Pride color blind at basketball power Birmingham high school

BIRMINGHAM — Ramsay High School's trophy case is like others throughout the South. The awards tell of history, proud moments and huge changes.

There's Ramsay's 1954 state football championship, when the school was all-white.

There are Ramsay's four recent state basketball titles, now that football is gone and the school is almost all- black.

Two eras, two races, two sports. Separated by so much, these two generations of students seem to have only one thing in common: success.

The discovery of that link brought the white alumni back after a half-century. They've helped push the new kids — young enough to be their great-grandchildren — to even greater heights.

The Lady Rams play in Atlanta today through Saturday in the Peach State Holiday Basketball Classic at Morehouse College. Behind the support of their elderly fans, they've won the past three Alabama Class AAAAA state titles.

"Kids seem to do better in school and in sports when they feel pride or a bind to something, to know what they represent," said Robert Mosely, girls basketball coach and history teacher.

His top two players, who recently signed SEC scholarships, smile when they talk about the older folks who have pressed upon them the school's long legacy of winning.

"It's a funny situation, because it's like a whole 360 degrees from football to basketball," said senior point guard Samone Kennedy, who recently signed with South Carolina. "I don't think we could have done it without them."

"We listened to what they needed to offer us," said senior forward Katherine Graham, recruited by LSU.

Before that? "I didn't put much thought into what they did and who they were. It was a different city, a different school then."

In the stands for every home game is 69-year-old Gloria Randolph. Sometimes she is the only white face.

Living three blocks from the school, Randolph observed during the decades of population shifts in the city that alumni of her era became reluctant to return to a school that didn't look like the one they remembered. She returned only on voting days because Ramsay was her polling place.

Four words heard from her classmates summed up the downturn in school pride.

"I went to Ramsay," she heard her fellow alumni say, "before it turned black."

That changed two years ago. Her Class of 1954 finally held their first reunion and toured the school.

Pride looked different to them, but clearly it was still alive.

They were impressed that the 600 Ramsay students could sing the alma mater. They were even more impressed with the girls basketball team, which had won their first state title.

On top of that were the stellar academics the school had been built upon. In the old days, Ramsay was so tough it was considered almost a private school.

Since 1979, Ramsay had been a magnet school requiring an entrance exam. Every class was college preparatory, and last year's graduates received more than $3.5 million in scholarships, mostly academic. Only 10 percent of the amount went to music or sports.

The visit fired up the older generation. Someone found the old football trophy in the school's attic, and the old alumni restored it and returned to the school for a presentation.

"Fifty years ago we sat in this same auditorium, read books in the library and, looking back, we recognize we didn't make it on our own," Randolph recalled her peers saying that day.

"Above all, we are here to tell you, 'We are proud of you, this school and its staff. We are proud you are committed to continue the quest for excellence. It is our school. It is your school. Together, we are Ramsay.' "

The senior citizens became a living link to the past.

Randolph hosted a preseason barbecue dinner at nearby Dreamland, the famous Alabama rib joint. She returned last week to show off the posters of Ramsay basketball success — the boys team won a state title a year ago.

The 1954 class also took part in the school's harvest parade – a replacement for homecoming. The football program was disbanded in the late 1970s after a player died in practice.

The white alumni base, which grew to include other classes from the 1940s to 1970s, donated scholarships for any needy student, principal Jeannette Watters said. And they gave $500 for seed money to bring back their beloved football team.

The sincere support impressed assistant principal Rex Richards, 51, one of the first African-American students to attend Ramsay.

"You can't fake that," he said. "I have wished that we could recapture some of the history of our school and have lamented the fact that we are not aware of all our history."

Randolph said the benefit worked both ways.

"It's refreshing to be part of something in the future rather than in the past," she said. "They will see things and do things that I'll never do. The past is important because we build upon it."

As the two sides spent more time together, a few stereotypes about today's generation got erased, too. When Randolph arranged a spring luncheon for the girls basketball team, she asked each player to invite a mentor. She was surprised when so many brought their dads, because she had assumed a majority lived in single-mother households.

"That totally destroyed that stereotype among all my friends," Randolph said.

Funny things happened, too. You should hear Randolph's voice crack when she calls Samone Kennedy by her nickname, "Super Fly." And she winces at the game soundtrack. For Randolph's peers, rap was what you did to a closed door.

In Alabama, one Ramsay parent pointed out, sports has long helped challenge the misperceptions related to color and culture.

"When Bear Bryant recruited minorities and they played for him, that changed the state of Alabama," said Birmingham native Walter Graham, 52, as he watched the Lady Rams win their 14th game last week. They've lost only once, to a Class AAAAAA school.

"It does not surprise me how things are evolving at Ramsay," he said, "because everyone wants to be part of a winner, regardless of how they got there."

Somewhere, the spirit of the school's benefactor must be pleased.

Erskine Ramsay's roots were Scottish, and the school colors — white and bright blue — match the Scottish flag. The students today didn't realize that before the alumni came back.

During the Depression, Ramsay was a millionaire inventor who imagined that the best and brightest of Birmingham would always feel pride in their sports victories at the school named for him.

It opened in 1930, built on land that once was home to two Confederate generals.

"When I hear the boys and girls at the football games cheering our schools ... aye, man, there's something jolly about it, and comfort, too," Ramsay, a childless bachelor, was quoted in a biography.

"One likes to remember that in the years ahead my boys and girls at Ramsay High will still be cheering for our school."

That's what school pride looks like, then ... still.

Michelle Hiskey writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. E-mail: mhiskey AT ajc.com