The CNN special 1968 is worth watching. Why? History matters. It always has. 1968, fifty years ago, resonates today through the resulting cultural and social changes of that year. That year changed our country and influenced many of us who lived through it.

In 1968, I turned 16. Social changes rocked the country. Integration was now the law of the land. Old restrictive ways, legal and illegal, said and unsaid, began to erode. Civil unrest reigned. Riots, demonstrations, the struggle for women’s rights, a presidential election that included the governor from my home state of Alabama, and the Vietnam War dominated the headlines.

At 16, my priorities were simple teenage desires. I was focused on the freedom a driver’s license could bring me. I got my license in February, but initially there was little driving for me. I had to earn the money to pay my car insurance. It took me a while even though I had a weekend job. Finally! I had a license, insurance and occasional access to the family car.

While the world swirled around me I continued in my teenage world.

On January 14, I watched the Green Bay Packers with Alabama’s Bart Starr defeat the Oakland Raiders 33-14 in Super Bowl II at Miami’s Orange Bowl.

Five days after that, on January 21, my family celebrated my birthday with homemade vanilla ice cream and my favorite of my Mom’s cakes, chocolate icing with pecans.

In sports, I went out for spring football practice.

As a fledgling speaker, I admired Dr. Martin Luther King. That year he delivered two of my favorites. Years later, I would learn his The Drum Major Instinct and I See The Promise Land and would deliver them in churches.

On April 4, many of us who were teens had to grow up when a gunman ended Dr. King’s life, and the hopes and dreams of many Americans, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots erupted across the country. It was a scary night for me as I made my way home from spring football practice. The crosstown trip would take two-and a-half hours and three buses to make the trek from my private high school to my home.Since the age of 14, I had lived in the segregated world and the integrated private school world that my dad paid for with two and sometimes three jobs. I often said that I was an ambassador between those two worlds. That night, I felt as if both worlds had failed me. I was alone and afraid.

Two months later, Robert Kennedy, running for President, was assassinated like his brother President John Kennedy was in 1963. Literally, the world has never been the same. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King in the same year two months apart. Five years after John Kennedy. What if, they had lived? What if’ was the question many of us asked over and over. A world of justice, peace, and love had seemed so close.

Change continued throughout the year.

On May 13, one million students marched through the streets of Paris.

In the fall of 1968, Henry Harris, a basketball player from Boligee, Alabama, entered Auburn University as its first African American scholarship Athlete. He was the first in the states of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. He would become a friend and big brother to me.

On September 24, 60 Minutes debuted on CBS.

On October 16, at the Olympics in Mexico City, with the world watching, African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists in a black power salute after winning, respectively, the gold and bronze medals in the Olympic men's 200 metres. They were both banned from future Olympic games.

On November 5, Republican challenger Richard Nixon defeated the Democratic candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and American Independent Party candidate and Alabama Governor, George Wallace. Nixon would become the President of the United States.

On November 14, Yale University announced it would admit women.

1968, like 1963, changed us all. Many of us remember what we were doing when those critical historical moments occurred. Some still debate the value of those times. I agree with Dr. King, “Time is neutral it can be used either constructively or destructively.”

The Big O is gone.

My friend. My teammate. The man who helped me through the biggest cultural change of my life is gone. James Curtis Owens died today, March 26, 2016. I knew it was coming. We all knew it was coming. But knowing and living beyond it leaves a hurt and pain deep down in my soul.

I first saw the Big O on a Friday night at John Carroll Athletic Field on Montclair Road in Birmingham, Alabama. I was a junior at John Carroll High School, playing my first full year of organized football. We were a small, rag tag, undersized bunch playing about two classifications above our ability and size level. We didn’t win very often.

The opponent was Fairfield High School. They were good. They had a starter named James Owens, who would later sign with Auburn University, becoming the first African American to integrate a major state university in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi… the Deep South. Now, he was warming up across the field from me. A running back, he was tall, lanky and wore a horse collar around his neck. He was about 6’2” and weighed close to 210 pounds. He looked dangerous. Ready to kick some you know what!

Our coach had warned us about him. He’d then gone on to tell the lie that coaches tell outmanned teams when they are about to get slaughtered by a bigger, faster, better team with bigger, faster, better players.

