On Thursday, Jan. 24, Denzel Washington’s voice resonated through Jarman Auditorium.
“Anybody know what this place is?” He asks rhetorically, in a clip from the hit 2000 movie, “Remember the Titans.” “This is Gettysburg.” He answers, addressing his team of dirtied, tired men. “This is where they fought the Battle of Gettysburg.”
Washington continues, “Take a lesson from the dead. If we don’t come together, right now on this hallowed ground, we too, will be destroyed. I don’t care if you like each other right now, but you will respect each other. And maybe, I don’t know, maybe, we’ll learn to play this game like men.”
When Herman Boone, the real-life counterpart of Washington’s character in “Remember the Titans,” took the stage at the Martin Luther King Symposium, he was greeted by a standing ovation of the audience. He graciously thanked the university and the town for their hospitality, citing the growth of the area despite its past history of racial discrimination and began with a simple point of clarification.
“I didn’t run those kids through no swamp at 3 o’clock in the morning. I might be crazy, but I’m not stupid enough to run a parent’s child through a swamp at 3 o’clock in the morning. We have witnesses here – I took them to the cemetery on a bus.”
He pauses for a beat. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.”
Herman Boone, as introduced by Longwood University Director of Athletics, Troy Austin, is most commonly known for being the Head Football Coach of the famous 1971 State Champions, the T.C. Williams High School Titans; subjects of the popular 2000 movie. He took the stage as the keynote speaker at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Symposium, the final event of the MLK Week’s events.
In Austin’s introduction, he touches on Boone’s life before the infamous events in 1971, demonstrating Boone’s finesse of coaching and leadership. When Boone worked at E.J. Hayes School in Williamston, N.C., in the early 1960s, the football team that he coached won a record of 99 wins and eight losses in a period of nine years.
In 1966, the team, under Boone’s leadership, was recognized as “The Number One Football Team in America” by Scholastic Coach’s Magazine. Unfortunately, Boone was later informed by the Williamston school board that the town was “not ready for a black
head coach,” so he subsequently left, where he later found himself in Alexandria, Va., working at T.C. Williams High School.
The rest, as they say, is history. “‘Remember the Titans,’ is not a movie about football,” Boone says
with a smile. “It is a movie about some incredible young boys, whom I coached in Alexandria, who were forced to come together due to the integration in Alexandria, Va. These boys did not like each other at all.” Boone later went on to express his immense pride for the former players of the 1971 team, citing their success in their later lives as these players went on to become mayors, lawyers, doctors and the like.
“My definition of a team is a group of people with one vision, one objective and by God, one heartbeat,” Boone said.
He added, “[The Titans became] second in the United States because they found a way to accept the soul of an individual rather than reject their brother because he was not the same color [...] [They] broke the mold and broke the silence in Alexandria and became an example of breaking the silence and breaking the mold to the country.”
Boone even revealed a connection he had to the Farmville community. In 1959, when Robert Russa Moton High School was shut down after refusal to integrate the schools in Prince Edward County, Boone was working in Luther H. Foster High School in nearby Nottoway County. Boone attempted to speak up in defense of the school.
“I have to challenge your mentality,” he said to one of his superiors. “I think it’s unspeakable, I think it’s unjust and I think it’s inhumane that you would deny any kid a right for an education, which is a foundation for all of our lives.” Unfortunately, Boone was subsequently fired after his remarks.
In lieu of the week’s events, Boone did believe it important to relate his experiences back to the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom Boone revealed that he did have the privilege to meet. He spoke of King’s life, Boone expressed the cultural importance of the era of Dr. King’s life, citing the emergence of the Black Panthers, the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers, integration of schools, the Kent State shootings and “sit-ins and demonstrations by Dr. King and many of us, just for the right to have a cup of coffee in a public restaurant in this country.”
Boone urged the audience to continue to celebrate and honor the life and vision of Dr. King and “not to mourn his death, but to remember his life, what he did during his life. His message of peace and love is universal for everybody.”
In conclusion of his presentation, Boone quoted King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, a piece which he described as incredibly powerful, both for its meaning and its message, and ended with a stanza from Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”
“Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention. I did what I had to do, and saw it through without exemption. I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway. But more, much more than this, I did it my way. “
