you, carol, and thank you for coming. Its wonderful to be on the panel with ansley who wrote a wonderful book. A lot of people like to celebrate the success of integration without talking about the pain it took to get there. The Perry Wallace, the fishing africanamerican athlete in the sou southeastern conference, not just vanderbilt. His phrase reconciliation without the truth is just acting. And that people often once they get to the reconciliation part, without doing the hard work it takes to get there. This year at vanderbilt and nashville, my book is being read by the freshmen at vanderbilt the entire class, engineering scholarship has been endowed in perrys name and courage award in the athletic department. If you took a snapshot of whats happening today you would think it was a happy feelgood story that worked out how everyone planned. Thats not how it happened. Learning the truth how it happened is what i try and im happy to be on a panel thats about civil rights and not just sports. That was very important to me to tell this story in the context of the place and times in which Perry Wallace operated and thats the deep south during the late 1960s, a tumultuous period in the 1960s, its not about scores of games and statistics. Its about what it takes to be a pioneer. And perrys story is a legitimate civil rights story. He began in 1954, he was around emmitt tills age when he was murdered in mississippi and perry was profoundly impacted by that. And in 1960s, the lunch town, and see what the College Students were doing with his own eyes. He entered Pearl High School 1963 a week after Martin Luther kings i have a dream speech and in high school for the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights act. What perry will say, he could feel the country changing, that there was a sense of momentum and opportunities coming along for him and members of his graduating class that hadnt been there for their older brothers and sisters and parents and he needed to be prepared to take advantage of these opportunities. He was. He wasnt just a great basketball playerment he was a great basketball player, he was starting center on a team that won three titles 1966. More importantly than that, he was a great student. Valedictorian at Pearl High School, into math and science, played the trumpet, sings opera, all four of his older soldiers went to college, and this is on the incomes of a mom was a cleaning lady and dad was a bricklayer. Education was very important in the wallace home. What perry said, he saw basketball as a means to an end, as a ticket out of the segregated city, a ticket out of jim crowe south. So his goal was a get to scholarship to a Big Ten School in the midwest. He went to wisconsin, michigan, northwestern, iowa and recruited by john wooden at ucla and this is what his whole dream was get out of nashville through a basketball scholarship to the north. Unfortunately, he saw the underbillionly, the ugly underside of college supports that still exists. On a lot of the recruiting trips, here is your car and when you come to school here, you dont need to worry about going to class, well find the easiest classes for you, and for a serious student like perry, thats not what he wanted to hear. Hes an engineer, and i consider perry a poet at heart. He said he wasnt going to trade one plantation for another. He wasnt going to leave the deep south only to be exploited for his athletic ability at one of these other supposedly better campuses. He begins to take vanderbilt seriously. Its unusual, even though he grew up a mile from the campus, this is a school that was segregated. He would have been excluded. He didnt grow up thinking he would go to vanderbilt or follow the team. The reason that vanderbilt was interested in perry went back to the 1960s, sitins. It was reverend james lofton. And when the University Learned it was one of their students that was doing this, they didnt thank him. They expelled him from the ute. Vanderbilt was looking to become more of a Strong NationalUniversity Rather than a southern school. The Media Attention that came from expelling reverend lawton was embarrassing moment for the university on a national stage. A new chancellor was brought in. A progressive new south type of figure at the time. He spoke about race and the central issue facing the country at that point in the 60s and his daughter connie, a music professor at vanderbilt now, was a sports fan. He understood for better or worse the role that sports made in the culture. He knew if he made a move in the sports sphere people would pay attention. So he called the basketball coach, roy, weve integrated the school two years ago and can recruit a black player and id like you to. Across the town, Perry Wallace, valedictorian, and he was the player to choose. But was perry going to be the first africanamerican in the entire league and face the road trips to alabama, mississippi, louisiana, georgia. A couple years after the famous civil rights encounters. So i spent eight years working on this book. The first four on research and interviews and the second four on writing. During that initial fouryear stretch, perry, who is now a professor in washington d. C. , flew down to nashville and we spent the day looking at the schools he went to and house he grew up in and parks. And we were over near the Tennessee Titans practice facility and i