THE STORIED RIDE OF THE CRIMSON TIDE: PROLOGUE

THE STORIED RIDE OF THE CRIMSON TIDE

Prologue

Over eighty years ago, something unexpected happened for the Crimson Tide, resulting in what is considered the most significant game ever played in the history of Southern football.  This game ushered in, with mixed southern emotions, the beginning of the south’s movement into the cultural and economic thinking of industrial America.

The University of Alabama faithful believe they hold the most storied “Rise to Tradition” in American football history and older fans know why this claim is made.  But there may be many younger Bama fans who know very little about these events.  And nationwide,the percentage who may be aware of them, must, at best, be minimal.

But before getting into this game, for a better understanding of the climate of the times in which this game took place, it’s best to take a look back into how our nation developed, long before American football was ever played.  I believe the following remark from the beginning of “Gone With The Wind” is the best point to start.

“There was a land of Cavaliers and cotton fields called the old South.  Here in this pretty world, gallantry took its last bow.  Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their ladies fair, of master and of slave.  Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered…A Civilization gone with the wind.”

To more clearly understand the climate of these times, “Gone With The Wind” was in no way typical of how the ancestors of today’s African Americans lived, but I’d consider their life style of wealthy Southerners a good example.  The early South’s history, with a primarily Anglo-Saxon population, even more deeply “refined” English social structure.

The South became a nation unto itself.  Those on wealthy plantations were the South’s highest class and socialized with no others.  The middle to lower class primarily lived in urban areas, except for the sharecroppers, who were only able to live day by day.  These “Knights and their ladies fair”

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