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

In August 1961, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Colts were scheduled to play a pre-season football game at Victory Stadium in Roanoke, Virginia.  However, a Virginia statute required that seating for the contest be segregated.  In response to the decision by local organizers and officials to sell tickets to the game on a segregated basis, a local civil rights lawyer and a local minister worked together to bring national attention to the injustice of the law by organizing the first successful civil rights boycott of a professional sporting event. 

Based on his article in the next Journal of the Historical Society of Western Virginia, Professor Alex Long of the University of Tennessee College of Law will deliver the talk, Victory Stadium: How a Lawyer, a Minister, and Twenty Football Players Helped End Segregation in Virginia and Professional Sports. Held February 13, 2025 at 7pm in the Logan Gallery on the campus of Roanoke College, the talk is free and open to the public. Parking for this event is available in the following Roanoke College parking lots: P10, P11, P14 and P28. This event is a joint presentation of the Historical Society of Western Virginia, Roanoke College Anthropology Concentration, Roanoke College Center for Studying Structures of Race, Roanoke Valley Preservation Foundation, and Salem Museum and Historical Society.

About the Speaker:

Alex Long is the Williford Gragg Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee College of Law.  He teaches and writes in the areas of Torts, Professional Responsibility, Employment Law, and Disability Law.   Professor Long served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the College of Law from 2014 – 2018. 

His scholarship has been published in numerous law journals, including the Northwestern Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, Emory Law Journal, and Washington & Lee Law Review.  Professional Long’s scholarship has been cited frequently by courts.  He is also the co-author of several casebooks on Torts and Professional Responsibility.  His most recent book, Professional Wrestling and the Law, which explores court cases involving the world of professional wrestling, was published in 2024.

While at the University of Tennessee College of Law, Professor Long has received awards for outstanding teaching, scholarship, and service to the institution as well as the Tennessee Bar.  Before entering academia, Professor Long was an associate in the labor group of the Clarksburg, West Virginia office of Steptoe & Johnson.  He grew up in Roanoke and received his undergraduate degree from James Madison University and his law degree from the College of William & Mary.