Nick Saban and Black Lives Matter

  In October of 2012 I called the Paul Finebaum show and got on air with Rhodes Scholar Nominee Greg McElroy and Paul  Had them taking notes with a reference to Howell Raines piece in the New Republic Farewell to the Bear on 1984 on Bear's relationship to the 60s George Wallace and how maybe more coulda been expected of the Bear.

    Now we have a rough version of the White Citizen's Council reincarnated in the politics of the NRA and this Black Lives Matter moment in America now spotlighted in Dallas.

    Since we all know most of the players that fund Saban and the SEC and ACC are people of color, and gun violence inordinately effects the extended families of people of color which make up the teams every fall in the South, it may be time for Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney and fellow coaches to engage a Muhammad Ali like summit of the 60s with Jim Brown and Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

     To that end I have left a message on the machine of Nick Saban's priest Father Ackerman of St. Francis Catholic Church in Tuscaloosa and just this morning talked to a staffer there. I have attempted to contact the former chair of Clemson trustees David Wilkins whose wife shares roots with me in Gaffney South Carolina.

    I will be leaving links to this blog at the facebook wall of New Baptist Covenant and others to bring President Carter in the conversation as I talked to his pastor this morning on the phone.

   I hope all including readers of this blog will take a strong look at nybooks.com review of three recent books on the politics of the NRA as well as the Daley book discussed in a blog below about political bleaching practices in Alabama and across SEC land. And the court Fee system is a matter of concern as pointed out by Auburn's Mark Wilson and his Living Democracy Project which has footprints going into the fourth year in Collinsville, Alabama.

     Derrick Harkins of 19th Street Baptist Church DC and Union Seminary was his eloquent best exploring this moment in America this morning on NPR diane rehm show, drshow.org. I invited the woman at St Francis to have her church and Coach Saban listen. Harkins was grand a few years ago on same program talking about Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer novel Gilead and it was an honor for me to have a phone conversation with him a few days after that program. Here in Alabama Obama detractors Rick and Bubba, Yellowhammer News and Crawford Broadcasting should be aware of Robinson's conversation last fall with Obama in the New York Review of Books.

    Just today my friend Robert Parham and Brent McDougal had was wise Christian examinations of the current moment at ethicsdaily.com. Brent is native Alabamian, studied with George Wallace biographer Dan Carter at Emory and is now a pastor in Dallas.

   Just today I saw McElroy on panel with three people of color on SEC Network media days from Hoover Alabama. McElroy has the connections and the wits in Dallas and Tuscaloosa to make a difference. We'll see where the conversation goes from here.

    God Bless the United States of  America and all its promise.