I guess I will give this stars. This is a good book. It isn't perfect, but it is very interesting & worthwhile. Perry Wallace was the first black basketball player in the SEC. He played at Vanderbilt. The SEC integrated slowly, so he stood alone for a lot of his basketball career. Godfrey Dillard was also recruited to Vanderbilt from Detroit, but Dillard was injured and then not given the opportunity to work his way back to the team. Perry Wallace grew up in Nashville. He was a very strong student and a great jumper on a great high school team. He considered leaving the South but decided to go to Vanderbilt.

This is a long book. It gets a little repetitive because the author is very determined to make the reader understand what Wallace went through. The establishment at Vanderbilt didn't do anything to protect him; there was no awareness of what he faced on trips to the deep south. The campus and student life remained segregated. There was a small group of African American students, including Wallace's best friend from high school & they stuck together. When Wallace got to campus he tried to go to a church near the college & they asked him to leave.

The framing event for the book is one of Wallace's teammates coming to him many years later to apologize for not having been more supportive.

Wallace comes through as an extraordinary man. As a young man, when he graduated & left Vanderbilt he left behind an interview that was published in the newspaper, detailing what he had experienced. Vanderbilt didn't invite him back & he didn't try to go back. But eventually, as Vanderbilt students found his story, and David Williams was hired to be vice chancellor & director of athletics, Vanderbilt brought him back. They retired his number.

Wallace did important civil rights work, and then became a lawyer; now he teaches law at American University. ( )