![]() That’s also because of you.”Įlsewhere, we witness Bear’s own courageous convictions about the importance of racial integration. Bear is intent upon recruiting Tony, and he tells him, “Tony, when I was coming up here, I passed a football field full of kids. It’s also deeply affected by the legendary coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide, Paul “Bear” Bryant. Tony’s sense of calling as a football player is naturally influenced by his parents, who are lovingly committed to their son. What’s so special about that?” Tony replies, “We’re a symbol. Jeff says, “It’s crazy, all these people coming to see us. The day before a huge game (which draws a record 42,000 fans), the two high schoolers run into each other while practicing. The running back develops a friendship with a quarterback from a rival team, Jeff Rutledge (whose team also has a revival-like Christian experience). ![]() Tony exhibits a wise-beyond-his-years understanding of how his stardom as an athlete influences people. And when racist pressure ratchets up for him to quit (the more successful he becomes), it takes courage for the young man to stay in the game-both literally and metaphorically. So he develops fortitude learning to take the hits. Though he’s full of football ability, Tony doesn’t like getting hit. And Tony Nathan perhaps has to exercise the most courage of all, both on the field and off. Coach Geralds courageously holds to his emerging convictions about integrating his football team and owning his own faith when both are challenged. Hank courageously keeps asking Coach Geralds for permission to share his faith. And it pairs that faith-fueled emphasis with another value: courage. Woodlawn brims with faith-focused themes, as we’ll see. But before long, the ripple expands into a wave that rolls off the Woodlawn gridiron and into the heart of racially fractured Birmingham, thanks in large measure to a courageous black running back named Tony Nathan. It’s a ripple of redemption and racial reconciliation that starts slowly at first. “Five minutes,” he says.Īn hour later, the entire team has answered Hank’s challenge to surrender their lives to Christ, and to live differently on the field and off. But when the determined evangelist shows up after a riot goes down at the school, Geralds relents. A message about Jesus he begs the coach to let him share. ‘Cause winning fixes just about everything, doesn’t it?”Ĭhanneled rage coupled with gridiron glory, Coach Geralds suggests, might be the best the Woodlawn Colonels can hope for as they launch their fall 1973 gridiron campaign.Ī sports chaplain who came to Christ listening to Billy Graham preach, Hank’s got a radically different message for the members of Coach Geralds’ team. So if it is anger that unites us, then let’s use that anger to win, boys. We can choose together what we will do with it. ![]() You’re angry because of what’s happened to this school. “Anger,” says Coach Tandy Geralds on the team’s first day of practice. The result is volatile: Black and white students and teachers eye one another warily fights send kids to the hospital and on the football team, racial animosity is practically palpable. And in 1973, 10 years after King’s famous Birmingham campaign, the compulsory integration of blacks and whites in schools remained explosively controversial.Īt Woodlawn High, a white school of 2,500 students is forced to accept 500 black students bussed in from poorer parts of the city. ![]() Nowhere was that more true than in Birmingham, Ala., one of the key Southern cities where Martin Luther King Jr. But for years more, resistance to federal laws mandating integration and equality for blacks remained fierce, especially in the Deep South. The 1960s was a watershed decade for the Civil Rights movement, a decade in which landmark federal rulings technically made discrimination against blacks illegal.
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