On August 28, 1963, nearly 250,000 people gathered in Washington, DC, for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In East Lansing, the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream ushered in the beginning of the school year and my dad’s new life as an MSU Spartan. The Black players, especially those who’d left the segregated South, had an instant connection with one another. They didn’t discuss the details of what life was like for them under Jim Crow. They had a quiet understanding of what they’d all been up against and the stakes ahead for them as individuals and eventually members of the
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