Originally published: Atlanta, Ga.: Peachtree Publishers, 1981.

The Crimson and Gold is a comprehensive narrative detailing the struggle for integration in Athens, Georgia, in the context of highly competitive football as experienced by athletes, their fellow students, teachers, journalists, and school administrators at (predominantly White) Athens High School and (African American) Burney-Harris High School and eventually Clarke Central High School—formed after the two legacy schools were forced to merge. The proud sports traditions of two high schools—both adored by their respective communities—eventually become inextricably linked with the larger battle for equal rights during the tumultuous 1960s and early 1970s. In addition to the relatively well-known stories of the University of Georgia’s integration in 1961, Mark Clegg details “Freedom of Choice” transfers in the early 1960s, desegregation of businesses like the iconic Varsity restaurant, the violence perpetrated by the local chapter of the KKK, the first athletic competitions between Burney-Harris and Athens High, the resistance by large portions of both the Black and White communities to the phasing out of their beloved schools, and the tense and often violent first several years of Clarke Central’s existence. Finally, Clegg recounts the Athens High football team’s remarkable state title run—in its last year of existence in 1969. Clegg conducted extensive interviews with a number of Black and White Athenians who lived through the era, including Horace King, Richard Appleby, and Clarence Pope (Burney-Harris and Clarke Central football players who were three of the first five Black football players at UGA); former Athens mayor and Athens and Clarke Central High School football player Doc Eldridge; current DeKalb County CEO and former Georgia labor commissioner (and Burney-Harris and Clarke Central football player) Michael Thurmond; the first Black scholarship athlete at UGA and Athens High School alumnus Maxie Foster; and local writer, journalist, and publisher (Flagpole magazine) Pete McCommons.

Few whites who violently resisted the civil rights struggle were charged with crimes in the 1950s and 1960s. But the tide of a long-deferred justice began to change in 1994, when a Mississippi jury convicted Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers. Since then, more than one hundred murder cases have been reopened, resulting in more than a dozen trials. But how much did these public trials contribute to a public reckoning with America’s racist past? Racial Reckoning investigates that question, along with the political pressures and cultural forces that compelled the legal system to revisit these decades-old crimes. “[A] timely and significant work...Romano brilliantly demystifies the false binary of villainous white men like Beckwith or Edgar Ray Killen who represent vestiges of a violent racial past with a more enlightened color-blind society...Considering the current partisan and racial divide over the prosecution of police shootings of unarmed black men, this book is a must-read for historians, legal analysts, and journalists interested in understanding the larger meanings of civil rights or racially explosive trials in America.” —Chanelle Rose, American Historical Review

The sickness of racism and inequality has been a part of America's DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) since 1472, and we, as Americans, do not have enough people with American grit to properly confront these issues. American grit is the passion and motivation for long-term success for yourself, your family, your colleagues, and America. It is obtained from acquiring contentment. Contentment is the state of happiness and satisfaction found through love and respect for oneself and others. Finding cont

These are the people who hauled Georgia up from its poor, agrarian roots, making it among the most diversified, prosperous states in the country. They fought for freedom and served in the statehouse and White House. They excelled at sports, founded institutions that shaped countless lives and inspired through art and lives lived artfully. They are famous, obscure, colorful, outrageous and saintly, all with fascinating stories and all consequential, sometimes in ways felt the world over. They include Martin Luther King Jr., Jimmy Carter, Ted Turner, Alice Walker, Juliette Gordon Low, "Hammerin' Hank" Aaron and Vince Dooley. Many here are no-brainers, while others may surprise. But all deserve recognition among the most influential Georgians of the twentieth century. Join author and longtime journalist Neely Young on this journey through the lives of these significant men and women.

In the 1960s, college sports required more than athletic prowess from its African American players. For many pioneering basketball players on 18 teams in the Atlantic and Southeastern conference, playing ball meant braving sometimes menacing crowds during the tumultuous era of civil rights. Perry Wallace feared he would be shot when he first stepped onto a court in his Vanderbilt uniform. During one road game, Georgia's Ronnie Hogue fended off a hostile crowd with a chair. Craig Mobley had to flee the Clemson campus, along with other black students. C.B. Claiborne couldn't attend the Duke team banquet when it was held at an all-white country club. Wendell Hudson's mother cried with heartache when her son decided to play at the University of Alabama, and Al Heartley locked himself in a campus dorm at North Carolina State for safety the night Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. Grounded in the civil rights struggles on campuses throughout the south, the voices of players, coaches, opponents and fans reveal the long-neglected story of race, sports and social history. Barry Jacobs has covered college basketball as well as news and other sports since 1976 for numerous publications, among them the New York Times, Washington Post, GQ, People, Oceans, the Saturday Evening Post and the Sporting News. He is the author of four books, including Coach K's Little Blue Book, The World According to Dean, and Three Paths to Glory. For 14 years he wrote the Fan’s Guide to ACC Basketball. He also served as an elected county commissioner for 20 years and supervises Moorefields, an historic site near Hillsborough, NC.

The 1913 murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan would have far-reaching consequences for Georgia and the nation; in the years that followed a Jewish man named Leo Frank was convicted on dubious evidence, a governor's career toppled while an anti-Semite became Georgia's senator, and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith was formed. The Silent and The Damned: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank tells the horrifying story of how a trial spiraled into mob violence and propaganda campaigns against Jews in the South. The authors, Robert Seitz Frey and Nancy Thompson-Frey, detail the trial that portrayed Frank, the superintendent at the pencil factory where Phagan was employed, as a sexual misfit and killer. The authors describe the responses from and against the Jewish community in Atlanta, and reactions from religious groups and the press across the country. Frey and Thompson also tell of how new evidence from a witness who stayed silent for years brought the case back under scrutiny in the 1980s, leading to a posthumous pardon for Frank. John Seigenthaler, publisher of the Nashville Tennessean and a leader in the efforts to clear Frank's name, provides the introduction.