Legendary coach Herman Boone was the focus of the 2000 film, Remember the Titans.
Herman Boone attended high school in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and played his college ball at North Carolina Central University. Making coaching his career, in 1961, Boone accepted a head coaching position at E, J. Hayes High School in Williamston, North Carolina. Boone’s 1966 team was recognized as America’s #1 high school team, and the winning ways continued. Hayes’s teams won nearly 92% of 107 games (99-8).
Photo courtesy Washington Post
Boone migrated to T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia, by decade’s end. In 1971, he was named head coach, which was a consolidated school in a city rife with racial tensions. Boone took players on pre-season bonding experiences in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. There, he introduced players to history, emphasizing circumstances that led to America’s Civil War.
The brotherhood that emerged catapulted the Williams Titans to the Virginia state championship. The integrated team captured national attention, including the President’s Office. Then-President Nixon credited the team “with saving the city of Alexandria.”
Boone’s approach was later dramatized in the Hollywood film, Remember The Titans (Touchstone – Disney), with Denzel Washington playing the lead role.
Herman Boone passed away in 2019, but his spirit lives on, testimony to the power of togetherness in troubling times.
Mr. Paris gives us revised history in that much racial discord lived in Alexandria before and after this state championship.
A movie is not real life. I coached in Alexandria during those years.