Back to the Old Dominion Monarchs Newsfeed

Minium: Sonny Allen built ODU into a winner and integrated Virginia basketball; he deserves place in Va. Hall of Fame

Many of you reading this weren’t alive in 1965. I was 13 then and remember it as a time full of discord and racial tension.

Yes, America seems more divided now than ever, but trust me, things were worse in 1965. It was two years after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and three years before Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy would be gunned down.

Most of the South, and much of the rest of the country, was segregated. Riots in Watts tore apart Los Angeles.

In Montgomery, Ala., police charged and brutally beat 600 peaceful civil rights demonstrators.