Good afternoon everyone. I was contacted by a member of the GTP community, MagnusDawgus, with a request to get the word out about his book. Never let it be said we don’t support our own here!
Here’s the info provided by MagnusDawgus:
I am the author of the upcoming book, The Crimson and Gold – Football and Integration in Athens, Georgia.
The book covers the decade of the 1960’s and the early 1970’s starting with the integration of UGA and ending with the merger between Athens High and Burney-Harris High School to form Clarke Central. Interspersed between the battle for racial equality is some exciting football at all three high schools. For more details, please click the link below.
The book will be released by UGA Press on September 1. But if you pre-order between now and June 21, you will get half off of the list price of $25.95. Just make sure you enter the 08SALE discount code before purchasing. Thanks for your interest, and I will be more than happy to answer any questions you might have.
Go Dawgs!
Congrats to MagnusDawgus for taking on this project and getting published!
Thanks, I was really lucky to get interviews with three of the “First Five” African American football scholarship athletes at UGA — Horace King, Richard Appleby, and Clarence Pope, all of whom played for both Burney-Harris High School and Clarke Central. I also interviewed many of the players of the Athens High team that made an incredible run in its last season of existence in 1969. I was able to talk with Buck Belue as well, who attended that epic state final game as a young boy in Valdosta and was on the losing side of the Wildcat team that played Clarke Central in the 1977 AAA state championship.
There are so many great stories to recount, and I am just fortunate that so many people were willing to share their experiences with me.
I’m in. Can you figure out a way for this group to get a signed copy?
If you pre-order it, there is no way I can sign it, because it is shipped directly from the printing company used by UGA Press. Over the next several months, I plan on putting together (hopefully a great many) signing events around the state. I would be happy to sign a book at one of those events if you bring it with you. If you can’t make it to one of those, I would also be happy to sign and send it to you after September 1 at the regular price. You can email me at mark_cleggjr@hotmail.com. Thanks for your interest!
Otis, great job. I ordered but it doesn’t show that the discount code took effect. As a CCHS grad this is right up my alley.
Thank you for the purchase! I just tried it, and it worked. You apply the discount just above the field where you fill in the details for payment method. If you didn’t obtain the discount, I would call UGA Press at 800-848-6224 and see if they can make a manual adjustment. The book will not ship until September 1, so they should be able to do it.
Awesome. Cant’t wait to read it. I’m also a CCHS grad.
Thank you. Let’s hope the Glads make another run for glory soon.
Ordered! I used to talk to Billy Henderson at the Y all the time. He told me about a player who came back from Parris Island and said Billy’s camp was tougher. I was telling a friend about it at a UGA game and the guy in front of me turned around and said “that was me”!
That story is actually in the book, but the version I heard from an ex-player was Coach Weyman Sellers running a tougher camp than basic training at Parris Island. Both coaches were known for their toughness, so maybe both did? Thank you for the purchase.
Huh, I’m not sure but I know Billy told it to me.
This was my experience too and my first year at Jekyll Island was in 1992. The coaches who had played for Billy before would always call us soft because we would get 1 water break during practice.
Billy was such a great guy. I used to see him at the Y and talk to him and tell him the stories he used to tell us about how Wally Butts was the meanest son of a bitch in the history of the world, how they used to discourage weight training for football players and just try to get over to him how impactful he was to me someone who was not a great football player but someone who needed someone like him when I was 13 years old.
I really look forward to the book. I wish Milton Bostic had been alive for you to interview him Magnus. He had some great stories about Burney Harris and Athens back in the 40s and 50s from an African American perspective.
In Fran Tarkenton’s autobiography, he talked about how much he despised Butts — he said that “the Little Round Man” called him every name in the book, worse stuff than was written on bathroom walls. Tarkenton and Pat Dye quit the team at the same time and had to be talked into returning by freshman coach Quinton Lumpkin.
I have heard great things about Milton Bostic as well; sad he is no longer around.
Billy told me that he got laid out on a punt return and Butts yelled “get that yellow bellied son of a bitch off the field.”
Coach Bostic was a very kind man who would always talk to you and treated everyone the same.
My daddy played for Sellers. As a transfer QB from Jacksonville, Fl, his first day @ prac Coach Sellers introduced himself and shoved pops to the ground with a shoulder shove asking “are you tough enough to play football here?”
Hah! I talk about his physical interaction with players a good bit in the book. Scenes like what you describe with your father were not uncommon with him.
My father played church league basketball in Athens, and when his team played against Sellers’s team, no one wanted to guard him in the paint — he was all elbows.
I’ve ordered it via Avid Bookshop in Five Points–both to support the local business and so I can pick it up on the publication date rather than be subject to the abysmal USPS service in North Georgia.
I’m excited to read it. What I know about the integration of the schools in Clarke came mainly through the history of East Athens “Across the River” that came out in 2019 and was primarily just people who still live in the area talking about their experiences, not sports-related at all.
Even though those neighborhoods are right up against Sanford, so many of the kids there were children of factory workers and just did not see the University as anything that had anything to do with them. One kid recalled seeing the campus as a playground (he grew up next to Oconee Hill) and knew Zippy Morocco and Charley Trippi because they’d stand on chairs to play pool at Memorial Hall. (fair disclosure: I was the editor for that book.)
Thanks for the order, and I did not realize Avid was offering pre-sales. I hope to do a signing there, as well as the UGA Bookstore and the Athens-Clarke County Library.
One tough East Athens kid who played for Athens High named Benny Edmondson features prominently in the book. Clarence Pope lived off of Oak Street, and he still has fond memories of hearing the crowd noises coming from Sanford on game days.
The old Lyons Middle School near Ben Epps Airport was where the Black kids went to school. They talk about how difficult it was to concentrate in class because of the noise from the airplanes and the mining operations from a nearby quarry.
For a library program, contact Ashley Shull at the Heritage Room. This sort of thing is right up their alley, and she was recently on the board of the historical society, so she’d have a way to co-sponsor.
You could also contact Historic Athens (Denise Sunta), as they have done author programs at the Lyndon House. They did a lovely panel discussion with the author of Across the River as well as with people featured in the book, and a lot of the conversation was about desegregation of the schools.
I don’t know who to contact at Hargrett now, but Steven Armour was responsible for bringing over the football archives from Butts-Mehre, and may be interested in doing some sort of tie-in. All these places have been helpful for the local Athens history books I’ve been involved with over the years, as well as with programming back when I was vp of the Athens Historical Society.
Thanks! Yes, I did a lot of research both a Hargrett and the ACC Library. This is more information than you need, but the Athens Banner-Herald and old Athens Daily News library of papers has not been digitized and likely never will since they are now owned by Gannett. So, I relied on page by page research on microfilm. The old high school yearbooks there were also very helpful.
I also bumped into a hidden treasure at ACC – the old mimeographed copies of Pete McCommons’s old United Free Press.
Hargrett was indispensable when I was researching the old archives (the O.C. Aderhold files) related to the integration of UGA.
Ordered it today, and can’t wait for the release. Can we send it to you for signature, MagnusDawgus – I’m in Charlotte. I’d also send a prepaid return label.
Absolutely, and thanks for the order. Shoot me your address information to mark_cleggjr@hotmail.com