Recently published book puts 1989 Conway football boycott back into spotlight

What started as a suggestion from Scott Pleasant’s wife turned into a detailed look at one of the most divisive few months in Conway’s history.

“Lines of Scrimmage: A Story of Football, Race and Redemption” profiles the 1989 Conway football boycott, particularly looking at longtime Tigers coach Chuck Jordan and now-Myrtle Beach coach Mickey Wilson. Pleasant, who runs the writing center at Coastal Carolina University, and Joe Oestreich, an English professor at the university, tag-teamed the project. They split up to follow the two coaches during the 2012 season as a tie-in for the book. However, it was the race-related strike that served as its primary context.

“We’re a little over 25 years from it,” Pleasant said. “If it got too much further, it would have been harder to get people who were there, the first-person narrative.”

In advance of the annual Victory Bell game between Conway and Myrtle Beach, the book’s first month of circulation is bringing the topic back to discussion again. On Oct. 8, the two will lead a panel, reading and book signing at Coastal Carolina.

It will be an opportunity to continue to break down how they researched and wrote the project. They combed through media reports and public records, but much of their information came from the interviews they conducted with nearly two dozen people who were involved in various portions of the boycott.

About the only voice missing was that of Carlos Hunt, who did not speak to the authors. It was Hunt whom Jordan replaced at quarterback (with Wilson), spurring the strike of the majority of the team’s black players.

Before long, the NAACP and local and state officials were involved in a heated back-and-forth that led to employee suspensions and marches, not to mention raw emotion. Even without Hunt, the book was anything but one-sided.

Oestreich and Pleasant spent significant time with Hank Singleton, the son of H.H. Singleton, the former pastor of the Cherry Hill Missionary Baptist Church and the president of the local chapter of the NAACP.

“We immediately got in touch with Hank, who was very forthcoming,” Oestreich said. “He was very helpful in both sharing his memories and getting in touch with his father’s [mindset].”

Singleton passed away in 2012, about seven months after the authors began following Jordan and Wilson.

The two coaches said last week they have yet to read the book, citing the constraints of the current season, although both said it will be a priority at the conclusion of their schedules. Still, both understand that it will at the very least refresh people’s memories of what was a painful and stressful era for Conway and Horry County.

“With time, you get less and less questions,” Jordan said. “For a good while there, it came up everywhere I went. That wanes. Over time, you don’t hear as much. I think most people got beyond it and have driven on. The bottom line with me is I lived it.”

Said Wilson: “When you go through a situation like that, at the time, it can be extremely difficult. But, man, how long has it been? … It made me a lot tougher mentally.”

The figures on both sides of the boycott rounded out the story line. And while there was some opinion infused at part of “Lines of Scrimmage,” the authors made it a point to remain neutral.

“We try to make it clear from the beginning that our only allegiance in this project was to tell the story the best we could,” Oestreich said. “We didn’t want to make one side look like the bad guy. … The world doesn’t always break down to good guys and bad guys.”

This story was originally published September 24, 2015 at 5:03 PM with the headline "Recently published book puts 1989 Conway football boycott back into spotlight."