Remember the Titans

The true story of the forced integration of a 1971 Virginia high school football team shows how we can all get along if race and background are put aside for the sake of the common goal. T. C. Williams is named for a former superintendent of schools who served from the mid-1930s until the mid-1960s. Virginia, like many other Southern states had a history of segregated schools. "Jim Crow Laws" which was the basic term for legal segregation took long to up by federal courts, had effectively created two separate societies. The two societies were "separate," but they were barely "equal." T. C. Williams High school had the goal, to not have segregation as apart of there school system. Black and white members of competing football teams were now part of the same school. If there was only one high school, there would be only one football team. The questions that were frequently asked was "Who would be on the team?" And, more importantly, "Who would be its coach?"

The school opened in 1965 and has served the Alexandria community and tens of thousands of students well for the past thirty-three years.

Coaches Bill Yoast (center) and Herman Boone (righ...

Coaches Bill Yoast (center) and Herman Boone (righ...

Kinran Senri Senior & Junior High School,Fujishiro...

The school has grown into one of the most respected, comprehensive public High Schools in the country. Eighty percent of the students go on to post-secondary education. T. C. has one of the most diverse student bodies in America with students from over eighty-four countries, speaking over fifty-six languages in its' halls and classrooms.

In 1959, five years after the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that separated but equal schooling is inherently unequal and unconstitutional, Alexandria formally desegregated its' public school system. But, unfairness in the diversity of neighborhood populations caused the school system to slowly migrate toward racial imbalance. In 1971 the Supreme Court...