As the recent film Glory Road reminded, the early desegregation of college sports often
was neither easy nor pleasant. Here, Bill Elder recalls how he and a courageous group of
white and black student-athletes broke racial barriers at a small college in northeast
Alabama in the early 1970s. The setting was Sand Mountain, an area that four decades
earlier had given rise to the Scottsboro Boys case, an area where racial attitudes for some
had not changed much.
Elder, recently retired from a successful career as a college sports administrator,
shows vividly why he sometimes wondered whether he and his players would live
through their experience. Abandoned by their school officials, the players faced constant
threats and harassment and occasional violence. But they kept playing and winning
games and forging bonds among themselves that lasted long after that first season was
over.
Through it all, Elder, an Alabama native and lifelong Baptist, watched his
community with both a loving and an objective eye. His brief eyewitness account of both
the worst and best elements of Southerners during this tumultuous era is compelling
testimony.
about the author
Bill Elder has twenty-five years' experience as a college athletic director, ten as
chairperson of departments of physical education, and twenty-one years as a physical
education professor. He served on the President's Cabinet at both the University of
Mobile and Lindsey Wilson College and worked as head basketball coach at the
University of Mobile, the University of Montevallo, and Northeast State Junior College.
He has been inducted into both the NAIA Basketball Coaches' Hall of Fame and the
University of Montevallo Sports Hall of Fame and has been recognized by the Mobile
Sports Hall of Fame for his contribution to athletics in the city. He has a Ph.D. in
educational administration from the University of Alabama and an M.S. in physical
education from the University of Tennessee. He earned his B.S. in physical education at
Samford University.
