The 19 of Greene narrates Tony Barnhart’s experience with integration in small-town Georgia as a member of Greene County’s first integrated football team. The longtime sportswriter, also known as Mr. College Football, details the Tigers’ surprisingly successful season, the enduring relationships he formed with his teammates, and the difficulties of school sports integration. As he witnessed the positive role that football played in the process of racial integration at Greene, his foundational experiences continue to help Barnhart navigate the persistent reality of racism more generally.
The early chapters set the stage for Greene County’s 1970 football season by outlining the roots of integration in the South beginning with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and how it and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 eventually led to Georgia, and Greene County in particular, being integrated in the classroom and on the athletic field. Barnhart discusses how the three high schools in Greene County—Greensboro, Union Point, and Corry—eventually became one by the fall of 1970. In addition, he outlines the rollout of integration of the Greene County school district population in 1965–66 and how it eventually led to athletics being integrated in the fall of 1970.
Returning to each of the players, as well as the coaches, teachers, and administrators who contributed to that 1970 season, Barnhart interviews these contacts to revisit this important time in all their lives. Their stories make plain that football merely served as the backdrop for the sociological interactions and events taking place in Greene County, Georgia, the South, and the United States at the end of the civil rights era and how change would be as rewarding as it was difficult.