On September 11, 1970, eleven young men ran onto Jaycee Field to take on the Wildcats from Louisville High School. It was the season opener much like our SHS game tonight -- but different. The players all wore black and gold, but represented two sides of Starkville, together for the first time.
Players from the all black Henderson High School and the nearly all white Starkville High were integrated to form a new football team on whose shoulders we stand today. That school year saw a new cheerleading squad, a new marching band, a new English class, and science, and history — a new student body mandated by federal desegregation rulings, but bound together by the desire to compete, to learn, and to meet the weight of the times. The road wasn’t easy, but their journey is our shared history and our path forward.
The students who took the field on that September night would go on to graduate in the spring of 1971 as the first class of the fully integrated Starkville High School.
As the Yellow Jackets once again take the field this football season, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of that historic class. Each week on our social media channels and at each home football game, we will highlight remembrances from the 1970-1971 school year — stories of a community coming together under the banner of Yellow Jackets.
For more information about our district’s celebration of this important milestone, visit www.starkvillesd.com/50years