Comments

1
Oh, come on Dan. Admit. You read the obits looking for people like George Rekkers and Marcus Bachman.
2
I didn't know this about Mississippi State:

"The Mississippi team was named the Maroons, an old Southern term for runaway slaves, which eventually gave way to Bulldogs."
3
Such a great story. "There is a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in."
4
Thank you for sharing that, Dan!
5
Um, national championship, not state.
6
This is hardly a "forgotten" chapter of the civil rights movement. The NCAA celebrated the 50th anniversary of this game this past season. And members of the original team are headed to the White House (today, I think).
7
I read the obits to find out someone I knew back in my grunge days just died in Redmond yesterday.

That's why I read them.
8
@2, I've never heard that either and I'm not sure about that....why would an all white school name themselves after a colony of escaped slaves?
9
A really interesting story, although I think he was being a little modest. I believe that the team just wanted to play in the NCAA tounament, and probably didn't immediately realize the significance of that game until later. But I have a hard time believing he didn't realize the type of statement he was making when he shook hands with Nate Thurmond.
10
@8: Why would a football team from Washington D.C. call itself the Redskins? And how the fuck is that still okay in 2013?
11
@8: Because the school colors are maroon and white. Hail State, I guess.

(Hotty Toddy.)
12
Oh yeah, and maroon communities like @2 is talking about were more common in the eastern part of the South. Whites took control of present-day Mississippi relatively late (treaties with Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw mostly happened in the late 1830s) and settlement for agriculture happened even later.

Even the Delta -- which is on the opposite side of the state from Starkville -- wasn't cleared for plantation agriculture until after the Civil War. Frederick Law Olmsted's travelogues, compiled nowadays as The Cotton Kingdom, describe frontier conditions in 1850 in that part of the U.S. South -- no infrastructure to speak of, much less plantation agriculture. Olmsted does address maroon communities in the Carolinas, though.
13
I just watched 42; I'm a sucker for civil rights stories. But that movie was terrible; it lacked any edge, and seemed it's only goal was to wash everything in amber light. Too bad Spike Lee didn't do the Jackie Robinson story.
14
@10,Agreed Redskins is horrible and should (will) be changed, but I at least understand there has always been some begrudging respect for Native Americans.....but find it hard to believe that a school founded a generation after the Civil War nicknamed itself after black men.

I had always assumed they named themselves after the school color.
15
@10,

Racism. That's the explanation for the name of the Redskins, and don't let any of the apologists claim otherwise. The man who named the team was a frothing-at-the-mouth racist.
16
@15: I'm a gay black man (and my great-grandfather was full-blooded Cherokee), I know from racism. What I marvel at is that the name still persists. I know I'm not the first to bring up how fucked up this is.
17
I think Dan forgets that, especially during the civil rights movement, the white people that participated in it in the south were *more* likely to get beaten or killed than the blacks who did. They were seen as traitors in this fight, and got twice the anger dished out by mobs.

Seriously, go research the Freedom Rides some more.
18
The Help? Oh wait, never mind...
19
@2, @12: people studying slavery in the US always seem to overlook the fact that it was but a tiny part (5% or so) of a two-continent-wide system of exploitation. The word "maroon" does not refer just or originally or even primarily to the Deep South in the USA but to the entire slave world. It's a Spanish word, from "cimarrón", and was in use in the Caribbean long before any slaves or indeed white people had set foot on what is now US soil.

@17, the Freedom Riders get a lot of attention, and played an important role by using their whiteness to focus media attention on the situation, especially when they got murdered, but the most interesting thing about the civil rights movement in the South was the way that it was truly grassroots, built not by white intellectuals or primarily even black ones like Dr. King, but by people like Medgar Evers, Bob Moses, James Bevel, and Fannie Hamer -- local people working against unimaginable odds. King was obviously a great leader but his were not the first or the most important boots on the ground.

20
@17: MORE likely to be beaten or killed? I know about the Freedom Rides and I understand the "traitor" rationalization, but I want some statistics to back up a claim like that.
21
Bayard Rustin, yes!

