One Night Two Teams: Alabama vs. USC and the Game That Changed a Nation (review)

Abstract

O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 307 Unfortunately, far too many of these “racial attitudes” exist as contemporary vestiges of the past hiding in our health care delivery system, exposed from time to time by landmark studies like the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s report Task Force on Black and Minority Health (Washington, D.C., 1985) or the Institute of Medicine’s report Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Healthcare (Washington, D.C., 2003). Through his critical examination of African American history, Todd Savitt provides a detailed account of how the cultural force of the African American experience helped shape the emergence of Western medicine. It covers a wide range of topics, from information on how racism exposed blacks as “vulnerable” all the way to an analysis of the origins of “black self-care” (p. 74). This book is appropriate for the intended audience of those interested in the history of medicine, African American history, and the emerging field of health equity. As an educational resource, Savitt succeeds in bringing to the foreground a history which, due to the magnitude of its shame, has been too often ignored in discourse about the pervasive influence of racism in the field of medicine. STEPHEN B. THOMAS University of Pittsburgh One Night Two Teams: Alabama vs. USC and the Game That Changed a Nation. By Steven Travers. Lanham, Md.: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2007. xxiii, 382 pp. $24.95. ISBN 978-1-58979-370-5. In One Night Two Teams, historian of University of Southern California (USC)footballStevenTraversarguesthatUSC’svictoryovertheUniversity of Alabama at Legion Field in Birmingham on September 12, 1970, hastened racial integration of Alabama’s football team. African American running back Sam Cunningham’s performance of 135 yards rushing and two touchdowns figures prominently in this account. Although Travers rightly dispels a huge myth that arose from this game, he leaves great questions unanswered and reports several historical inaccuracies. Travers begins with the solid premise that Christianity gradually made southerners more tolerant. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. certainly advanced Christian ideals of brotherhood and love in the 1950s and 1960s; Alabama head football coach Paul Bryant embodied Christian ideals also, according to Travers, and would have integrated his team sooner if not for the segregationist political atmosphere that elevated George T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 308 Wallace to the governor’s chair in 1962. Travers reminds readers that the USC-Alabama game did not cause Bryant to desegregate the team as is widely perceived; Wilbur Jackson had already been recruited and had enrolled as a freshman (freshmen were not then eligible for varsity intercollegiate play). The performance of USC’s great African American athletes in the game did, however, make integration more acceptable to white Alabamians. Travers interviewed several athletes, journalists, and coaches for the book, including Jackson, who were around the two football programs and could comment on the game’s impact. Each chapter ends with an “Other Voices” section, though some ramble aimlessly into commentary on USC-UCLA contrasts and USC-Notre Dame games. These “Other Voices” show a pitfall of oral history: that many differing accounts and perceptions can raise unresolved questions. Sam Cunningham and then-USC head football coach John McKay insisted at the time that Bryant brought Cunningham into Alabama’s locker room after the game to tell his players, “This here’s what a football player looks like.” Alabama quarterback Scott Hunter and former assistant coach Clem Gryska insist the incident never happened. At least one “Other Voice,” then-USC assistant coach Craig Fertig, suggests that Bryant may have wanted to lose the game to advance integration and boost his team’s talent in the long run. But this suggestion seems unlikely in light of Bryant’s oft-quoted comment “I ain’t never been nothing but a winner.” A refreshing aspect of Travers’s work is its even-handed treatment of the two teams. Although Travers criticizes Alabamians for their racism, he also emphasizes that USC’s fans were divided between supporters of white quarterback Mike Rae and black quarterback Jimmy Jones as...