“Blue-Gray, Without Black”

This article examines the 1960s desegregation controversy of the Blue-Gray All-Star Football Classic, which ultimately ended the game's twenty-seven-year-long segregation policy. The Blue-Gray game was founded in 1938 in Montgomery, Alabama, as a Civil War–themed football game between white players from Northern and Southern universities. Pressure from civil rights organizations, corporations, and the national viewing public led the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) to cancel its telecast of the segregated Blue-Gray game in 1963, while pressure to maintain national significance and relevance forced Blue-Gray game organizers to desegregate the game in 1965. The complicated relationship among profit, publicity, and social change in Montgomery during the 1960s is exemplified through the Blue-Gray game's desegregation fiasco, which ultimately reveals the role of capital and media in reshaping the reluctant American South during the civil rights era.