1960's and 70's Racial Setting

If we look at Trinity today it is still a predominately white campus. However, I believe that Trinity does treat everyone pretty equally and everyone is always welcome. Society as a whole is not as progressive as Trinity is regarding racial equality. While it still has made improvements from the 1960’s and 1970’s there are still many problems with it today, some of which are reoccurring problems that are no different from back then. Basketball has especially grown since Thurston and Jeffries played here. According to Sports Business News  “81.7 percent of players were people of color”. At Trinity this year there were 6 people of color on the basketball team.

The Civil Rights Movement was a nationwide movement amongst African Americans for racial equality.  Since the late 60’s was right on the edge of the Civil Rights Movement, this gave Felix and Jeffries the perfect opportunity to make strides in the Trinity community and outside in the real world (Leadership Confrence 2017). They both handled the opportunity well, while at the same time succeeding in the classroom and excelling on the court.  I believe that they were also able to be a big part of the movement for racial equality because of their success on the basketball court; it allowed for more people to back them up, stand with them and gave them more attention. In an interview with Jefferies, he said that most people accepted black students at Trinity and they were more accepting because they knew he was the best player on the basketball team. Even though most were accepting, there were still some students who had not seen a minority before and they did not really care for them. He said he was actually was disliked more by a lot of minorities because he was going to a white school and he said they were all jealous (Jeffries 2016)