Howard White, who with wife Janice White co-owns TOP Choice, a store that sells Southern University, Greek, HBCU and masonic merchandise at its Harding Blvd. location just off the Southern University campus, holds one of the last 'House Divided' LSU- SU license plates, popular with faimlies with kids at both schools, Friday, Sept. 9, 2022, a day before Saturday's historic LSU-Southern University football matchup.
Bennie Brazell of LSU shares a hug with Chad Green of Southern during the Parade of Champions on Jan. 24, 2004, in downtown Baton Rouge. 'It did a great deal to bring the city together,' former Southern coach Pete Richardson said.
Fans at Southern University's 86-0 win over Florida Memorial University, Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022 at A.W. Mumford Stadium. It was the highest points total ever scored by the Jaguars in a football game; the 1952 Jaguars beat Bishop College by the score of 105-0.
Mike waves a large LSU flag as fans gather to watch The Golden Band from Tiger Land march down Victory Hill, Saturday, September 18, 2021, before kickoff between LSU and Central Michigan in Baton Rouge, La.
Fans gather to watch The Golden Band from Tiger Land march down Victory Hill, Saturday, September 18, 2021, before kickoff between LSU and Central Michigan in Baton Rouge, La.
Howard White, who with wife Janice White co-owns TOP Choice, a store that sells Southern University, Greek, HBCU and masonic merchandise at its Harding Blvd. location just off the Southern University campus, holds one of the last 'House Divided' LSU- SU license plates, popular with faimlies with kids at both schools, Friday, Sept. 9, 2022, a day before Saturday's historic LSU-Southern University football matchup.
Bennie Brazell of LSU shares a hug with Chad Green of Southern during the Parade of Champions on Jan. 24, 2004, in downtown Baton Rouge. 'It did a great deal to bring the city together,' former Southern coach Pete Richardson said.
Fans at Southern University's 86-0 win over Florida Memorial University, Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022 at A.W. Mumford Stadium. It was the highest points total ever scored by the Jaguars in a football game; the 1952 Jaguars beat Bishop College by the score of 105-0.
Mike waves a large LSU flag as fans gather to watch The Golden Band from Tiger Land march down Victory Hill, Saturday, September 18, 2021, before kickoff between LSU and Central Michigan in Baton Rouge, La.
Fans gather to watch The Golden Band from Tiger Land march down Victory Hill, Saturday, September 18, 2021, before kickoff between LSU and Central Michigan in Baton Rouge, La.
Behind the counter at her family’s store, Janice White moved from one task to the next. She restocked shelves with Columbia blue Southern T-shirts. She organized racks of apparel. She helped customers check out and filled a cardboard box with used hangers.
TOP Choice should have closed 25 minutes earlier, but people continued to walk inside, giving her more to do. Some customers had come for their children’s spirit days at school. Others wanted new shirts and hats. Southern’s first football game against LSU had sparked a rise in sales that rivaled the biggest match-ups of the year.
“It’s like homecoming,” White said.
Near the front of the store on the edge of Southern’s campus, a sign advertised a weeklong $20 package deal that included blue shirts and a pompom. Licensing issues prevented TOP Choice from making merchandise with both school logos, so it leaned into a marketing concept, emphasizing one color.
“Don’t wear gold,” Howard White said, smiling while he sorted merchandise. “Because both teams have gold.”
Excitement has steadily grown around parts of Baton Rouge before kickoff at 6:30 p.m. Saturday inside a sold-out Tiger Stadium. Geographically, LSU and Southern University are separated by fewer than 8 miles, but their football teams never played each other until now. LSU officials expect 200,000 people on campus, which would match crowds for the largest Alabama games.
The game itself, for once not the main event, offers a backdrop for everything else. Tailgating and the halftime show may provide the most entertainment, and throughout the day, two sides of a divided town will share the same ground, creating an event older generations thought they’d never witness.
“I see it as a unifier bringing our city together,” Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome said.
Baton Rouge, like the rest of the Deep South, has a fraught, often ugly racial history that stretches back centuries. The city split along those lines, a divide reflected in resources, income and perceived inequities around its two schools, one a Historically Black College and University and the other a predominantly white institution.
The relationship between the schools and their surrounding areas has made some incremental progress, particularly in recent years, but they remain separated despite their proximity. City and university leaders hope this week’s events foster more collaboration between the institutions, while football helps heal some lingering wounds.
“We can do this outside the games, and we can impact each other,” Howard White said as he sat inside an office in the back of TOP Choice one evening. “But we can also learn about each other.”
An employee knocked on the door. Someone who attended White’s church wanted to ask him a question. He told them to come inside.
"We looking for some shirts, man,” one of the customers said. “You don't have nothing with Southern and LSU on it?”
When he was about 5 years old, Verge Ausberry rode over the Mississippi River Bridge with his family. He noticed a large structure in the distance, its lights twinkling against the evening sky.
“What is that down there?” Ausberry asked.
“That's LSU,” his grandparents responded. “None of us are down there.”
Ausberry, who grew up in a family of Southern and Grambling graduates, followed HBCU football and attended the Bayou Classic. He watched more Oklahoma games because his parents got their master’s degrees there. He didn’t go to Tiger Stadium until a recruiting trip as a linebacker his senior year of high school in the mid-1980s.
Throughout the state, Black families shared a similar experience. Growing up on St. Rose Avenue from the late 1960s to early ’80s, Dale Flowers and his friends rode their bicycles all over town. They stopped once they reached LSU’s front entrance. When he ran track at McKinley High School, less than a mile from campus, the team never ventured farther than the lakes during practice.
“For me and the kids I grew up with,” Flowers said, “LSU was not a place where we felt welcome.”
