What do you think when you see this image?

Some may think this is a very overused image. 

Perhaps it’s a cliché.  It’s over-done.  It over-simplifies something that isn’t simple at all. 

But about two years ago, those of us in Chicago learned, or re-learned, how a group of young white men from Mississippi sent a decoy group to board a plane, then drove out of their way, across their state border, and came to the frigid north in March, just so they could play a ball game.  

And that meant a white player shaking hands with a Black player at center court. For the whole country to see.  Including the Governor of Mississippi who had forbid them to leave their state precisely because he didn’t want them to compete with Black athletes.

When Loyola beat Mississippi State, the Chicago school went on to win the NCAA championship;  so far, the only Chicago college to capture such an honor.  A stirring reminder of that achievement reverberates throughout Loyola’s Gentile Arena whenever the Ramblers reach 63 points: the student section chants “six – ty  three,  six – ty  three.”  

Many have argued how significant or insignificant that game was.  Against a backdrop of Civil Rights issues that were yet to be addressed, and the violence and economic hardship that continued, how much did that game change? 

But in 2011, when Jerry Harkness attended Joe Dan Gold’s funeral in Kentucky, there, next to the casket was a picture.  It was from 1963, of the two of them shaking hands at the beginning of the “Game of Change” – a game that the Governor had tried to stop by issuing an injunction, and that had been overridden by a handshake. 

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