Sports

Monique Perez

History of Sports Industry

8-10 Tu-Th

April 18, 2005

Remember the Titans is a phenomenal movie about a football team working together and finding unity within themselves. This compelling and true story was filmed in 2000 about events that took place in the 1970's. Many controversial issues arise in this movie that deal with race, gender, ethnicity, class, region, and religion. By combining comedy and tragedy, viewers get a very intense overview of what life must have been like for the people in this film. After struggling through many emotional and hurtful experiences, the football team can finally appreciate one another. When the players realize that unity exists between them, they can finally begin to function as a team. However, they had to engage in several controversial issues before this would be possible.

This movie starts off with a white southern high school is integrated with a black students from a near by high school. The south region was very populated with African Americans during the 1970's era and that being said most schools were split from African Americans and Caucasians but were starting to integrate their schools. With this being said the schools had quite a problem going from a segregated school to an integrated school that is now mixed and that meant that athletics would also be mixed. Both schools had very successful football programs and they picked Coach Boone for the head coach position putting the current head Coach Yoast to the secondary position. This caused quite a lot of problems in the town with the students that Coach Yoast coached in the previous years. Many of them felt as if they wouldn't have their spots that they had in the previous year. Causing many of the Caucasian parents to be very upset and give Coach Boone a hard time. During this era the schools tried to be equal because they had to and not because they thought it was the right decision.

Another part of this movie I would really like to elaborate on is them going away to camp. The team went away for a team camp and while at that camp they had to get to know one another and eat lunch with members of the same specialty. By the end of the camp the majority of the guys became good friends but it was until they turned that they realized how it was almost like they were away at paradise and now they were in the real world again where skin colored mattered. They were back to reality where there was so much hatred for those with a different skin color. This scene really showed how big of an issue racism was during this era when they first started to integrate schools. Outside of the school they were having all these protest and calling all the African American names was a big problem during that time. There were also other instances where Coach Boones was receiving threats.

For some this met so much to them to not change the way things were and to not have an African American head high school football coach. After