Before Wilbur Jackson and John Mitchell officially integrated the Alabama football team in 1971, there was Dock Rone.
Rone was among five Black students who attempted to make the Crimson Tide team during the spring of 1967. And if circumstances had been different, it might have been Rone who is remembered today as the Jackie Robinson of Alabama football.
Rone, a graduate of Carver High School in Montgomery and then a freshman at Alabama, walked into Paul “Bear” Bryant’s office one day in early 1967 and informed the coach he wished to walk on as a non-scholarship player. Bryant did not immediately agree, but a few days later called Rone in to take a pre-practice physical.
“I was pretty sturdy, it looked like I had played football,” Rone told sports writer Ray Glier for a USA Today story in 2013. “But I imagine he wanted to make some calls and check me out before he said yes.”
A 185-pound guard, Rone convinced four of his African-American friends — Arthur Dunning of Mobile, Melvin Leverett of Prichard, Andrew Pernell of Bessemer and Jerome Tucker of Birmingham — into trying out with him. Though the other four had to wait to be cleared academically and physically, Rone became the first Black player to suit up for an Alabama football practice on April 1, 1967.
Rone had been an all-state selection in high school and had received scholarship offers from historically Black schools. However, he wanted to prove he was good enough to play in the SEC.
“I wanted to go to school in my state, and I wanted to play football here,” Rone told The Birmingham News prior to the start of spring practice. “If I didn’t think I was good enough to play on this team, I wouldn’t have come out.”
As Alabama guard Tom Somerville told author Keith Dunnavant for his book The Missing Ring, Bryant and his coaches instructed the players “that we shouldn’t make a big deal about it… just to treat ’em like everybody else, which we did.”
Rone said he was nervous at first, but soon got over the anxiety.
“They were doing a drill, and the defensive backs would attack the running backs,” Rone told the SEC Network for its 2019 Saturdays In the South documentary series. “And the guys were getting tired, so the coach said ‘I need some more running backs.’ I said, ‘I’ll try it.’
“Before I positioned myself to get ready, the defensive back hit me and knocked me square on my butt. When that happened, I felt like the eyes of the world were looking at me. I felt so embarrassed. When they blew the whistle the next time, I tackled him just as well as he tackled me. I just raised him up across the chest with my forearm, knocked him out of the way. … All the butterflies went away. It was just football then.”
As it turned out, only Rone and one one of the other African-American players (conflicting reports indicate it was either Pernell or Tucker) stuck it out through the entire spring and suited up for the Red and White intrasquad game (the precursor to A-Day). At the end of the spring, Bryant informed Rone that he’d made the team and would be allowed to return for the start of preseason camp in August.
“I got a fair shot,” Rone said at the time, according to a 2012 article on RollBamaRoll.com. “I expect to get a chance to play next season.”
But it was not to be. Rone left school over the summer for family reasons (which he has never discussed publicly), and soon after entered the military.
Had Rone stayed at Alabama in 1967, the Crimson Tide would have been among the first SEC football teams — rather than one of the last — to integrate. Kentucky running back Nat Northington became the first African-American football player in SEC history in 1967, Tennessee wide receiver Lester McClain followed in 1968.
It would not be until 1969 that Alabama signed Jackson to a scholarship, and not until 1971 that Mitchell and Jackson first saw the field in a varsity game for the Crimson Tide. Freshmen were not eligible to play on the varsity in college football until 1972; Mitchell was a junior-college transfer who signed with Alabama in late 1970.
(Pernell — one of the original 1967 walk-ons — returned to the Alabama team in the spring of 1968 and played in the spring game. However, he was ruled ineligible to play football due to an SEC rule at the time that prohibited students who were on academic scholarships from participating in athletics.)
Rone and the other 1967 walk-ons remained obscure figures until Dunnavant began researching The Missing Ring. He tracked down Rone, who was initially reluctant to talk, and convinced him to open up about his experiences at Alabama.
The story of the walk-ons was not mentioned — nor was Jackson’s presence on the 1970 Alabama freshman team — in the 2008 HBO documentary “Breaking the Huddle,” which told the story of college football’s integration. However, 2013 Dunnavant’s documentary “Three Days at Foster” included the first on-camera interviews with Rone, Dunning and Pernell.
Rone did return to Alabama a few years later to finish his degree in political science. He went back home to Montgomery and for many years worked as a plant supervisor in a production facility
Though he never suited up for a game at Alabama, Rone was inducted as an honorary member into the Crimson Tide’s “A-Club” letterman’s association in 2014 (a direct result of Dunnavant’s film). In a 2023 interview with Montgomery’s WSFA-TV, he said he remains proud of his brief tenure as an Alabama football player.
“I feel like I’m just as much a part of it as anyone who’s been here,” Rone said. “It’s a great feeling.”
