Roy Skinner

Each year Vanderbilt selects a book for all incoming first-year students to read during the summer before arriving on campus. This year’s selection is Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South by Andrew Maraniss, BA’92. Here we present an excerpt adapted from Strong Inside, which is currently being made into a documentary film and a children’s book. Read More

The man sitting next to me on the night of Dec. 3, 2014, was Perry Wallace, and many of the 400 people approaching him were fellow Vanderbilt alumni, including members of Wallace’s Class of 1970. It was an exhilarating and emotional scene at the Nashville Public Library, the official launch of my biography of Wallace (Strong Inside), the first African American basketball player in the Southeastern Conference. Read More

Roy Skinner, who won 278 basketball games, compiled an 81.5 percent winning percentage at Memorial Gym and recruited the first black athlete to the Southeastern Conference, died of respiratory failure at Southern Hills Medical Center. He was 80. Read More