Author Jay Jennings to speak at Rice March 30

BY ARIE WILSON PASSWATERS
Rice News staff

Jay Jennings, author of “Carry the Rock: Race, Football and the South of an American City,” will discuss his book at Rice University March 30. The talk will be at 7 p.m. in Fondren Library’s Kyle Morrow Room and will be followed by a book signing.

	JAY JENNINGS

Set 50 years after the first nine African-American teenagers integrated Arkansas’ Little Rock Central High School, “Carry the Rock” chronicles the school’s football team and the still-present struggle to close racial divides.

Jennings, a veteran sportswriter and native son of Little Rock, returned to his hometown to take the pulse of the city and the school as the golden anniversary of the integration fight approached. Despite years of healing and a school that had long been desegregated, the author discovered that sociological issues still haunt the urban South and any place where sports, race and community intersect.

He tells this story through the school’s football team and shows how black and white students came together under longtime coach Bernie Cox, whose philosophy of discipline and responsibility and punishing brand of physical football know no color.

Jennings, a freelance writer, has contributed to The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times and Travel & Leisure and is a former reporter for Sports Illustrated and features editor at Tennis magazine.

The event is sponsored by Multicultural Community Relations in the Office of Public Affairs.