Thursday Night Lights: Texas integration offers lessons for NFL debate

When Thurman Robins thinks of Thanksgiving he thinks of 1954, his ninth-grade year at the all-black Jack Yates High School in Houston, and their annual football game against Phillis Wheatley High School. As was often the case in Texas’s blacks-only high school football league, he saw something that took his breath away.

This time it was Ivory Jones winning the game for Yates with a last-minute field goal – an incident almost unheard of back then, when kickers kicked straight-on with their toes and often missed. 

Decades later, November in Texas means the start of high school football playoffs. And this year it means something else as well: the 50th anniversary of the desegregation of high school football in the state.

Though the all-black leagues had celebrated traditions, with integration came the opportunityNow, some observers are wondering whether a key purpose of integration has been lost, and needs to be rediscovered.