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The AFL All-Star walkout exposed these earlier hedges and negotiations as insufficient and unsustainable. By January 1965, promoters could ensure integrated ticket sales, locker rooms, and hotels, but many of the taxicabs, restaurants, and nightclubs the players encountered independently did not adhere to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The cautious and quiet efforts of gridiron boosters had not yet been able to influence much of New Orleans beyond the playing field, but the walkout gave them a platform from which to publicly call for broad social reform throughout the city. Because many local fans argued the boycott was unjustified, sentiment for change was driven largely by a desire to prove wrong the protesting All-Stars. Racial progressiveness was no longer seen as political acquiescence by the Sugar Bowl Committee or the Pro Football Club but as an effort to repair the city’s unfairly blemished image.
The boycott thwarted the city’s immediate football aspirations; the pros went with two other 1966 expansion cities, and the Sugar Bowl’s top choices refused their 1966 Classic bids. Ultimately, however, the boycott unified local citizens in an effort to prove to America that New Orleans had the racial climate necessary for hosting the nation’s best college and professional football. When the Saints were awarded to New Orleans as a 1967 NFL expansion team, attention shifted away from the city’s history of segregated sports as the country saw New Orleanians united as football fans. —ERIN GRAYSON SAPP
D Kickoff of the 1956 Sugar Bowl
1956; photograph
gift of the Sugar Bowl, 20t37.0208.129
E Jim Nance (no. 35) in the 1965 Sugar Bowl
1965; photograph
gift of the Sugar Bowl, 2007.020S.130
F.	1965 Sugar Bowl program cover
1965
gift of the Sugar Bowl, 2007.0208.128
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