It's a long and winding road to Glory

Rating: 9/10 (13 January 2006)

I was discussing affirmative action the other day and encountered the usual argument about those things that happened in our great grandfather's day. Having grown up in the South, I am well aware that many of the things that happened in "my" day are still going on to some extent. I was high enough up the food chain in the military to hear conversations behind closed doors. In the small Arkansas town I grew up in, blacks lived across the tracks and up the hill - they probably still do.
A.O. Scott comments in the New York Times about Glory Road: "Glory Road finds its true story at a point where sports history intersects with the struggle for racial equality. The annals of postwar America are full of such moments, but few of them are as astonishing and consequential as the 1966 N.C.A.A. championship game, in which Don Haskins, coach of the Miners of Texas Western (now known as the University of Texas at El Paso), sent five black players onto the floor against Adolph Rupp's all-white University of Kentucky team." Forget about Josh Lucas, Tatyana Ali, Emily Deschanel, or Jon Voight. They were incidental to the film and could have easily been replaced with others. The story of the Texas Western basketball players in 1966 is what Glory Road is all about.
It happened in 1966. I was a sophomore in High School. I knew no more about Civil Rights or black oppression that the next guy. The only thing I knew for sure was that we used a two-handed set shot, not jumpers or Michael Jordan moves. It's the same criticism that I have of Hoosiers, another great basketball film. It wasn't my great grandfather's day; it was mine. It still is. If you are not moved by this film, then you are part of what was wrong then and what is not corrected to this day. It was about respect and the need for humans to give each other their due and not dwell on stupidity. We were all cut from the same cloth many many generations ago in Africa.
I came to Florida from West Texas and know the area well. Color is not important there when it comes to sports. We've gotten past that. It is time to get past it in other areas of our lives. If Glory Road can help a little bit in that, then it is well worth your time.
Well, it's well worth your time anyway as it is a great movie. As Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post said: It's one helluva story, and if this moving, and even thrilling little movie finally brings Haskins and a truly great American sports story to light, then three cheers and hooray.