Steve Stacey gives his grandson’s suggestion a contented laugh of acceptance.
These days, they undoubtedly have the casting contacts at Wrexham. The story of the club seems to have captured the attention of half of Hollywood ever since Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney arrived at the Racecourse.
However, Stacey’s walkway existed before the red carpets along the Mold Road. One that started in the racial division of the Deep South and traveled through the gas-lit alleys of post-war Bristol to Wrexham, connecting North America and north Wales long before the A-listers.
As a result, Stacey, a black GI’s kid, became the first African-American football player.
In addition to Charlton Athletic and Exeter City, it brought him to Ipswich Town, where he would become the team’s first black player.
And in the end, it brought him and his family—who had no knowledge of the significant events their long-lost relative had accomplished far from their Mississippi home—to an emotional reunion with the father he believed to be dead.