appreciate you all being here instead of the titansbrowns game right now. He said pull the car over here and look at the rocks and trees. And thats all it was, i didnt see anything significant about it. He said thats the rock that i sat on and prayed over my decision whether i was going to come to vanderbilt or not. So thats the kind of research, that was pretty cool to see the actual rock that he sat on. So he makes a decision to come to vanderbilt and today perry has a phrase he uses that any one of us can treat each other in three wells, you can be treated well, treated poorly or not be treated at all and ive never heard that before, but i think thats a profound way to look at life. In the beginning he experienced all three types of treatment. He was treated well by some people including the chancellor and chaplin at the university and a small group of black students who formed the first black association. And the other treatments from the beginning. He arrived on campus about a month early just to move into his dorm and get acclimated and meet some people. He knew this was going to be a stressful year and i wanted to get a little bit of a head start. On one of his recruiting trips, clyde lee who had been a star of a time, showed him around campus. Here is the church of cries, clyde was white and grew up in the white church of christ, and growing up in nashville, he never would have thought walking through the doors of the white church, but apparently this is what being a pioneer was all about. He was going to give it a shot. For three sundays in august he walks in the church and sits in the back and left alone or ignored. And the fourth sunday he was pulled aside by older church members, perry, you cant keep coming to the church. There are members who will write the church out of their wills, you have to leave right now. Before hes taken his first class in vanderbilt hes expelled from the church. His friend, walter, followed perry to vanderbilt. The first day of english class, and so, i see they let the nwords in and thats the way hes greeted in school. On the Basketball Court he wasnt treated well either. Freshman Year University of mississippi, ole miss canceled both games against vanderbilt rather than play against an integrated team. Not until the sophomore year he becomes the first africanamerican player to play a game in oxford, mississippi in ole miss. The first half of the game hes hit in the nose intentionally he tells me, bleeding out of the nose, cant see out of one eye, the refs dont call foul, and its not until the next dead ball. And as they walked him, the crowd rises and cheers that hes injured and spit on as he walked back to the locker room. At halftime, the managers and trainers assist him, as the halftime clock runs out the west of the vanderbilt coaches and players, walk out for the warmup. They leave him in the locker room and he knows hell have to walk back through the tunnel where the fans harassing him are waiting on him. What would have been an ordinary walk back was a long hellish trauma for him. And i asked him about his approach to road trips in general and said as he looked at the teams schedule each year and knew he was travelling to auburn and lsu and mississippi and Mississippi State and looked at it with dread. Whats the worst thing that could happen to me on one of the trips. On his mind, it was shot and killed. Around one of the small southern towns or on the court during the game and he still had the courage to persevere and try to play a basketball game like anybody else. He said the three types of treatment, being treated well, treated poorly or not treated at all. It was the third way, not treated at all that was the most difficult for him. It wasnt the physical and verbal abuse he took, it was the sense of isolation that he felt on the vanderbilt campus. It was the most difficult for him. This is at a time when the greek system dominated the social scene on campus completely, but the frats and sororities were all white. There werent black fraternities and sororities as an alternative to those. No student center. Youd walk, an africanamerican classmate would notice as she would sit around there were no other black students white students wouldnt sit next to her in that row or in the row behind her. Youd walk into biology lab and whoever sat next to you became your lab partner, what if no one sat next to you. There was incredible isolation and it denied him and his friends their humanity and thats the most difficult parts of the experience. During college and trying to come to terms after it. Perry didnt quit. He had been a student of sports history and read about Jackie Robinson, what would Jackie Robinson do in this situation and that was not quit. His mom, very churchgoing person, told perry to put on the full armor of god and thats going to protect you. And his mom, have he close, dedicates the last game of his career to his mom. And he plays the game of his life. He has 28 points and 29 rebounds. Which is about as many rebounds as a team might get in an entire game. And he saves the best for last. The last basket of his career was a slamdunk in the last minute of this game and that doesnt sound too noteworthy exception a dunk was outlawed in College Basketball at the time and i have a chapter in the book about the undertone of that rule change. And he saved that for the last game. Growing