I’m currently working on a book about an episode that happened here in South Carolina, in 1989, when 31 of the 37 black players on the Conway High School football team walked away from the squad for the whole season in protest of the (white) coach’s decision to bench the starting (black) quarterback in favor of a less experienced white kid. The boycott divided the town largely along racial lines, and it soon became clear that the incident was about much more than football. It was about the legacy of slavery and segregation and Jim Crow and all the other points of tension and oppression that many people in Conway had wrongly assumed were settled.
I’ll have more news about the book soon, but in the meantime, you can get caught up to speed on the 1989 Conway Football Boycott by reading the excellent article that Sports Illustrated ran about it back then. To read the SI story, click HERE.
JOE OESTREICH 