Victory Stadium: How a Lawyer, a Minister, and Twenty Football Players Helped End Segregation in Virginia and Professional Sports

Law professor Alex Long will offer a look at the remarkable history of a landmark NFL game played at Victory Stadium in Roanoke City in 1961.

At the time, Virginia state law demanded segregated seating for the event. But two local leaders, an attorney and a minister, worked to bring national attention to that injustice by organizing the first successful civil rights boycott of a professional sporting event.  

Long serves as the Williford Gragg Distinguished Professor of Law for the University of Tennessee College of Law. His scholarship has been published in numerous journals and his most recent book, "Professional Wrestling and the Law," was published in 2024 (McFarland).

This event is co-sponsored by Roanoke College's anthropology concentration program and the Center for Studying Structures of Race in honor of Black History Month.