An untold story that needs its movie!
22
I know a member of the 1963 Loyola of Chicago team and I have spoken to him, at length, about this game and his involvement in such an important moment. He speaks with great respect about the Mississippi State players and some life-long friendships resulted from that shared experience. Texas Western's win over UK is something most sports fans know about but, until the publicity back in March, very few - even knowledgable - fans knew of this game. And, really, it is something that sports fans and non-sports fans should know about.
23
As a reminder, Bennett Singer and Nancy Kates' "Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin" is available streaming on Netflix. Don't miss!
24
Doug, you sure you aren't confusing it with "Glory Road"? And isn't it too soon for Hollywood to roll out another heroic-college-basketball-team-takes-a-stand-against-racism-and-wins-the-championship story?
25
a Bayard Rustin biopic needs to be made by Lee Daniels.
26
@Dan: Thanks for the Bayard Rustin nod. The Wiki link led me to this movie, Out of the Past, which I will now have to check out (unfortunately, it doesn't stream on Netflix):
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0141699/plot…
27
I get what Dan's saying about the "noble white folks" movies but they could be doing more good than harm.

Mississippi Burning and The Help may be white-washed versions of the movement but if a lot of white people are seeing them and identifying with the heroes it could be taking some blinders off of bigotry then and today.

Sort of a Will and Grace effect.

Of course, Spike Lee would probably tell me to go to hell for this suggestion....lol.
28
I want to see a Civil Rights movie where the "noble white folks" without whom there would never have been a movement, are portrayed as fitting into the traditional "black character" roles: helpers, funny men, well meaning jerks, and the fools who get they dumb asses kilt (and I don't mean like they dress Scotsmen.)

I want to see a Civil Rights movie that does have the NWFs, but they have no power, propulsion, or agency. They're the weak. And they're fighting against the Tyranny of their own people (who are Evil Men) But that every last jot of real heroism is vested in Samuel L. Jackson's character, whoever the fuck he's playing.
29
@28. Oh. And make it a musical, please.

Title it just "King."

You could rip off an old Moliére comedy, one of the ones where the King comes in and fixes things at the end of the Fourth Act. (If you don't know, in several of these screamingly funny little plays' premieres, when the King came on to fix things, The King [Louis XIV-The Sun King] was the dude who put on a wig and took his mark.)
30
Great book about the '63 Loyola Ramblers (the team that beat Mississippi State in the passage Dan quoted): "Ramblers: Loyola Chicago 1963--the team that changed the color of basketball" by Michael Lenehan.
31
@24: the team I was talking about and @30 was talking about is the Loyola team mentioned @6, not the Texas Western team depicted in Glory Road. The Texas Western v UK game was historic but for intrigue and historic significant, the '63 game was as important. And, yes, Doug, they did go to the White House today.
32
I call it the White Messiah genre. Because there are so many such films that you can have a genre. And they are racist, and it's time to start calling them that.
33
@32 Yes, there's no one more racist than President Lincoln.

In fact, let's ignore everyone who wasn't black who contributed to the civil rights movement. That will surely benefit future race relations.

Do you realize how stupid that sounds? Why can't we give credit where credit is due, regardless of race?

You apparently don't understand that someone (white) decided that it was morally wrong for non-whites to be denied equal treatment and put their own safety on the line when they could have done nothing and been safe. If you don't think that deserves some praise for doing the right thing, then I submit that you're the racist.

The only way to end racism is to judge people on their merits, not their skin color. MLK knew that, but apparently you've forgotten.
34
There's two sides to this. One is the problem you mention, the racist need to believe that white people are always the hero and the need to have all movie protagonists be white. That's a legitimate criticism.

That said, I think there's a felt need to believe that equality politics need not always be identity politics. That human beings can act out of love and compassion for their fellows in a way that is clearly not motivated by self-interest.

I think we can make movies that balance the criticism of the first point with the needs of the second, don't you?

Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.