Description: 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 up until now.

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 to be the first Black athlete to graduate from the previously 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, and overt racism awaited him on and off the football fi...

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