Professor Pfinklepfunder's $1 Sunday Films
Directed by Boaz Yakin
With Denzel Washington, Will Patton, Wood Harris
Rated PG, 113 minutes
With football season almost wrapped up and amid the many discussions about athletics as a positive opportunity for people of different backgrounds to meet one another, it's a good chance to revisit how athletics were part of the school desegregation process during the Civil Rights Movement. In early 1970s Virginia (much like Indiana), high school football was a revered institution with each game being a major community outing and mini holiday. And with such recognition, comes powerful emotions. In 1971, high school football was incredibly important to the people of Alexandria, Virginia. When the local school board was forced to integrate an all-black school with an all-white school, football became both an opportunity for greater cohesion and a flashpoint for longstanding anger and tensions.