Leland Mitchell has passed. Do you know who he is? You should.

[Are_grits_groceries]

In 1963, Leland Mitchell and his Mississippi State teammates had to sneak out of their state to compete in the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament. Gov. Ross Barnett and other hard-core segregationists were worried that their all-white team might compete against blacks, a step the governor said he feared “might lead to integration across the land.”

In a tense if peculiar moment in the civil rights movement, a state court had enjoined Mississippi State University from going to Michigan to play Loyola University of Chicago in the Midwest Regional of the prestigious tournament. Mississippi State had won the right to advance to national play by winning the championship of the Southeastern Conference. It was the fourth time in five years that the university earned a berth but seemingly would again be unable to play.

But the team did play. The game between Mississippi State and Loyola on March 15, 1963 — contested at the height of the civil rights struggle — is widely seen as the beginning of the end of segregation in college sports. In explaining his opposition to integrated sports in 1960, Governor Barnett had said: “If there were a half-dozen Negroes on the team, where are they going to eat? Are they going to want to go to the dance later and want to dance with our girls?”

But by the spring of 1963, pride in Mississippi State’s superb basketball team was challenging old racial attitudes, which were already starting to soften. Reacting to pressure from students and the public, the university president and the board governing state universities agreed to let the team compete. The governor and a handful of state legislators fumed but realized that they had no legal power to stop the team.

Then a chancery court judge stepped in and issued an injunction to keep the university from violating “the public policies of the state of Mississippi.”

Mitchell, a star player and team leader who died at age 72 on Saturday at his home in Starkville, Miss., had an immediate and sharp reaction.

“We need to head out tonight,” he said. “Who all else has a car?”

The actual escape was more complicated. The university president decided the officials named in the injunction should get out of town. He left for a speaking engagement in Atlanta. The coach, Babe McCarthy, along with the athletic director and his assistant, drove on back roads to Memphis and flew to Nashville. The next morning, the team’s second-stringers were sent to the local airport in Starkville.
<snip>
Much more on their escape and what happened:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/11/sports/ncaabasketball/leland-mitchell-defied-racism-on-the-basketball-court-dies-at-72.html?hpw&_r=0

RIP Leland Mitchell.
Every step helped.

[socialist_n_TN]

1. This WAS in 1963....

and one of the proudest moments for MSU fans everywhere. At least for the fans who were on the right side of history.

GO DAWGS!!!!!!!!

[malaise]

2. An important part of the civil rights movement

R.I.P. Leland Mitchell

[MerryBlooms]

3. Wow, what a gripping article.

Thanks for posting this.

[Laelth]

4. Interesting. Thanks. k&r n/t

-Laelth

[Recursion]

5. I used to mow his lawn

I grew up in Starkville but didn't hear this story until last year.