70 years later, Pitt honored Bobby Grier’s Sugar Bowl legacy in Atlanta

On Jan. 2, 1956, Bobby Grier took the field alongside his University of Pittsburgh teammates to face Georgia Tech in the Sugar Bowl. It was the first racially integrated bowl game played in the Deep South, and it almost didn't happen. But with the support of Grier's fellow Pitt football players, who refused to play without him, and Georgia Tech players and students, Grier made history.

Seventy years later, the Pitt Alumni Association (PAA) welcomed the blue and gold community to Atlanta for a weekend-long celebration of his enduring impact Nov. 21-22.

"We're here to honor Bobby Grier's courage and legacy as well as celebrate a significant, watershed moment in University history and college athletics," said Nancy Merritt, Pitt's vice chancellor for alumni relations.

Friday evening included a panel discussion at the College Football Hall of Fame moderated by Pat Bostick (A&S '10), former Pitt quarterback and the University's senior associate athletic director. The panel featured Allen Greene, Pitt's director of athletics; Adam Walker (A&S '91), trustee, Pitt football alumnus and former NFL running back; and Rob Grier Jr., Grier's son who co-authored "No Grier, No Game: How Bobby Grier and the Sugar Bowl Showdown Changed American Sports History " with his daughter, Camille.

"This is a story about unity ... a story that matters now more than ever," said Grier Jr. "Here is a template that we showed in an extreme time of separation that unity matters, courage matters, strength matters and doing the right thing matters."

For Walker, Grier's quiet strength and integrity spoke volumes in a year that also saw Rosa Parks, the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Emmett Till's lynching.

"It meant so much for him to take things on his shoulders that he wasn't asked to take," said Walker. "But he changed the world, and he changed sports."

To cap off the weekend on Saturday, hundreds of Pitt alumni, fans and friends got ready to cheer on their Panthers during a PAA tailgate before a 42-28 victory over Georgia Tech.