In 1969, two young black men entered the University of Montevallo as its first African American student-athletes. It all happened in Montevallo, Alabama, a small, busy, predominately white, college town. There were court-ordered guidelines and federal government assessments, but no one marching... no one standing in doors, blocking entrances ... no city or community disturbances ...no military or secret service escorts or police supervision ... no student walkouts in protest ... and no one was killed.
The Silent Integrators provides a glimpse of the journey that Dr. Lonnie J. Edwards, Sr. and Hansell Gunn, Jr. took, making racial integration happen without national attention. It was not without challenges, but it happened peacefully. What a victory! This book is a peek into the lives of
these pioneers, their fears, their feelings, their defeats, and their victories, along with stories involving some of the individuals with whom they engaged along the way. It chronicles these young men from their births in small towns in Mississippi to their maturing and leaving legacies, in
multiple states, in their own rights. Although sometimes daunting, their journey shows us that human relations is more important than race relations. When we treat each other with respect as equal humans, everything else will fall in order, and the world will be a better place.