Earl Edwards was born in Selma, Ala., in the early 1950s when it was a segregated city, before it became a flashpoint in the civil rights movement. His parents moved to New York when he was 1 to escape the overt racism of the South, but they returned most summers to visit his grandparents.
One summer, they were staying at a hotel in Selma with a pool. Earl and his sister jumped in. The White kids in the pool got out.
"We clearly knew what was happening," Edwards says. "My personality is such that I swam back and forth, splashing, clearly badgering them with how much fun I was having with my sister to the point where they couldn't take it anymore. They jumped back in eventually. There was a clear message there."
To read the full story in Wednesday's San Diego
Union-Tribune,
click here.
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With 30 national team championships, nearly 150 individual titles and the top scholar-athlete graduation rate among Division II institutions in the United States, the UC San Diego intercollegiate athletics program annually ranks as one of the most successful in the country. The Tritons sponsor 23 intercollegiate sport programs that compete on the NCAA Division I and II levels and, in summer 2020, will transition into full Division I status as a member of the Big West Conference. UC San Diego scholar-athletes exemplify the academic ideals of one of the world's preeminent institutions, graduating at an average rate of 91 percent. A total of 82 Tritons have earned Academic All-America honors, while 37 have earned prestigious NCAA Post Graduate Scholarships. In competition, more than 1,300 UC San Diego scholar-athletes have earned All-America honors.
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