Referring to Owens, our coach said, “Hey! He’s no better than you. He puts his pants on one leg at a time just like you do.”

We all knew that was bullshit. Putting his pants on like we did had nothing to do with playing the way we did. This guy was All-State in football and track. He ran the 100 hundred-yard dash and threw the shot-put. He was a monster. I was glad as hell I wasn’t on defense.

It wasn’t pretty. He left carnage on the field. I don’t remember the score but it wasn’t close. After it was over, I watched him walk off the field where he had dominated us. Having integrated Fairfield High School football he was now heading off to be one of the first blacks in the Southeastern Conference.

Two years later, I would join James and Virgil Pearson, also from Fairfield, and Auburn’s first African American Athlete, Henry Harris, at Auburn University.

As a basketball player, Henry often travelled in different circles. For Virgil and me, James became our Daddy. We nicknamed him “Daddy O.” He was strong like our fathers, but gentle towards us, who had followed him. We not only respected him, everybody, on and off the field and in the athletic complex, held James in high esteem. Integration made things socially awkward but everybody respected James for his quiet, dignified courage. That respect lasted all of his life.

Our special friendship lasted from 1970 until his death. Like close friends we drifted apart throughout the seasons of our lives but we always found each other again because of the love and respect we had for our shared experience.

Henry left Auburn University after his senior basketball season. Virgil left his sophomore year, looking for a different experience. For the next two years on the varsity football team It was just James and me, as athletes of color. For the rest of his life we always relived that experience.

Between us we realized there was no one else in the world who shared that loneliness, that moment in our lives where we carried the pail of integration uphill without much assistance from those who could have helped us along. Those times were about providing for those whom would follow. We knew that. It kept us going.

James kept me grounded. He talked me down many times when, emotionally, I was way over the top. Over time, we embraced our teammates and they embraced us with that special bond that comes from the shared experiences of being teammates and winning games. During the two years when James and I were the two black pioneers on the team, we won 19 games and lost 3. We were a part of something bigger than us.

Throughout the decades that followed we talked a lot about those times. We always circled back to that experience. What had been a painful part of our lives had become, by the 21^st century, a memory of achievement, a gift that we gave to all who followed at our university, not just the black athletes. We also grew to love our teammates and they loved us back. Today we are teammates for life. It ‘s more than a slogan. We live it.

James is an Auburn University icon. He doesn’t need for me to tell everyone about his contributions. Look around the university and you will see his accomplishments in the faces of the young men on the football team, the basketball team, the track team, the baseball team and in the faces of the young women on the softball team, the basketball team and all the other sports that did not exist before integration.

He will always be remembered for what he gave to Auburn University, the state of Alabama and college football. I will always remember him as my friend.

I never thought I’d write this column. I never knew I’d feel this way. A teammate has passed on and I can’t stop thinking of him. Our journey together brought us a long way. Because we accomplished great things on the football field 40 years ago, the sports media named us, “The Amazins.” As we grew older, had families, and matured, learning to love each other along the way, we coined our own phrase, “Teammates for Life.”

That’s how I feel about David.

David Langner, died Saturday April 26, 2014. He was one helluva football player. A little guy, I often said he was crazy on the football field but if I had the first choice, I’d take David. I’d rather have him on my side than be against him.

David and I traveled a long way in our journey to friendship. I knew him before he knew me. We played against each other in High School. He was a star at Woodlawn High in Birmingham. They were very good. The night we played them they dressed nearly a hundred guys. They came out of their locker room, cocky and proud and ready to feast on the 40 or so players we had from the small Catholic school who had no business on the field with them. David, his brother, his cousin, and their teammates blanked us 39-0 and it wasn’t that close. David, a winner of all kinds of honors, became a highly touted signee of Auburn University.

I walked on at Auburn. One of three blacks on the practice fields of over a hundred players and the only black walkon. David and I didn’t start out as friends.

Walkons have it tough. David didn’t care for the fact that I had dared to walk on to that hallowed ground that he had already earned a spot on. To further confuse things, we had both grown up in Birmingham in the 1960’s when legal segregation meant we could not play ball with or against each other. Friendship was out of the question.

