Glory Road, the much ballyhooed Hollywood movie, has it place as it weaved a positive spin during a turbulent time concerning race relations.

When Texas Western (now the University of Texas at El Paso) started all black players and beat No. 1 ranked Kentucky – a lily-white squad for the 1966 NCAA Basketball championship it made history and opened eyes to the possibilities that American blacks and whites can indeed work together and coexist as one.

Martin Luther King’s holiday has come and gone and Black History month isover, so it seems timely that Glory Road just completed its showing in theaters throughout America.

I firmly believe in this universally accepted axiom: "If you do not know your history, you can’t know where you are headed."

The positive thing about Glory Road is it has made all revisit a time in American history when this country had a lot to be ashamed of concerning civil rights and equal opportunity.

In a way, the movie showed us just how silly and misguided racism is and the folly of it all.

Just think, Blacks and whites could not play on the same college basketball or football teams throughout the American university system, as if some dreaded disease like scarlet fever or AIDS would befallen any race that mixed together in games or to eat or simply sit next to each other on a bus.

Here we were, 15-plus years after Jackie Robinson had integrated Major League Baseball; yet, too many big-time university teams, especially in the South, still fielded segregated squads.

The fact of the matter is life in America was still basically segregated. There still were separate schools for blacks and whites, separate restaurants, separate hotels and separate drinking fountains.

I admire those young men and women that stood up to injustice. I admire those young basketball players, both black and white, and coach Don Haskins.

Life back then was unkind to people who tried to bring the black and white worlds together. Surely Texas Western’s players endured racism, cat calls and mean-spirited stares, letters and phone calls. Life could be hateful for those trying to change the way things were.

I will never question Haskins’ motives. No matter if it was all about winning or he had a conscious desire to change the status quo, he did do something that no other coach at a predominately white university has enough guts to do, start five black players in a NCAA title game.

Haskins leap of faith is magnified to a great extend because of the coach he faced at the 1966 NCAA’s - Adolph Rupp, who was a stern symbol of segregation in the South.

Haskins has told reporters that he never had “second thoughts” about starting five black players and he was just trying to win. He noted that he was criticized from all sides and received over 40,000 pieces of hate mail. Haskins said most were crudely written [and] all starting with "N-lover".

I was a 12-years-old sports aficionado when Haskins, led by Detroit Highland Park star Bobby Joe Hill, beat Pat Riley and his crew. I remember my Dad and I were pretty excited and happy that Texas Western’s athletes showed the world that playing with black guys would not scar one for life.

I want and need to believe that race relations have improved from America’s sordid beginnings and Jim Crow’s separate and unequal laws.

It’s rather convoluted that on one hand blacks had already proven that they could play basketball and help a team win. Bill Russell and K.C. Jones had led San Francisco to back-to-back NCAA titles in 1955 and '56; Wilt Chamberlain (‘57) and Elgin Baylor (’58) had won the Final Four's most valuable player for Kansas and Seattle, respectfully. Cincinnati had four black starters on national championship teams in 1961 and '62.

Yet, most schools had an un-written quota for blacks. No one was willing to start five black players.

Exclaimed by many as the most important game in college basketball history, yet has there really been carry over, especially in the state where it all originated?

Ironically, two of the recent rulings that affect minorities the most have been eagerly implemented in Texas, Florida and California – the wave of anti Affirmative Action and regeneration of capital punishment have made these states take a step backwards in the continuous fight for equal liberties.

Glory road was a triumph in the battle for equality, but it just proves the battle for equal liberties is still ongoing.

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