Editing Atlantic Coast Conference (section)

====Racial integration====
Racial integration of all-white collegiate sports teams was high on the regional agenda in the 1950s and 1960s. Involved were issues of equality, racism, and the alumni demand for the top players needed to win high-profile games. The ACC took the lead.{{Vague|date=August 2022|reason=unclear when this happened and how it compares to other Southern colleges, much less Northern colleges}} First they started to schedule integrated teams from the north. Finally ACC schools—typically under pressure from boosters and civil rights groups—integrated their teams.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Martin|first=Charles H.|date=1999|title=The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow in Southern College Sports: The Case of the Atlantic Coast Conference|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23522657|journal=The North Carolina Historical Review|volume=76|issue=3|pages=253–284|jstor=23522657|issn=0029-2494|access-date=January 20, 2020|archive-date=April 18, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160418053400/http://www.jstor.org/stable/23522657|url-status=dead}}</ref> With an alumni base that dominated local and state politics, society and business, the ACC flagship schools were successful in their endeavor—as Pamela Grundy argues, they had learned how to win:
: The widespread admiration that athletic ability inspired would help transform athletic fields from grounds of symbolic play to forces for social change, places where a wide range of citizens could publicly and at times effectively challenge the assumptions that cast them as unworthy of full participation in U.S. society. While athletic successes would not rid society of prejudice or stereotype—black athletes would continue to confront racial slurs...[—minority star players demonstrated] the discipline, intelligence, and poise to contend for position or influence in every arena of national life.<ref>{{cite web |last=Grundy |first=Pamela |title=Learning to win: Sports, education, and social change in twentieth-century North Carolina |publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]] |date=2003 |page=297 |access-date=January 25, 2022 |url=https://www.questia.com/read/101457616/learning-to-win-sports-education-and-social-change |language=en |archive-date=December 15, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181215171453/https://www.questia.com/read/101457616/learning-to-win-sports-education-and-social-change |url-status=dead }}</ref>