We didn’t get along. David had further to go than I did. We fought often on the field. But we were ballplayers and together we won many games. I won a scholarship and in 1972, we shocked the Southeastern Conference by winning 10 games, losing only once and finishing #5 in the nation. David was a hero that year with his two touchdowns against Alabama in the now famous “Punt Bama Punt” (look it up if you don’t know) game against Alabama. He also led us in interceptions, made All-SEC as a defensive back, and instigated many of the fights we had with other teams. He was a bad ass and we were glad we had him. We always knew he would make a big play.

As we won games, he and I tolerated each other the way teammates will do when they are not friends. Winning does that.

When we were done, he went his way and I went mine. Many years later in Nashville, while filming a Legends of Auburn video, we sat across from each other at dinner. We talked and laughed. He’d already had some health issues and discussed them freely with me. It was a great night for me and, I believe for him. After those many years, we were learning to be friends.

Later, at the thirty-year reunion of “The Amazins,” David came up and gave me a hug. Not one of those quick man hugs but a real hug. He wouldn’t let me go. I hugged him back. I remember standing there in the middle of the floor hugging. Hugging for what seemed like a very long time. That is my favorite memory of my friend David.

Since I heard of his death, I can’t stop thinking of him. I’m proud that we overcame society to be friends.

David will be celebrated for the touchdowns against Alabama, and the great career he had at Auburn. There’s talk that David belongs in the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. You will get no argument from me on that. But most importantly, I will fondly remember the impact we had on each other’s lives. We are teammates for life, and now beyond.

If work is supposed to be fun, I’m having a ball. For the past year I’ve been working on a project that feeds my soul and in the words of the old Native American Chief in the film Little Big Man “causes my heart to soar like a hawk.” Quiet Courage, a film documentary on my good friend James Owens gets my juices flowing.

James Owens has been my friend since 1970. We were pioneers of college football integration at Auburn University. When we played black players in the Southeastern conference of college football were relegated to one or two per team.

In comparison to James I had it easy. He was the first African American football player in Auburn’s history.

The loneliness, the slurs, the suppression of hurts and emotions stayed with me a long time. It was three decades before I could express it in this manner or any manner. It was many years before I could bring myself to talk about it with my wife and son. Just couldn’t. It was too painful.

But this isn’t about me: Nor about the pain. It’s about my friend and his forty-year relationship with Auburn University.

“I had no idea what I was getting myself into,” James tells me. “I had no idea of the magnitude of being the first black.”

In 1969, James Owens realized a portion of Martin Luther King’s dream. He fulfilled the legacy of Jackie Robinson. He answered prayers of many blacks and some whites in the state of Alabama by answering Auburn’s call to play football at the University. What has followed over the last forty years is a love story.

Not knowing what to do to aid their only black football player and only the second black athlete in Auburn Athletic history, Auburn attempted to treat James as if he was no different than the other athletes. “We treat all our athletes the same” was the philosophy.

Imagine being the only white among a team of blacks. Imagine being the only white in a University of 15,000 blacks where everyone, students, alumni, whites and blacks examine your every move. Imagine there are so few people who look like you on the campus, that your social life consists of sitting in the TV room after games while all your teammates are out partying and enjoying the spoils of victory. Imagine being seventeen and having no family, nearby. Imagine possessing a second rate education, a by-product of segregation that leaves you inadequate in the classroom. Imagine.

Quiet Courage explores these issues and others as told by James, his teammates former coaches and friends. It’s introspective, funny, sad, and full of love. Mistakes were made. James did not graduate. He didn’t play professional football. The University brought him back as a graduate assistant to get his degree. The rules were changed and he was asked to leave. He wandered. Jobs came and went. His wife Gloria who he met when she became one of the few black women at Auburn his senior year, became his salvation.

Then he found the ministry. Saving souls was as tough as scoring against bigotry, but it was more rewarding. His church was only forty miles from where he’d made history, but he didn’t venture close to campus. Nor did the University reach out to him. Love relationships are like that.

