Integration and High School Football  

Atlanta banker Mark Clegg has been a football fan since kindergarten in the early 1960s when his family lived in Athens. His father was a referee for the Georgia High School Football Association, and he often tagged along to area schools, playing in and under the bleachers unsupervised.  

“On Friday nights, the Athens Trojans would play and it was a big event,” he recalls. Thousands would fill the stadium known as “Death Valley.” 

His family would move from Athens to South Carolina and Atlanta, but over the years he kept up with Athens High and one player, in particular. His father had coached Andy Johnson in the Pony League, which was just the beginning of a playing career that included UGA and culminated in the National Football League.  

“His career was a strong influence on the book,” Clegg notes. The book is “The Crimson and Gold,” Football and Integration in Athens, Ga.,” released in September by the UGA Press.  

Clegg started writing at age 59 and had written two books about his outdoor adventures when he decided in 2020 that the story of the 1969 Athens Trojans and their unlikely championship season had all the elements of a good book.  

“It was a totally remarkable season,” he says. “The team had struggled early in the year but they gradually got better.” Under the skilled and merciless coaching of Weyman Sellers and the leadership of quarterback Johnson, the team made it to the finals.  

“No one gave them any chance,” Clegg remembers, “Valdosta had only given up seven points the entire year. The game was in Valdosta, and they did everything to psych out Athens. The Trojans had 33 boys to Valdosta’s 100.” 

The team had flown down to Valdosta for the state championship game where an old school bus that picked them up had no seats, an example of the mind games the Wildcats engaged in. It didn’t work – 12,000 people packed the stadium to watch the teams battle to a tie and a co-state championship.  

“If you Google the greatest high school football games of all time, that 26-26 game will come up. It always stuck with me that it would be a great story although it wouldn’t have that big an audience.” 

The whole story 

Clegg says after he started doing research, “I realized I had a much larger story.” After years of delay and what has been called “massive resistance,” the South was finally having to fully implement the 1954 Supreme Court decision to integrate public schools.  

Students at Athens High and Burney-Harris, the Black high school, were scheduled to start the 1970 school year in what was renamed Clarke Central High School. The football players from both schools had been practicing since the spring under Sellers, who the Black players perceived as racist.  

“As I was interviewing the former players, I began to realize the extent of the racial climate in Athens as it related to the football team. When I talked to Doc Eldridge, he told me to call Michael Thurmond.” Eldridge, a center on the team, would go on to be mayor of Athens and Chamber director. Thurman, a running back, became the first African American state labor commissioner and most recently, Dekalb County CEO. Each had a leadership role in patching up a divisive situation that had led Black players to walk off.  

As one interview led to another introduction, Clegg would ultimately interview 30 to 40 people.  

“No one was defensive,” he notes. “I was amazed. They didn’t know me. We were talking on the phone, not in person. People were very open.”  

Clegg says he doesn’t think anyone from Athens could have written the book – “It’s still a controversial topic.” After he had written the first third, he took it to UGA Press where the reaction was “We can’t believe no one else has written this.” 

Both sides reluctant 

Across the South as school integration began in earnest in community after community, the historic Black schools were being subsumed into the white schools. Mascots, school colors, team names, school newspapers, yearbooks disappeared without a trace. Black teachers and administrators lost jobs. Buildings were boarded up and left to deteriorate.  

“Some people thought they could erase our history, and we’d just move on,” recalls Clarence Pope, linebacker on the 1970 Clarke Central team.  

The Black community in Athens was so tied to Burney-Harris, not just educationally, but also culturally, that they resisted simply becoming a part of Athens High and wearing the AHS red and white.  

This surprised Clegg who says he was very aware of the white community’s reluctance to integrate but not that of the Black community. 

“I thought the Black community would be glad for the obviously superior resources like up-to-date textbooks and more extensive course offerings,” he explains, “But Burney-Harris had a long, storied history and cultural ties beyond the educational mission.” 

“Black students couldn’t hold dances or social events at local venues, so they always had to use school facilities. Black teachers occupied the top tier of professional occupations because so many other careers were cut off. Teachers had an exalted status.” 

“It became apparent to me at the outset I had it wrong that the Black community would welcome the change from Burney-Harris to Athens High.” 

