“We are going to do everything we can to keep you gentlemen safe,” a football staff member said upon landing in Birmingham.
That was the moment Bruce Rollinson knew this trip would be different.
It was Sept. 12, 1970. Rollinson, a backup defensive back for USC, was with his teammates in Birmingham, Alabama, preparing to play the all-white University of Alabama team under legendary head coach Paul “Bear” Bryant.
USC’s backfield — junior quarterback Jimmy Jones, senior running back Clarence Davis and sophomore back Sam Cunningham — was all Black. Alabama had never played against a fully integrated team, nor had it fielded a Black player or allowed many, if any, Black fans in the stadium.
Rollinson recounted his experience when the team traveled to Alabama.
“Every Friday night we would go to the movies,” Rollinson said. “That was our pre-game tradition. When we went in Birmingham, all the white people just stood up and walked out.”
The 42–21 Trojan victory over the Crimson Tide would shift the trajectory of college football in the South and beyond.
“As the years have gone by, I’ve realized I’m honored to have played in this game,” Rollinson said. “We did everything we could to make the team great and the university great.”
USC racked up 559 yards of offense, 300 more than Alabama. Cunningham ran for 135 yards and two touchdowns. Jones, the first Black quarterback Alabama had ever faced, led the team through his leadership.
“We knew it was important not to let up, ever,” Jones said to ESPN. “We were down here not just to win for the mighty Trojans. We were also down here to win this game for our people.”
All six USC touchdowns were scored by Black players.
Defensive leader John Papadakis, along with other players on the team, hadn’t realized the significance of the game at the time.
“When we finished the game, there were hundreds of Black people surrounding our bus with candles and Bibles, praising us,” Papadakis said. “That doesn’t happen often. We had just kicked their teeth in. But they were thanking us.”
Back at the hotel, the cultural collision was impossible to ignore.
“We were in our room in Birmingham, Alabama, and little kids had invaded our room to get a glimpse of Black players,” Papadakis recalled.
Kent Carter, a linebacker, picked up one of the kids who approached him. “The kid asked, ‘Are you a [N-word]?’ And Carter said, ‘I’m a Black man and Black is beautiful.’ And the kids were shocked.”
Papadakis and Carter often roomed together on away game weekends. This was looked down upon in Birmingham, where integration was slow to gain any traction.
“We were close, we hugged, sweated on each other,” Papadakis said. “That’s real integration, when you’re close.”
Papadakis, who had a stroke just months before visiting the USC class this semester, said the work of telling this story became “an exercise of love between Sam [Cunningham] and I.” He later helped develop the Showtime documentary Against the Tide, narrated by USC alum Tom Selleck.
“In the late ‘90s I saw Sam’s quote [about his experiences], who still holds Patriot records, and it struck me,” Papadakis said. “I wrote the story and brought him in on it and said we’d make a book and a damn movie out of it.”
Cunningham passed away in 2021, but his memory anchored the recent classroom conversation in Jeff Fellenzer’s JOUR 380 class on Sept. 10, 2025.
“Sam was the best of us,” Fellenzer said. “He was always so gracious and giving of his time… he was still there telling stories at 10 minutes to midnight. He used to tell students, ‘It’s your story too.’”
Bill Holland, a fullback on the 1970 team, was at a convenience store next to the hotel when he experienced a moment that stuck with him.
“There were people in front of me and behind me in line to pay,” Holland said. “The cashier waited on the people behind me first. When I held out the money finally, he wouldn’t take it from me. I had to put it on the counter. When I went to get my change, he wouldn’t put it in my hand.”
Decades later, Fellenzer reflected.
“That small act of ignorance and insensitivity… It’s being talked about 55 years later in a college classroom,” he said.
Holland’s challenges continued in the classroom at USC.
“As a student, it was difficult,” Holland said. “You couldn’t be in fraternities. It was difficult when you had group assignments, you never got selected, so you ended up doing projects on your own. It was just me.”
However, by Holland’s senior year that dynamic changed.
“My senior year it was totally different,” he said. “Everyone wanted me in a group because they had seen me perform and knew I was a serious student, not just a football player.”
Holland’s work ethic proved to his classmates that he belonged there, but it wasn’t the same for his everyday life. For a group project, his classmate decided they would meet at her sorority house.
“At 6 o’clock the girls had to use their keys to get into the house. There were constant knocks on the door,” Holland said. “I went to the door and pushed it open, and someone grabbed me from behind and cocked a gun to my head. It was LAPD. They claimed someone made a call that there was a Black man with a gun running around the sorority house.”
The tension bled into USC’s own athletic department when the Black Student Union had a protest at a football game.
“I had forgotten about [the protest], and suddenly behind me I could hear commotion,” Holland said. “I turned around and a group of Black students had a long scroll. They turned around and it said: ‘SC ain’t shit without Black athletes.’”
The following Monday, a coaching staff member warned him to keep a low profile or risk his scholarship. Holland decided to take the issue to head coach John McKay.
“It takes courage to go into McKay’s office, you didn’t just show up. No one went uninvited,” Holland said. “I told him what had happened to me and he said I could join any organization I wanted. By the end of the semester, that assistant coach was gone.”
Holland echoed how the courage that McKay had goes unnoticed.
“He went to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to recruit Jimmy Jones,” Holland said. “He had the courage to start Jones. He had the courage to have an African American coach. If you had issues, he would deal with them straight up.”
Rollinson, a longtime coach at Mater Dei High School, shared what he tells his own players.
“Respect starts at the top, but you have a vote and wade through all the BS. Are they true to your beliefs?” Rollinson asked.
When asked what the players said to each other after the historic game, Rollinson said, “You need time to decompress… We were on to the next game. We never patted ourselves on the back. We knew we had to spin it around Saturday and play again.”
The 1970 team finished ranked No. 15. The following year, Alabama played its first Black player, John Mitchell, a defensive end originally recruited by McKay. McKay told Bryant he was planning to recruit him, but Bryant beat him to it, bringing Mitchell to Tuscaloosa.
The two schools played again, this time in Los Angeles, and Alabama won 17-10.
But by then, the tide had turned.
“Who wants a life with just one cultural influence?” Papadakis said. “There’s no life in that life.”
Professor Fellenzer hosts this conversation between the players and students every fall, teaching the next generation the importance of that hot Saturday at Legion Field.
“It’s such an important story for USC students to know,” Fellenzer said. “It’s really a human rights story about the brotherhood of sports with so many layers. Sports can serve as a change agent in our society, bringing communities together and people. I mean, it gives us hope.”
He remembered Sam’s words: “It’s your story too.”