Fate intervened. His nephew, Ladarious signed a scholarship to play football at Auburn. James was drawn back to his Alma Mater. This time it was different. Auburn loved him back. Auburn Athletics created the James Owens Award of Courage to honor him. He received his award and a standing ovation in front of 86,00 Auburn fans. Auburn named him an Auburn legend and he was honored at the SEC Legends dinner with other legends from the conference before the 2012 championship game.

Life was good. He was back in the fold. His teammates honored him as the soul of the 10-1, 1972 team known as the Amazins, one of the favored teams in Auburn history.

Then came the diagnosis. His heart was failing. Tears followed. His teammates and the University rallied to his side. Letters, phone calls, and loads of love poured in.

Yes. He realized, they loved him, not only as a football player but, as James Owens, the human being who notched his name in the Auburn history book.

He had one regret. He never received his degree.

The phone call from the Auburn administrators shocked him. The robe, the march, the arena full of the Auburn family, his name called, the honorary degree handed to him, his acceptance speech. He was an Auburn University graduate.

They were back together again, a happy ending. Just like in the movies.

Birthdays for me have always been celebratory. From my time as a curly-headed grinning youngster, to my memorable 21^st, 40^th and 50^th birthdays. They’ve always been special.

Today’s celebration is also reflective, A look back, over the journey of things seen, lessons learned, and paths crossed.

I’ve jokingly talked about the uniqueness of this birthday. I’ve said to friends, “Think about it, President Barack Obama’s Inauguration, Martin Luther King’s Holiday and my birthday all falling on the same day.” Wow!

Do I feel special? Yes I do.

A beneficiary of Dr. King’s legacy and a forerunner to President Obama’s “he’s the first African American,” to do this experience, my reflection leads me back down history’s path. True history and truth are the scorekeepers for legacies. They record who is right and who is wrong.

Dr. King more than “having a dream” ushered in changes in social and economic morality in the United States. His sermons and speeches resonate today as moral, guideposts for ethics and character.

Annually, I read from A Testament Of Hope, The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King. The book, an inspiring work is a collection of King’s speeches on nonviolence, civil disobedience, and social policy. My favorite is The Drum Major Instinct, delivered from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church on February 4, 1968. The lessons are “fitness over favoritism” and “servant leadership” (“he who is greatest among you shall be the servant to all”). I have been honored to perform these words from Dr. King’s works. I can think of no higher honor.

The praise for King did not come easy. The criticism and stinging arrows were scary and led to his assassination. He was mocked, “a communist,” “a socialist,” “…he hates America.” “An outside agitator.”

Obviously, they were on the wrong side of history.

I wonder about President Obama? The personal attacks on this President have been different. Hate filled. My friends who happen to be white, whether Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, tell me of the hate filled stories about this man that are shared with them that those same “ friends” don’t feel comfortable sharing with me. My friends tell me if they defend their points of view with intelligence and fact, the conversation becomes a treatise on” treason” and “the white race.”

George W. Bush was a bad President, most agree. His record on the economy, United States security, international relations, and other key indicators verify that. Yet there was never the personal hate this President is subjected to. Surely, if raising taxes and the deficit were the sole issue, Ronald Reagan would no longer be praised.

At a recent football reunion, two ex-teammates were somewhat embarrassed at their own words and actions as portrayed in my book Walk-On, My Reluctant Journey to Integration at Auburn University, a look at my personal sports integration of major college football. Today, they are fine gentlemen, but back then they reacted to me out of ignorance and lack of exposure. They listened to false information designed to divide people and protect economic interests. I’m sure today, it’s embarrassing.

In my presentations and speeches, I often get the audience to mentally travel along with me back to the days of southern sports integration. If they are old enough, I ask them to examine their own feelings of who they were at that time. I then ask if they would want their grandchildren to have known them back then. I ask whether they were on the right side or the wrong side of history.

Many choose to lower their eyes no longer willing to make eye contact, their action a telltale giveaway to their answer. I imagine it’s not a comforting feeling to know that you were wrong, because of your own ignorance and your own unwillingness or laziness in searching out the truth.

Finally and for my birthday, ask yourself this question; Thirty years from now, will you have been on the right side or the wrong side of history? Will you be able to look those who come behind you in the eye or will you lower your eyes in shame?