Football becomes the flashpoint 

The Athens High coach, Weyman Sellers, was a local hero. He had been AHS head coach since 1952, had many winning seasons, won a state championship and was considered a role model. He was covered by both the Athens and Atlanta newspapers and had a regular radio show. He also happened to be deeply prejudiced.  

He had run off two promising Black players who had ventured over to AHS as part of the “Freedom of Choice” program. Now with full integration looming, the Black community was worried enough that the NAACP tried, to no avail, to block him from becoming head coach.  

“He felt so empowered that nobody could stop him,” recalls Pope. “He tried to get us to quit before the season. He told the newspapers there might be one or two Burney-Harris players he could use. We felt slighted before we even went over.” Ironically, Pope, Horace King, and Richard Appleby would go on to be the first Black scholarship athletes to play football at UGA.  

The spring of 1970, Burney-Harris students felt the white administration was not listening to their concerns and staged a walkout with 300+ students marching en mass from their school to Athens High during the school day. A skirmish ensued. Following several other racial incidents, the whole community was on edge. Mistrust was building and would explode in several days of violence.  

“When we players looked at it, we thought of being the cohesive link for the whole community,” says Pope. “But one central figure didn’t want it to work except the way he wanted it to. He [Sellers] was in the driver’s seat; he could have brokered peace.”  

Clegg describes the many incidents of racial misunderstanding and racial resentment in the fall of 1970 that would prevent the newly named Clarke Central Gladiators from a team cohesiveness that could consistently win games.  

“It’s taken this long to realize how monumental integration was,” Doc Eldredge reflects. “It was a strange time and a confusing time for children. We had grown up in church, singing ‘Jesus loves the little children – red, yellow, black and white.’” 

“It was thrust upon all of us, white and Black,” Pope says. “It was the moment, and we were the people.” 

“You respond how you’ve been trained. I was raised by my grandfather, a generation whose parents were slaves. They had a knowledge and so much wisdom. They knew the value of education to transcend where they had come from.”  

Soon after the season began, another incident threatened the first effort at fielding an integrated team.  

Mike Thurman, a running back and all of 125 lbs. missed a block in practice that caused Sellers’ son, who was also the quarterback, to take a hard hit.  

The coach was furious and stopped practice. “He told Mike to hold the ball over his head like he was going to throw it, and then he told two of the biggest linemen to run at him and hit him as hard as they could.”  

“We were shocked – he ordered Mike to get up every time he was knocked down. We kept telling him to stay down but he wouldn’t.” 

After that, all the black players left the team. “We said, ‘We’re not playing for this guy – he doesn’t want us.’” The three Burney-Harris coaches, who were now assistant coaches at the newly consolidated school, called a meeting and emphasized they were going to forfeit any chance of going to college. 

Book Review

THE CRIMSON AND GOLD:

Football and Integration in Athens, Georgia, (UGA Press, 323 pp.) by Mark Clegg 

By Bill Hartman 

Mark Clegg’s excellent book on integration in Athens brought back a lot of memories and revealed some truths about what life was like in our city during very turbulent times.  

I lived through it and knew my teenage years were different from my parents but it took “The Crimson and Gold” to bring it into focus. He uses the segregated high school football teams as characters to tell his obviously well- researched story. And, he paints a picture of Athens before integration so the reader will know where the seeds were planted.  

People my age, both white and Black, were pioneers. We learned on the job how to conduct ourselves. I was 13 when there was a race riot at Myers Hall, 15 years old when a few Black students began to attend Athens High School. I remember what went on in a general sense. Mark interviewed me and people I knew to give the story a firsthand account of the good and the bad.  

I had forgotten some of the bad or didn’t realize what was happening at the time. Mark put it down on paper for me to see. “The Crimson and Gold” is a must read for someone from Athens, but it is a much bigger story than that. Even someone from New Jersey would enjoy it. It has rich characters, hard truths, and a happy ending. It would make a great novel! But it really happened. 

Bill Hartman, a 1966 Athens High graduate, had a 50-year career in sports broadcasting in Atlanta where he worked at WAGA-TV and WSB-TV. He covered multiple Super Bowls, World Series and Olympic Games. He won several Emmys and the 1985 Georgia Sportscaster of the Year award. In 2012, he was inducted into the Atlanta Sports Hall of Fame.