By Andrew Maraniss
The New York Times bestselling book Strong
Inside is the untold story of Perry Wallace, who in 1966 enrolled at
Vanderbilt University and became the first African-American basketball player
in the Southeastern Conference. Strong Inside is not just the story of a
trailblazing athlete, but of civil rights, race in America, a campus in
transition during the tumultuous 1960s, the mental toll of pioneering, decades
of ostracism, and eventual reconciliation and healing.
This fast-paced, richly detailed and meticulously
researched biography digs deep beneath the surface to reveal a more
complicated, illuminating and rewarding story of sports pioneering than we’ve
come to expect from the genre. First-time author Andrew
Maraniss masterfully unfolds the unique life story of
Wallace, the rare slam-dunking basketball star who was also a valedictorian,
engineering double-major, law school graduate, and university professor.
Wallace’s unusually insightful and honest introspection reveals his inner
thoughts throughout his journey.
Wallace entered kindergarten the year that Brown
v. Board of Education upended “separate but equal.” As a 12-year old, he
snuck downtown to watch the sit-ins at Nashville’s lunch counters. In 1963, he
entered high school a week after Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
While in high school, he saw the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights
acts, and his Pearl High basketball team won Tennessee’s first integrated state
tournament. The world seemed to be opening at just the right time, and when
Vanderbilt recruited him, Wallace courageously accepted the assignment to
desegregate the SEC. His experiences on campus and in the hostile gymnasiums of
the Deep South turned out to be nothing like he ever imagined.
On campus, he encountered the leading civil
rights figures of the day, including Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King,
Fannie Lou Hamer, and Robert Kennedy – and he led Vanderbilt’s small group of
black students to a meeting with the university chancellor to push for better
treatment.
On the basketball court, he experienced an Ole
Miss boycott and the rabid hate of the Mississippi State fans in Starkville.
Following his freshman year, the NCAA instituted “the Lew Alcindor rule,” which
deprived Wallace of his signature move, the slam dunk.
Despite this attempt to limit the influence of a
rising tide of black stars, the final basket of Wallace’s college career was a
cathartic and defiant dunk, and the story Wallace told to the Vanderbilt Human
Relations Committee and later The Tennessean was not the simple story of
a triumphant trailblazer that many people wanted to hear. Yes, he had
gone from hearing racial epithets when he appeared in his dormitory to being
voted as the university’s most popular student, but, at the risk of being labeled
“ungrateful,” he spoke truth to power in describing the daily slights and
abuses he had overcome and what Martin Luther King had called “the agonizing
loneliness of a pioneer.”
About the Author
A New
York Times bestseller, Strong Inside is the first book by Andrew Maraniss. A
partner at McNeely Pigott & Fox Public Relations in Nashville, Andrew
studied history at Vanderbilt University as a recipient of the Fred Russell –
Grantland Rice sportswriting scholarship, earning the school’s Alexander Award
for excellence in journalism and graduating in 1992. He then worked for five years
in Vanderbilt’s athletic department as the associate director of media
relations, dealing primarily with the men’s basketball team. In 1998, he served
as the media relations manager for the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays during the team’s
inaugural season, and then returned to Nashville to join MP&F. The son of
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author David Maraniss and
trailblazing environmentalist Linda Maraniss, Andrew was born in Madison, Wis.,
grew up in Washington, D.C. and Austin, Texas and now lives in Brentwood,
Tenn., with his wife Alison, and their two young children. Follow Andrew on
Twitter @trublu24 and visit his website at andrewmaraniss.com.andrewmaraniss.com.
