Back to Woodlawn, movie stirs memories

With all this time at home, I have had more opportunities to watch some of the movies I have collected over the years. I’m one of those guys who buys 20 or so of the Walmart Black Friday DVD movies every year, then pick up some titles in the cheap bin from time to time.

Five years ago a movie entitled “Woodlawn” came out and though I intended to go see it at the cinema, I never had the chance. I knew it was an inspirational film centered on a football story, rather like “Remember the Titans” movie with reference to some of the same issues contained therein. I didn’t know the setting time or location of this film until this past week when I screened this movie at home.

I was stunned to learn that I used to live in the Woodlawn community referenced in the move, a part of Birmingham, Ala., where I started my teaching and coaching career.

I graduated from Harding University in the 1975 and planned to stay there in Searcy as I had gotten married, and had lined up a job to support us while I pursued a higher degree. In 1976, my wife I spent that summer on an overseas mission work for our church. Upon arriving back in the states in late July of that year, the business where I held a pretty good job closed in my absence. Not sure on what to do next, I was contacted by a man who was on campus recruiting teachers for a Christian academy in Birmingham. After an interview, I was hired as basketball and track coach and athletics coordinator as well as a teacher, so it was off to Birmingham. At that time, I had never been further south than Little Rock. I thought moving that far was kind of daunting but working at a Christian school would be nice.

A Woodlawn church which is no longer there was in charge of the school and I eventually moved to a home on First Avenue North. While I lived there, never did I hear the story depicted in the movie about Woodlawn High School, that is, until this week, 44 years later. Ironically, I will be passing through Birmingham soon, on my way with some of my grandkids on a vacation trip. We are spending a night in Birmingham where I will get to be reunited with Chuck, the best kid I coached while in Birmingham, the first place I ever coached. We became Facebook friends earlier this year and we have messaged back and forth all summer.

I asked him about the Woodlawn events from the movie and if he was knowledgeable about it. It turns out Chuck was a student at Woodlawn during the time covered in the movie and was actually at the games depicted. He later transferred to Jefferson Christian Academy where I met him.

For those who aren’t familiar with the movie, the mid-1970s were when the high schools in Birmingham were desegregated. The plan didn’t go over well with a lot of the citizenry as many were sympathetic with the cause of the Ku Klux Klan. A lot of Black kids were moved into the previously all-white Woodlawn High School. In the fall of 1973, riots broke out around the school and a lot of fights broke out nearly daily between the Black and white students. The football team was as split as the student body and coach Tandy Gerelds was on the verge of being fired and the team disbanded. Enter Hank Erwin, a sports chaplain, who was not from Birmingham, but who came there asking to speak to the players. Using his point of view as a Christian, he spoke for an hour and convinced the team to band together instead of fighting each other. They listened.

The team which was given no chance to win more than one game that year, pulled off a string of upsets and were within one game of making the state playoff quarterfinals. However, they lost that qualifying game to Banks High School, the state champs the previous two years. Coming from a predicted last place finish in their conference, Coach Gerelds brought his team to the cusp of a championship. His best move was starting a Black athlete over the projected starting white tailback that season. The new starter was Tony Nathan who went on to be a consensus AllAmerican, later starring at Alabama and playing in the NFL. Woodlawn’s chief rival was neighbor Banks High School, where future Alabama All-American quarterback Jeff Rutledge starred. Nathan and Rutlege started together for the legendary Bear Bryant after graduating high school.

The greatest achievement in the Banks/Woodlawn rivalry was their decision after that Banks’ victory, to hold fall camp together and to often meet together with all the players from both teams. The football players of both teams became friends on and off the field which sparked a student movement that quieted what have might have turned out to be a violent time in the schools’ histories. Later in 1974, both teams met undefeated in November for a spot in the playoffs. The game was at Legion Field in Birmingham, a 40,000 seat stadium. 22,000 fans were turned away that night and that game still holds the record for most watched high school game in Alabama history. Banks won again, however, but there was no acrimony, no animosity, no violence that might have flared up. What some have called a miracle, a sports chaplain helped to turn around a team’s attitude which turned around a city. He told them they didn’t have to live like that. They agreed.

When I arrived in Birmingham in 1977, I was warned to be careful around Black people. However, my time there impressed me with the experience as I had no adversarial or even rude interactions with the people I had been warned about. I did witness a lot of bigoted behavior from white folks, something I was not prepared for, especially coming from people that were allegedly Christian. Not long after I arrived, the FBI finally brought down the man who orchestrated the Baptist Church bombing that killed those four Black kids in 1963. It was hard to believe people thought it was a bad thing not to let the killers go.

The event that left a lasting impression on me was in January 1978. The academy I coached for had a single Black family among the student body. Kenny was from that family and he was my starting point guard. More succinctly, he was my only point guard. On the night of an important game, he called to tell me he could not play, that his mom’s car would not start. I told him, hold on, I will come get you.

He lived in Gate City, a small community with lots of government project apartment buildings there for poor families. It was dark when I got there, and I asked some young men on a corner if they knew where I could find Kenny. They wanted to know why, of course, and I told them I was his basketball coach and he had a game. They told me to ask Lonzo on the next corner as he knew everyone.

I met Lonzo, whereupon he ran upstairs into the right building and got Kenny, and we went back to the school and we won in a close game. I took Kenny back home, everything was fine.

The next day about midmorning, I was summoned to the superintendent’s office where I was met by him and some board members.

“Did you or did you not go to Gate City after dark by yourself?” Well yeah, I replied, Kenny needed a ride and I had a car.

I was then told how I was lucky to be alive, that they understood that I was not raised around Black people (they didn’t say Black people) but I was never to go into a Black part of town again. I had to ask them why the concern, was there a lot of white people getting killed in those areas? I probably shouldn’t have said that as it made them angry but the upside was that I decided that evening that I needed to go someplace else to live and work.

I learned a lot in Birmingham, Ala., in the late 1970s, and what I learned would aid me greatly when I went to my next school, but that story will be for another day.

As opposed to what you might read or hear in the media, the country is a far cry from the white supremacist days of the ’60s and ’70s. Of course, there are bad people everywhere doing bad things and there always will be. By and large, the people of the United States are pretty good people. I’ve seen real racism. Today is not 1963 and never will be.

Editor’s note: John McGee, an award-winning columnist, sports writer and art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, writes a regular sports column for The Times. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. He can be contacted through The Times at prtnews@nwadg.com.