Remember the Titans

Remember the Titans

In 1971 Coach Herman Boone replaced a popular, successful white coach at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia, in that community’s effort to finally integrate its schools. The school and community were angrily divided by the federal integration order, and the volatility of the situation was heightened by the abrupt demotion of Coach Yoast and Boone’s promotion to Head Coach. In this movie Coach Boone is on a mission to try to get the white and black players to unite and play together as a team. He wanted the two races to become a team. Around that time, there was a lot of racism and a lot of schools were segregated, so the players obviously didn’t get along with each other at first. A lot changed when Boone replaced Yoast for the head-coaching job for the Titans. The city had a hard time accepting the fact that the Titans now had a Black man as head coach. Coach Yoast agreed to be assistant coach and convince the white players to play with the black players. Now it was time for them to go to camp to see what they were really made of.

They were ready for camp and ready to get on the bus. At first the busses were separated by Blacks and Whites, but Coach Boone didn’t want that he wanted them to sit together. So one bus had the offensive players only and the other had defensive players only. He wanted the players to get along, so he sat one black player with one white player on each set of seats and told them that the player they sit with would be their roommate. It still didn’t work out when they got to the camp. They still had their differences and wouldn’t get along. When practices began they wouldn’t have each other’s back. The white player would miss a block just because the person he was blocking for was White. The coach had to find a way for these players to become a team. It wasn’t going to be easy, but Coach Boone was up for the challenge.

This team actually started becoming a team after Coach Boone gave an inspiring speech at the graveyard in Gettysburg. That is when a team actually started to form. The speech was about the Civil War that happened at Gettysburg. He told the players to hear closely, because if they do, they can hear people saying things about killing their own brothers. He told the players that they have to stop fighting with one another and start thinking of each other as brothers and come together as a team and start seeing life in a different perspective. After that, they had plenty of practices and worked hard until they learned how to get along, and they finally did that. It was beautiful to watch them get along and become a team. They were becoming friends and would joke with one another in the locker rooms. Mostly everyone get along. Julius and Gary were becoming great friends, which was hard to believe, because they hated each other at first. Later on, they got a new player. He had long hair, and they called him “Sunshine”. He was a quarterback and was the newest player on the mighty Titans. The team thought he was gay but he really wasn’t.

The team was ready to come back home after all the hard practices