A breakdown of the campus-chaos leading up to and following the infamous 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech game. U-M benched Ward and succumbed to Tech's demand to not play against a black player. Read on:
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Black and Blue – New Trailer For Gerald Ford-Willis Ward Documentary
Check out the updated trailer for the Willis Ward-Gerald Ford documentary – looks to be outstanding (despite the gent at 1:51): I understand from Buddy and Brian down at Stunt3 that it will be released in the September-October timeframe and like Bart Scott, I “Can’t Wait”. Look for more updates here of course and I hope you will check it out. For much more read my post on The Willis Ward Protests.
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It Had to Happen
Nearly three years ago to the day I submitted a mgoblog guest post talking about the 100-year Michigan football anniversary event held in 1979. Former player Willis Ward attended the celebration held at Chrysler errr, Crisler Arena. I mentioned this: Willis Ward: The African-American end and U-M track star was Gerald Ford’s roommate for road games and a member of the ’32 and ’33 national championship squads. This man’s story deserves a full documentary or movie, not a blurb on a blog post, and it’s safe to assume he gave some interesting remarks to the banquet crowd. A hat tip to my boys at UGP/Moe’s and MGoShoe for simultaneously sending over this link. Pete Bigelow at AnnArbor.com writes that a local group is putting together a 10 part series covering Michigan football. It’ll debut with this: The series will debut with an episode on the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech game, in which the Yellow Jackets threatened to pull out of the game if Michigan played Willis Ward, the school’s second black player. Ward’s teammate, future President Gerald Ford, contemplated quitting the team in protest of Ward’s exclusion. Here’s a trailer from the group producing the films, Stunt3 Multimedia: When can we expect this to come out? According to senior creative director Buddy Moorehouse: ..the first film in the series ("Black and…