in segregated nashville, there were unjust laws. In playing college hoops, there was no dunks, and thats an unjust rule and thats his form of protest with a slamdunk. He gets a standing ovation, the team wins the game against Mississippi State and a lot of significance for perry. At that moment hes more popular in this town than he ever had been and if theres ever a movie made about this book, i hope there will be, that would probably be the triumphant scene, the last drunk in his last game. The protest. Perry didnt let it stop there. He had an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach that the Nashville Community was eager to wrap up this integration story and say we did it, we had perry and this is over. Even though there was no other africanamerican player along perry and only played against one black player in his entire career in the sec and the other schools werent jumping on. He had a moral obligation to the people to come behind him to tell the truth about the experience hed liked. Even though hed been a valedictorian and he set up for a bright career in his hometown. If he gave this interview he was writing his ticket out of town, all over in nashville. Unfortunately, he was right. I interviewed mr. John sigenfelder, and others who wrote about perry. The phones rang off the hook the day it ran on the front of the tennessean, and telling about how he was kicked out of the church and they treated his best friend and callers were canceling subscriptions to the newspaper saying Perry Wallace was ungrateful for what vanderbilt had done for him. He graduates, drafted by the philadelphia 76ers and he flies up there, left nashville never lived here again. He goes on a very successful career and columbia law school. He served six years in the national guard, giving back to his country after the country had given him to that point. Hes an attorney for the Justice Department for about seven years and hes now been a professor of law at American University in washington d. C. For the last 20 years. And when this book came out, the first event that we did together was nbc, politics and pros. The great bookstore there. And my family lived in washington, perrys family is there, colleagues from American University were there, a very warm, welcoming crowd at the bookstore, but the next day we were flying down to nashville. And we wont from warm to what perry said i think were headed into a hot environment in nashville. He didnt mean hot in a good sense of the world. And not having lived there 30 years, we hoped there would be a new nashville. We had our if i think fingers crossed. And afterward a handful wanted my ougautograph and others want perrys on the book. And i had a chance to see the interaction between perry and people who wanted him to sign the book. It was touching and emotional and people came up crying with bloodshot eyes as if they had been crying and heard perry speak and saying things like i wish i had been paying attention to what you were going through at the time. I wish i had been there for you, youre a hero, please forgive me. And for me to see that, was very rewarding and what youve seen over the last year or so, since the book has come out, is that that sentiment has been relayed to perry more and more often. It sparked a real honest conversation about race at vanderbilt this year, which is pretty cool to see. I asked perry about it, the difference between how he was perceived in 1970 when he gave that interview and now. Back then, he suspected people didnt want to hear what he had to say, wouldnt be ready to hear or or didnt want to hear it. The way that people changed and times changed he had this hope that some day, if he just continued to tell the truth and live his life the right way, that people would understand. And so, thats now, when people hear about the book or they read the book, i feel like where are are the people that perry has been waiting for the last 50 years. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you, andrew. Its good afternoon. A real pleasure to be here and im really grateful to the southern festival of books for inviting me and andrew and cheryl for joining in this conversation and grateful for you choosing to spend your saturday here with us. Sunday. [laughter] youve been on the road. Ive been on the road. So, Perry Wallaces story is incredibly powerful and its powerful in the way that individual narratives often are, right . They help us think about the kind of interactions with students in the past, and with adults in nashville today, that capture a lot of feelings of justice or injustice, really, really visibly. So what i want to do in talking with Nashville School desegregation story is to pick up on some of those stories and look more broadly and think about not only interactions, but the policy choices and politics that condition a lot of those individual interactions. Nashville desegregation story offers many powerful stories. For example, sixyearold la wanna streets in 1967 held her fathers hand as she walked to school for the first time in september, as a first grader, and she walked to school as a young black girl going to a historically segregated white school and through a crowd of white protesters. She described not being afraid because she had her fathers hand. At a different school, grace mckinley led her daughter linda and her friend Rita Buchanan t