Dallas Cowboys, Gaffney SC and the Flag

       The fall of 2017 I saw my second NFL game in 40 years. It was two days after Trump had implied two of Nick Saban's Heisman trophy winners, Mark Ingram and Derrick Henry were Sonsabitches cause they didnt bow down to his interpretation of the Kaepernick affair that was on fire that season.  Nick had a reply for Trump in Saturdays Down South on Monday saying Trump was full of deceit. You can interpret Saban's statement for yourself.

     I saw the Titans play Pete Carroll's Seahawks a few years after Gaffney's Sidney Rice played for Pete. Caught a ride with a Bama Revenant who took his son and Aunt Paula by marriage, a 74 yr old divorcee who was a high school friend and classmate of the Steelers Terry Bradshaw.

   The picked my up in Ft Payne Alabama cause they missed the exit in Collinsville. I drove on up there for the ride and once in the car I don't think there were more than two minutes silence to Nashville. No Radio , all chat.

    The game was two days after Donald Trump's profanities at Colin Kaepernick's expense in Huntsville Alabama in a fundraiser for the Episcopalian Senate Candidate Big Luther Strange. Bama's Senior Senator and the University of Alabama Legend Richard Shelby was present.

   At the 4 pm kickoff Derrick Henry and his Titans stayed in the locker room in solidarity with the visiting Seahawks while the National Anthem was sung. But the country singer took a knee when she finished. There was an uproar in the stadium and a fellow from Kentucky in the next row below me about two seats left was outraged. I was oblivious to the provocation of the mayhem and said something in his hearing and Aunt Paula, Terry Bradshaw's High school friend almost had to come to my defense.

    August 2 a USA Today columnist made the case the Kneeling conversation has changed and it is mostly left to "whiners" to fight the lost cause. Apparently that didn't stop my good friend Tommy Martin and his staff from carrying the piece about the Flag and the Dallas Cowboys.

    A few years ago I read the piece Dallas 1963, a book about that year in Dallas, home of the godfather of the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. Dallas was an ugly place that year with the anger of the Birch Society and fundamentalists who were calling the Civil Rights movement Communist, and as we all know ended with the assassination of JFK. The book advances the sentiment, Dallas Loaded the gun while Oswald Pulled the trigger.

    

        1963 was just seven years after the influential pastor of FBC DAllas, WA Criswell told a joint session of the SC legislature: "You wouldn't call a chigger, a chiggerow, now would ya. The Day before he said the same thing to a howling convention of Baptist pastors from across the state. One of my Dad's seminary professors and later my Baptist hero, Stewart A Newman stood up at the pulpit after and Said : "WA Criswell doesn't speak for me."

    Now 60 some odd years later Bobby Jeffress at FBC Dallas is a Super Trumper.

     Ive also read the Princeton Professor Wuthnow's book Rough Country about how Texas brand of Baptist fundamentalism shaped the modern day Republican Party. First time I saw Lee Atwater's Nword memo was in that book, an evolutionary political strategy further revealed in the 25th Minute of Ms Duvernay's Netflix documentary 13th. Take a look at that as you consider how Trump and Fox News and conspiracy noise media distorted Kaepernick's attempt to stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter Movement.

     The last couple years the book Dying of Whiteness crossed my radar. It looks at three congressional districts where working class white folks are eaten up with Trump adoration. Makes a compelling case they have been hoodwinked into voting against their own health and economic interests by Trump's playing their resentments against Blacks and Mexicans and what they think is their cultural heritage.

     

     The previous NFL game I attended was in the fall of 1971. The  Furman band was invited annually to Atlanta Falcons  for a halftime game. I was down on the field waiting on hafltime with about two minutes to go in the Half. I looked up from our endzone camp and saw Archie Manning of the Saints from about the twenty hurl a beautiful high arc soft touch toss to his receiver at the back of the endzone. About the most beautiful spiral I had ever seen in person to that point.

    Maybe even historically greater for my pilgrimage on this earth, however, was three years earlier, when in the first year, first month of full integration of the public schools in Gaffney SC, I saw my friend Danny Parker launch a crucial pass with minutes to go to Donnie Ray Littlejohn against Lancaster. It is legend in Gaffney how much that pass did to relieve tensions of integration in Gaffney, home of one of the top one hundred all time High school dynasties in the nation according to Max Prep.

     So John Lewis is Dead but Trump is till in office and distortions about Patriotism and the Flag and Free Speech and rich black athletes continue to run amok.

    Here is hoping Gaffney and the nation can come to clearer understanding on these matter and lean with the good folks at John Lewis funeral at Ebenezer toward that more perfect Union.

    Stephen Fox is a 1971 graduate of GHS where he proudly served on the Bi-racial committee with Charles Foster, Kay Brumbach and Grady Sizemore, the father of consensus best player in MLB the first Decade of the 21st Century. Currently riding out the Covid in Central SC, for the last 30 years has lived in Alabama. A lower case free lance writer and raconteur, he is also a graduate of Furman. You can find his illustrious blog, so named by a former chair of the Davidson History department at foxofbama.blogspot.com