If These Stairs Could Talk

I spent some time on the Vanderbilt campus today and took the opportunity to walk up the stairs outside the main administration building, Kirkland Hall. These are the same stairs I describe on at least three occasions in the book – the stairs Chancellor Heard bounded up each morning with his manila folders and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches; the same stairs coach Roy Skinner climbed on his way to meet with Heard to discuss the possibility of recruiting a black basketball player for the first time; and the stairs Perry Wallace ascended when he led a group of Vanderbilt students to meet with the chancellor to discuss their experiences on campus. One of the interesting parts about digging through photo archives for the book was spotting landmarks or just random places around town or at Vanderbilt that remain today. Look, there’s Stokely Carmichael walking past a building on Broadway I see every day. There’s Martin Luther King standing in Memorial Gym. There’s Perry Wallace playing high school ball in the same Municipal Auditorium I just watched a game in last week. Love thinking about how these locales have remained static while the people and times have changed around them.