While LSU started in 1860, it did not accept a Black student for almost a century. Southern offered an alternative, growing into a prominent HBCU. Collis Temple Jr., who became the first Black LSU basketball player in 1974, spent his free time with the students at Southern.
Relations improved to a degree over the years. Flowers attended parties on LSU’s campus as a Southern student. Ausberry played football for LSU. But progress has been slow and never followed a linear path.
Lori Martin, an LSU professor of sociology and African and American studies, noticed race determined what Black and white citizens meant when they referred to “the university” after she moved from New York in 2013.
“It was hard to find any memorabilia or gear for Southern if you were south of Government Street,” Martin said. “And you would hardly see any LSU things if you were north of Government.”
If nothing else, sports offered a chance to at least interact. After LSU won the BCS national championship and Southern won the Black college national title in 2003, the city hosted a joint parade through downtown.
Crowds eight to 10 rows deep lined the streets as players rode through on floats behind the bands. The celebration culminated in a joint ceremony on the Capitol steps.
“A lot of individuals on both sides of town hadn't seen or experienced anything like that in the city of Baton Rouge before,” former Southern coach Pete Richardson said. “It did a great deal to bring the city together.”
When Skip Bertman took over as athletic director in 2001, LSU already had a game scheduled against Utah State that fall. LSU paid the school $680,000, he said, for a matchup that didn’t create much excitement or help fill the vast stadium.
Bertman implemented a new strategy. He had played midweek baseball games against in-state teams, and he applied the same idea to football. Bertman wanted to keep money within Louisiana, spend less on the payout and draw more fans.
Though LSU had a long history with Tulane, it hadn’t regularly faced other Louisiana teams in football. Bertman understood the optics if the state’s flagship school lost, but he knew that likely wouldn’t happen because of the talent gap. LSU hasn’t lost to an in-state team since 1982.
Bertman scheduled UL the next season. LSU paid $400,000 and had more fans in the seats, while the Ragin’ Cajuns didn’t have to spend as much money on travel costs, letting them keep a larger share of the guarantee.
“This is a good business decision,” Bertman said, “regardless of the outcome of the game.”
LSU maintained the approach across multiple administrations, scheduling 19 games against in-state teams over the past two decades. Southern and Grambling were the only ones left. Grambling is on the schedule next season.
Ausberry, now LSU’s executive deputy athletic director, began arranging football schedules in 2006. The idea of hosting Southern floated around without any serious discussions. He worried about player safety.
“I wanted the program to be in a good position,” Ausberry said. “I didn't want to go out there when they have 30 guys on the team healthy, guys with academic problems. They cleaned all that up.”
The push for the game continued. One night about three years ago inside Ruth’s Chris Steak House, Gov. John Bel Edwards summoned a group of school representatives, including Ausberry and Tony Clayton, the former chairman of Southern’s board of supervisors.
“ ‘Guys,’ ” Clayton remembered Edwards saying, “ ‘why not?’ ”
“I thought it would be beneficial,” Edwards said. “At the same time, I don't want to overstate my role in it. I think this is something the two universities and their leaders really wanted to do. They had to make it work.”
The next spring, Ausberry sat in his office in the midst of a national social justice movement after the killing of George Floyd. Wondering what he could do, Ausberry thought finally about scheduling the games.
Ausberry decided the teams were stable enough to compete, and he believed LSU’s first football game against an HBCU opponent might help bridge the divides. LSU and Southern agreed to a $700,000 guarantee with an additional $60,000 payment to Southern’s athletic foundation and 800 complimentary tickets.
“It does start a healing process,” Ausberry said, “from things in the past.”
As the mayor, Broome will go to the game supporting both teams. A local company made her a black T-shirt for the occasion. In the front, there’s a fleur-de-lis decorated in sequins with the schools’ colors and their logos.
“I believe it's going to be historic not only because it's the first time that this has happened,” Broome said, “but I think it's going to be historic for our community that we see two great universities, esteemed and celebrated at the same time.”
While many Black residents will set foot on campus and in Tiger Stadium for the first time Saturday, some devout Southern fans decided not to attend, particularly those older than 50. Flowers, who has season tickets and went to a game in Tiger Stadium before, plans to watch on television.
Flowers said parts of his generation believe the game shouldn’t be played because of what they experienced growing up and the difference in the programs. He still doesn’t feel welcome on LSU’s campus. Emotional scars remain.
“It's a great game for the city, but I honestly have no interest in seeing it in person,” said Flowers, now president of the McKinley High Alumni Association. “I just don't have a desire to sit in Tiger Stadium and watch that game.”
Questions remain about how much one game and the surrounding events can lead to realistic change. Edwards and Broome think it will after school presidents signed a joint A&M agenda earlier this week. But people still see tensions over issues ranging from political representation to school districts, things that one weekend can’t solve.
“That can be a starting ground,” said Heishma Northern, a former Southern defensive back, “but it has to go beyond sports.”
This may not be the last time LSU and Southern play. Major programs might not schedule as many games against other divisions as college football changes, but Ausberry wants to make the matchup part of an in-state rotation with the available slots. His parents, now 91 and 87, are coming to the game.
Howard White and his family will be there, too. Their son planned to drive over from Houston, where he stayed after graduating last year from Prairie View.
White suspects his son won’t move back, at least for now. But maybe, he hopes, games like this will help people think about ways to strengthen the connective tissue of an entire city.
“I hope to see people having a good time,” White said, “and in their mind, asking themselves, ‘Why can't I do this more?’ ”
Jim Kleinpeter contributed to this report.
For more LSU sports updates, sign up for our newsletter at theadvocate.com/lsunewsletter
Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
News Tips: newstips@theadvocate.com
Other questions: subscriberservices@theadvocate.com