re: Was Bear Bryant a racist?

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I have heard he was, but that doesn't make sense because Croom speaks so highly of him. They certainly make him out to be a racist in that movie Mississippi Burning with that joke they tell about the colored boy who wanted to play for Bear Bryant. So was he racist towards African-Americans?

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RGC, I don't think that Bryant was a racist. I think that his role in coaching had a huge impact on blacks in the SEC. The majority of the time I think that movies always try to make the south out to be such a horrible place. While I am not downplaying the south in those times and times of unjust, I sometimes think that Hollywood makes the south out to be horrible and the north to be the great groups of people that had no ill will towards blacks. I in no way say that how people treated blacks in those days is in any way warranted nor do i condone it. But, from everything I have heard and seen, Bryant was in fact kind of the pioneer in having black players in the SEC or at least in Alabama.