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On a beautiful sunny day in October, black students from all over campus joined together in a march on the president s office to demand change at Auburn University. Resentment had been simmering for a while, after earlier discussions had been held asking for reforms at the university. There had been no answer.
If silence was supposed to be an answer, the students were not going to accept it.
Thom Gossom Jr. did not set out to be a groundbreaker. He did not apply to Auburn University with the goal of being the first black athlete to graduate from the almost all-white college. He just knew that he wanted to play football and he wanted to play football at Auburn. A gifted athlete and good student, Gossom was accepted to Auburn University in 1970 and forever left the comfort of his segregated hometown boyhood to enter into a world of privilege that was just starting to grapple with desegregation. Loneliness, anger, jealousy and overt racism awaited him on and off the football field. As Gossom fought for his place on the team and on campus he became part of the movement to make the world a better place for those who were to come after him, and in doing so, became a part of history.
