North Carolina Football

 We had an interesting day yesterday. Perennial also ran, Matthew Baker, ran off three in a row, as did Alex Smith, and has shot into a tie for the lead. Everyone has won at least one game - thank you Oklahoma? - and everyone has lost at least one game. Today we get rolling at 12:30PM Eastern time with my favorite bowl name: Duke's Mayo Bowl. Can't wait to see the winning coach doused with mayo at the end of the game. 

I remember going to a North Carolina v. Duke football game with RC in the early 80s. I believe LT and/or Kelvin Bryant played. Probably the two best football players in Carolina history. But what I remember about that day was walking through the university to the stadium, which RC proudly told me could never rise above the tree tops. When I went, the stadium did not have permanent endzone seating. But, good ole Mack Brown changed all that in the 90s. Now the stadium has seating in both endzones and seats upwards of 60,000 plus people. 

In these times, I believe it is important to acknowledge all of our history, not just the convenient parts. The stadium was originally financed by William R. Kenan Jr.. A graduate in the 1890s, Mr. Kenan became a wealthy industrialist, scientist, and philanthropist. He financed the original Kenan stadium and some subsequent refurbishments and expansions. He asked the University to name the stadium after his parents. However, it became known that his father was a white supremecist and led a paramilitary outfit that participated in the Wilmington Massacre of 1898 in which a defacto coup d'etat overthrew the integrated city government of Wilmington, replaced it with a government of white supremecists, and killed many prominent black citizens of Wilmington. Therefore, the University in 2018, removed the dedication plaque of the stadium and changed the stadium dedication to the son, not the father. 

It's tragic that it took until 2018 to make this change. It's even worse that so many of the massacres are kept in secrecy from us in our history books. And, it's scary that the same forces that led the Wilmington massacre of 1898 are active once more and using the same tactics of voter suppression, gerrymandering, violent intimidation, and the politics of jealousy and hate. 

So, as we watch today's bowl games that 2022 will be an election year and we must all do what we can to make sure all citizens can vote, that we must not yield to intimidation and violent rhetoric of white supremecists, and we must make sure the history we hand down to others is truthful and unafraid to confront the injustices of our forefathers. 

RC certainly did his part to chronicle that history. Make sure you read his book, They Closed Their Schools. I don't know about you, but I was taken aback at the funeral with the stories of how the book has been handed down in Prince Edward County. How RC's work led to changes of who represents Virginia in the statutory hall in the U.S. Capitol building. How there was an active movement to decrease the amount of copies of the book that were published. 

Well, I've birdwalked enough. Let's watch some football.

-The Commish