All Guts and No Glory An Alabama Coach’s Memoir of Desegregating College Athletics Bill Elder NewSouth Books 978-1-58838-209-2 $23.95 hardcover 5 ½ x 8 ½  143 pages Published in 2007 Bio/Memoir, Sports & Recreation As the film Glory Road reminded, the early desegregation of college sports often was neither easy nor pleasant. Here, Bill Elder recalls how he and a courageous group of white and black student-athletes broke racial barriers at a small college in northeast Alabama in the early 1970s. The setting was Sand Mountain, an area that four decades earlier had given rise to the Scottsboro Boys case, an area where racial attitudes for some had not changed much. Elder, recently retired from a successful career as a college sports administrator, shows vividly why he sometimes wondered whether he and his players would live through their experience. Abandoned by their school officials, the players faced constant threats and harassment and occasional violence. But they kept playing and winning games and forging bonds among themselves that lasted long after that first season was over. Through it all, Elder, an Alabama native and lifelong Baptist, watched his community with both a loving and an objective eye. His brief eyewitness account of both the worst and best elements of Southerners during this tumultuous era is compelling testimony.

Reviews

“Bill Elder’s memoir combines the three most powerful and sacred elements of Alabama folk culture: sports, religion, and race. Based on his experiences as basketball coach of Northeast State Junior College when he recruited the school’s first black student-athletes during the racially charged 1970s. Elder reminds us how harrowing those years were for racial iconoclasts in places such as Scottsboro and on Sand Mountain. His strength is recognizing paradox when he sees it; the evangelical religious values that provoked him to challenge segregation while different religious values caused his Southern Baptist brethren to ostracize him; college faculty and administrators who encouraged his martyrdom while running for cover themselves; sports offering opportunities for blacks that churches and colleges rejected. Memoirs like Elder’s . . . open entirely new vistas into the civil rights struggles after laws were changed but hearts stayed pretty much the same.”
—Wayne Flynt, Distinguished University Professor, Auburn University

“Through the lens of basketball, Bill Elder provides an honest look at the complicated and deep-seated issues of race while he was growing up and becoming a man (player and basketball coach) in pre-integrated Alabama.”
—Clifton L. Taulbert, author of Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored

“All Guts and No Glory is a painful story told with poignancy and candor. Such a narrative reminds us once again that we must remember our history so that we are not cursed to repeat it.”
—Nancy Grisham Anderson, Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor of English and Philosophy, and Director, Actions Build Community, Auburn University Montgomery

“Bill Elder coached during a time of high racial tensions, but he knew what was right and proceeded to do what was right. He faced many adversaries, but always sensed that God was with him.”
—John Ed Mathison, Senior Pastor, Frazer United Methodist Church, Montgomery, Alabama

“Bill Elder is representative of many individual leaders in sensitive positions of supervision who, because of their personal belief, were able to facilitate change that reflected and acknowledged genuine value and human worth regardless of skin color. All Guts and No Glory is a profound story of an era when our nation made significant strides at the grassroots, far beyond the court of sports.”
—Chris Doss, Attorney, Birmingham, Alabama