A conversation with Godfrey Dillard
Godfrey Dillard and Perry Wallace, the first two African American basketball players at Vanderbilt University, endured harsh discrimination on campus as they campaigned for equal rights and diversity. Trailblazers during the 1960s, the duo today continues to champion these values, contributing to the advancement of inclusion and equity in higher education and athletics.
Dillard chose Vanderbilt because he saw the opportunity to integrate the Southeastern Conference but racism and discrimination in the South were fiercer than the young visionary imagined. The athlete became an advocate for all ethnicities who were marginalized.. “They wanted to get rid of me because I represented what the future looked like,” Dillard said in a recent interview. “In a lot of ways that was true. I was very progressive, political and color-blind. I wasn’t hung up on ways. I was there trying to make it better for everybody. So, unfortunately I paid the heavy price for that.”
During his year at Vanderbilt, Dillard felt traumatized in the classroom and on the basketball court. White students didn’t speak to him. Dillard’s grades suffered as a result of the discrimination permeating so much of the institution at that time.
Dillard suffered a knee injury his sophomore year, and decided to leave Vanderbilt after he recovered. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree at Eastern Michigan University, a law degree from the University of Michigan and a master’s in international affairs at George Washington University.
Dillard is now an attorney in private practice in both Atlanta and Detroit. He was part of the group that challenged the University of Michigan’s race-based admissions policies.
“Leaving Vanderbilt was the best decision I ever made because it changed me as a person to provide the motivation and the trajectory for my life,” Dillard said. “It gave my life purpose, and a road map to excellence, success, service and the wonderful and exciting life that I live. Out of the anxiety, out of the destruction on me as a person and an athlete, I was able to rebuild myself.”
In 2004, nearly four decades after leaving Vanderbilt, Dillard returned to campus for the ceremony retiring Perry Wallace’s number. Dillard was encouraged to see the increased minority and international student population at Vanderbilt as well as minorities in leadership roles within the university.
However, Dillard sees it as a “very bad sign” that Vanderbilt sororities and fraternities are still basically white despite the greater presence of Asians, African Americans, Hispanics and other ethnic groups in the community. Dillard suggests that white fraternities and sororities should go into the Hispanic, African American and Asian areas of Nashville to do community service and shake their image of being leisure-focused. He feels that one-on-one interaction is vital.
He hopes Vanderbilt will stop viewing itself as a predominantly Southern institution, referring to itself as “the Harvard of the South,” adding “I would like to see more diversity at the top, at the chancellor level.”
Learn more at the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery exhibit; RACE, SPORTS, AND VANDERBILT: 1966-1970, running now through Dec. 8, 2016.