Kent Merritt

We had some, quote-unquote, student leaders, Black student leaders who were leading the effort to make things better for Black students in school, and they were involved in these demonstrations, these walkouts, and this sort of thing.  So, one way to protest, it was decided among these Black leaders that we would have the Black football players not play in football games, football games.  So, they were encouraging some of the players not to play in these games that we had, which really ticked me off because I was the captain of the team.  We had not done anything like that before, and the only thing that it was going to do was to hurt us, and we didn’t play up to our potential in those two games.  But the kids did play, but we just didn’t have the enthusiasm that we would normally have if we played in the game.  But anything that could cause a disruption to show the dissatisfaction with the way things were was attempted, just about.