A racial turning point

Excerpted from an article that originally appeared in The New York Times. Used with permission.

Eunice, Louisiana — Before two-a-day football practices began in August 1969, coach Joe Nagata gathered some of his white senior players at Eunice High School. He told them to prepare for workouts more difficult than usual in heat and humidity that felt like damp clothes inside a dryer.

Desegregation by federal mandate was approaching belatedly and nervously in my rural hometown on the Cajun prairie, 2.5 hours west of New Orleans in St. Landry Parish.

Fifteen years had passed since Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the landmark Supreme Court ruling, declared racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional.

Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon a month earlier. Finally, black students from Charles Drew High School were, by court order, to fully integrate Eunice High School as summer turned to fall.

"We don't know these other young men," Nagata said of the arriving black players, according to Coleman Dupre, our star white running back. "We have to find out who is willing to pay the price." 

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