News from campus and beyond
Furman’s football pioneer
When Furman first sought to integrate its football team in 1969, it found what appeared to be an extraordinary candidate directly outside its gates. Rodney Acker earned the highest score among African-American students in Greenville County on the SAT. He was a standout football player at Beck High School. So four years after Joseph Vaughn became the first black student at Furman, Acker became the school’s first black football player. Acker talked about his experiences at the university during a panel discussion on campus titled “Athletics & Desegregation.” Read more in The Greenville News.