Leland Mitchell, Who Defied Racism on the Basketball Court, Dies at 72 - NYTimes.com

Leland Mitchell, Who Defied Racism on the Basketball Court, Dies at 72 - NYTimes.com: In 1963, Leland Mitchell and his Mississippi State teammates had to sneak out of their state to compete in the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament. Gov. Ross Barnett and other hard-core segregationists were worried that their all-white team might compete against blacks, a step the governor said he feared “might lead to integration across the land.”

In a tense if peculiar moment in the civil rights movement, a state court had enjoined Mississippi State University from going to Michigan to play Loyola University of Chicago in the Midwest Regional of the prestigious tournament. Mississippi State had won the right to advance to national play by winning the championship of the Southeastern Conference. It was the fourth time in five years that the university earned a berth but seemingly would again be unable to play. 

But the team did play. The game between Mississippi State and Loyola on March 15, 1963 — contested at the height of the civil rights struggle — is widely seen as the beginning of the end of segregation in college sports. In explaining his opposition to integrated sports in 1960, Governor Barnett had said: “If there were a half-dozen Negroes on the team, where are they going to eat? Are they going to want to go to the dance later and want to dance with our girls?”