By CAITLIN BYRD | The State | Published: March 7, 2021 CHARLESTON, S.C. (Tribune News Service) Ken Gordon never kept a journal during his time at The Citadel. But no one, he explained more than 35 years later, can forget hell. When Gordon reported to the Charleston campus in August 1984, he found a South that refused to let go of its past. Confederate battle flags waved in the stands during home football games. Cadets marched to Dixie during Friday afternoon parades. Eighteen years had passed since Charles DeLesline Foster broke the color barrier in 1966 to become the first African American to join the Corps of Cadets. Yet Gordon, an 18-year-old Black freshman from Willingboro, N.J., remembers being called one name more than any other his first year: The N-word.