JACK PITTS

Jack Pitts was the quarterback of the 1965 Class A GIA championship team from Decatur’s Trinity High and was a catalyst for integrating Deep South college football. Pitts passed for two touchdowns and ran for another in Trinity’s 19-14 victory over Wilson of Tifton in the state championship game. Pitts also intercepted a pass that led to the winning touchdown, which he scored. Contemporary newspaper articles credited Pitts with 33 touchdowns scored for his career and 24 rushing or passing touchdowns in the first five games of 1965. He was the MVP of the 1966 GIA East-West All-Star Game. Pitts is believed to be the first African American from metro Atlanta to play football in the Big Ten after signing with Michigan State, whose coach, Duffy Dougherty, called Pitts “the greatest quarterback prospect we’ve ever seen.’’ Pitts, also the valedictorian of his class, had more than 20 scholarship offers. But as he recounted years later, “Georgia and Georgia Tech wouldn’t recruit me because I was a Negro.’’ In 1966, the Atlanta Constitution and Sports Illustrated pointed to Pitts as an example of how racist policies held back Southern college football. A neck injury sidelined Pitts at Michigan State, but he went on to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees there. Decatur High, a formerly all-white school that absorbed Trinity’s students in 1968, added Pitts to its Wall of Honor in 2015.