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Roy Skinner, Who Recruited First Black Basketball Player in SEC, Dies at 80 By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK Roy Skinner, the Vanderbilt University coach who recruited the first black athlete to play varsity basketball in the Southeastern Conference and who led the Commodores to more victories than any other coach, died Monday in Nashville. He was 80. The cause was respiratory failure, Mr. Skinner’s daughter Chris said. When Vanderbilt’s chancellor, Alexander Heard, encouraged Mr. Skinner to recruit black players in the mid-1960s, Mr. Skinner immediately began to search for suitable players and eventually recruited Perry Wallace, a high school star in Nashville. “I don’t think Skinner was looking to make history, but he was aware of it,” said Andrew Maraniss, a Vanderbilt alumnus who is writing a biography of Mr. Wallace. “I think the most important thing to Skinner would be that Wallace was a great player, and also a great student, a valedictorian.” Mr. Wallace, 63, said that although Mr. Skinner rarely if ever addressed the racial hostility Mr. Wallace faced, he was a calming influence during difficult times. “The test is not, did he stand up to hostile crowds?” Mr. Wallace said. “His basic manner and his approach and the fact that he was sincere in trying to help me was most important to me.” Mr. Skinner later said that recruiting black athletes from the North was difficult because black students “were skeptical going to the South.” He also said that he received petitions from alumni against recruiting blacks. “I only took that with a grain of salt,” he said in a 2007 article on the Vanderbilt Commodores’ Web site. “There wasn’t anything they could do about that.” Read more at www.nytimes.com

 

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