During the Civil rights movement, segregation was being fought against on many different fronts. In 1963, you can add collegiate sports to the list. Leland Mitchell, a leader of his Mississippi State University basketball team, defied court orders from a chancery judge, and led his team and coaches to Michigan to play against Loyola University of Chicago, which had several black players on their team. Coming from the highly-segregated state of Mississippi, this game integrated those who would have otherwise been segregated, and marked the beginning of the end of segregation in collegiate sports. It was not easy, with the team having to leave Mississippi secretly or else be brought back to campus for discipline, but they succeeded. Though they ultimately wound up losing the game, there was a far greater importance to the game other than the end result. This game marked the start of integration throughout collegiate sports.

Written by Cameron Feigenbaum