{"id":3691,"date":"2015-04-10T19:46:48","date_gmt":"2015-04-10T23:46:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2016\/02\/17\/athletics-and-desegregation-at-furman\/"},"modified":"2022-11-07T18:15:35","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T23:15:35","slug":"athletics-and-desegregation-at-furman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/athletics-and-desegregation-at-furman\/","title":{"rendered":"“Athletics and Desegregation” at Furman"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Women's<\/a>

Women’s basketball coach Jackie Carson is among the panelists for the “Athletics and Desegregation” discussion.<\/p><\/div>\n

Furman University will sponsor a panel discussion, \u201cAthletics and Desegregation,\u201d Wednesday, April 15 at 6:30 p.m. in Daniel Recital Hall as part of the university\u2019s yearlong commemoration of the 50th anniversary of desegregation.<\/p>\n

The panel discussion was rescheduled from February after bad weather forced its cancellation.<\/p>\n

The panelists include three notable Furman African-American graduates of the athletic program\u2014former women\u2019s basketball standout and current head basketball coach Jackie Smith-Carson \u201800, men\u2019s basketball All-American Clyde Mayes \u201975 and Rodney Acker \u201873, Furman\u2019s first African-American football player.<\/p>\n

The panel also includes retired history professor Dr. John Block \u201863, Furman\u2019s longtime NCAA Faculty Athletics Representative and former vice president of intercollegiate athletics. The discussion will be moderated by Furman history professor Dr. Steve O\u2019Neill \u201882, a former Paladin All-Southern Conference football linebacker.<\/p>\n

Athletics has played a vital role in the desegregation of Furman\u2019s student body over the last five decades.\u00a0 Today approximately 50 percent of Furman\u2019s African-American males are student-athletes, and 36 percent of Furman\u2019s African-American students are also athletes.\u00a0 At present, 13.1 percent of the university\u2019s approximately 400 student-athletics are African-American, compared to 5.1 percent of the overall student body.<\/p>\n

Fifty years ago, on January 29, 1965, Joseph Allen Vaughn became Furman\u2019s first African-American undergraduate student. His enrollment was the culmination of 10 years of work by hundreds of students, staff members, and professors who believed desegregation was \u201cthe only policy permissible for a liberal arts institution.\u201d Thanks in part to their efforts, Furman became the first private university in the state to pass a non-discriminatory admissions policy.<\/p>\n

This year, a special committee composed of selected faculty, staff, students, and administrators has planned a commemoration of the events that so profoundly transformed Furman 50 years ago.\u00a0 The committee has published a booklet detailing the history of Furman\u2019s desegregation and has planned a dozen events over the 2014-15 academic year. A full list of events can be found on the official Desegregation Commemoration website<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

For more information, contact Dr. O\u2019Neill at 864-294-3346 or steve.oneill@furman.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Furman will sponsor a panel discussion, \u201cAthletics and Desegregation,\u201d Wednesday, April 15 at 6:30 p.m. in Daniel Recital Hall as part of the university\u2019s yearlong commemoration of the 50th anniversary of desegregation. The panelists include three notable African-American graduates of Furman’s athletic program\u2014former women\u2019s basketball standout and current head basketball coach Jackie Smith-Carson \u201800, men\u2019s basketball All-American Clyde Mayes \u201975 and Rodney Acker \u201873, Furman\u2019s first African-American football player. The panel discussion was rescheduled from February after bad weather forced its cancellation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":14734,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}