Southern White Teams Just Didn’t Play Black Ones, but One Game Ended All That

Members of the 1969 Florida A & M football team gathered in Tallahassee over the weekend.

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
NYT

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — On a Saturday night 40 football seasons ago, just before kickoff of the penultimate game in his career, Coach Jake Gaither of Florida A&M strode toward midfield of Tampa Stadium. There he extended his hand to the opposing coach, Fran Curci of the University of Tampa, and they strained to speak above the din of a capacity crowd.

“Jake, this is bigger than I thought it would be,” Coach Curci recently recalled saying.

“Not me,” Coach Gaither responded.

Both men were trying to fathom the event they had set into motion, the first interracial football game in the South, a landmark in sports and civil rights that has gone relatively uncelebrated. It pit the Florida A&M Rattlers, long one of the dominant teams among black colleges, against the Tampa Spartans, a rising power that was overwhelmingly white.

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