Sept. 29, 2016
By Zac Ellis
VUCommodores.com
On campus in Nashville — In the fall of 1966, an era defined by the fight for civil rights, Godfrey Dillard and Perry Wallace arrived at Vanderbilt as the first black basketball players in the SEC. Dillard was a highly touted dual-sport athlete from Detroit, and Wallace was dominant big man from state-champion Pearl High School in segregated Nashville. The two men became roommates and friends who helped shatter the SEC’s racial barrier, integrating the conference at a time when equality was hardly a priority in the South.
Both Dillard and Wallace played pivotal roles as freshmen and sophomores in blazing a new trail in college basketball. This week Dillard and Wallace were back in Nashville as part of “Race, Sports and Vanderbilt”, an exhibition highlighting photographs, artifacts and other pieces of history from the late sixties on Vanderbilt’s campus. The story of Dillard and Godfrey is also chronicled in “Strong Inside; Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South”, a book by Vanderbilt alumnus Andrew Maraniss, which we would encourage all listeners to read.
The Commodore Insider Podcast caught up with Dillard and Wallace to discuss their Vanderbilt history, and what it was like to play college basketball in the segregated South.
