R.L. Stockard
Sport: Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism
Induction Year: 2008
University: Southern
R.L. Stockard was the first African-American to be employed as a sports writer at the Baton Rouge State-Times (1954-1960) and the New Orleans States-Item (1960-74). He also was the first sports information director at Southern (1956-59) and for the New Orleans-based South Western Athletic Conference (1985-92) and wrote for the Baton Rouge News-Leader, Louisiana Weekly and Black Collegian magazine.
He helped organize the famous “secret” St. Augustine-Jesuit basketball game in 1965 that desegregated prep sports in New Orleans and was on the committee which brought the Bayou Classic to the city.
In 2005, Stockard was stranded in his Ninth Ward home for two days during Hurricane Katrina. At age 81 he walked more than two miles to the top of the I-10 high rise and was eventually evacuated from the Superdome. Prior to that he had been an adjunct professor of geography at SUNO.







