As a boy growing up in Houston, Dennis Quaid remembers supermarkets with bathrooms and drinking fountains labeled "White" and "Colored." He remembers Jim Crow balconies in the movie theaters of East Texas.

So, in making the new movie The Express: The Ernie Davis Story, in which Mr. Quaid plays the head football coach at Syracuse University, he says the mandate was "not to be politically correct. Not to make a movie with 2008 values set in 1959."

Before it's over, Dallas and the Cotton Bowl emerge as characters, even villains. Syracuse – led by All-American running back Ernie Davis, the first black player to win the Heisman Trophy – arrives to play in the Cotton Bowl game on Jan. 1, 1960.

What unfolds is a moving two hours that transcend football and serve as a time capsule of American history. Dallas is the setting for more than one racist incident, but says Mr. Quaid, 54, who's "proud to be a Texan," it could have happened anywhere.

"We tried to reflect the way it used to be," says the actor who plays the late Ben Schwartzwalder, a World War II paratrooper who coached Mr. Davis at Syracuse. "In doing so, we look back, not just at Texas, but at the nation.

"Racism was more overt in the South but institutionalized in the North. There were certain lines you didn't cross, and that's just the way things were. But the movie also speaks to today – about how far we've come and how far we have yet to go."

He pauses. "To tell you the truth, I grew up hearing the 'N-word' used casually. We're not starting a dialogue. The dialogue has already started – we have an African-American running for president. But we're contributing to the dialogue."

In the movie, which opened nationally on Friday, the Syracuse team shows up at a Dallas hotel to be greeted by a Confederate-flag-waving mob. Its three black players are informed that they will be segregated from white teammates. They sleep in janitors' quarters.

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Syracuse Orangemen running back Ernie Davis

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Then comes the game. A white player from the University of Texas, which Syracuse defeats 23-14 to win the national championship, spews a racist insult at Mr. Davis, who overcomes a pulled hamstring to almost single-handedly whip the Longhorns. After winning the award for Most Valuable Player, he and his black teammates are told they won't be welcome at the post-game party, held in honor of the MVP.

John Brown, 69, was one of those teammates. He calls The Express "a good Hollywood movie" but takes issue with various details. There were, he says, "guys who called us racist names on the field." He says a UT lineman kept calling him "a big black dirty [expletive]." He says the player later apologized and that he forgave him long ago.

In the aftermath of the game, UT players charged that the racism was mutual. They accused Syracuse players of taunting one of their players, who happened to be Hispanic. Mr. Brown says he has no memory of any Hispanic players or of Syracuse engaging in anything racist.

Austin attorney Mike Cotten played safety for UT and remembers the Cotton Bowl game as having a bench-clearing brawl near the end of the first half. Mr. Brown says it came about because the UT lineman persisted in calling him a racist name. He warned him to stop, which led to a punch being thrown. Syracuse fullback Art Baker, another black player, told Life magazine that one of the UT players "spit right in my face."

"I know Dallas was considered to be a very conservative city at that time," says Mr. Cotten, 68. "But that didn't have anything to do with our football team. The game ended up with some racial overtones."

Mr. Cotten's team was all-white, as were all of UT's varsity teams until 1968, when a black player, Leon O'Neal, lasted only a season. In 1969, UT became the last all-white team to win a national championship, nearly a decade after Ernie Davis played in the Cotton Bowl.

In 2001, the Cotton Bowl Athletic Association inducted Mr. Davis into its Hall of Fame, though he died of leukemia at 23 after leaving college and before being able to play for the Cleveland Browns.

In The Express, he's portrayed by Rob Brown, who co-starred with Sean Connery in Finding Forrester.

Rick Baker, president of the Cotton Bowl Athletic Association, grew up in Elmira, N.Y., as did his boyhood hero, Mr. Davis. Last week, Mr. Baker issued a statement:

"What happened in the 1960s during the civil rights era is something all Americans have learned from and should never forget. The movie certainly reflects a period of change in America. It's a tragic yet inspiring story that should be told."

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Actor Dennis Quaid at the premiere of The Express in Los Angeles.

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But Mr. Brown says the film should have strived harder for accuracy. He remembers seeing no Confederate flags during his visit and takes issue with the movie's depiction of the Melrose Hotel, dubbed "the Aristocrat" in The Express.

"They have us living in a pig sty," he says with a laugh. Black players were segregated from white teammates, except for one, "who stayed with us. But they put us in a suite, a really nice suite adjacent to the kitchen."

He also takes issue with the post-game award scene being portrayed as a snub by a Dallas country club. What really happened sounds even worse.

Both teams were enjoying a post-game dinner at a Dallas hotel, but after the meal was over and Mr. Davis had received the MVP award, Cotton Bowl officials approached the black players from Syracuse. They told them the party was about to start, and they would have to leave. "We went instead to a party thrown by the NAACP," says Mr. Brown.

In 2001, he says he was privileged to meet Texas coach Darrell Royal, who had come to Dallas for the Ernie Davis induction. He says Mr. Royal apologized for his team's behavior more than 40 years earlier.

"I thought that was really classy," he says.

Mr. Brown's biggest issue with the film has nothing to do with Dallas. The Express, he says, portrays Mr. Davis as a confrontational figure who clashed with his coach in front of teammates.

"Ben may have been a lot of things, but he wasn't mean," says Mr. Brown. "Ernie Davis never would have embarrassed his coach in front of his team. He and Ben had a really good relationship. Out of all the guys, Ben treated Ernie like a son. If Ernie had a problem, he would have gone into Ben's office and talked privately to him."

Details notwithstanding, Mr. Quaid says the point of the film is to underscore the stark racial realities that existed a half-century ago and to educate the under-40 crowd, which he says has reacted with shock and amazement.

"Near the end, Ernie is walking with Floyd Little," a star running back whom Mr. Davis recruited to play at Syracuse. "Ernie picks up a bottle," says Mr. Quaid. "And he says, 'I didn't want to be the best black running back ever. I wanted to be the best running back.' The point is, not to look at each other with labels. I don't know that that's even possible in our lifetimes, or whether it's possible, period."

The movie's theme is best summed up, he says, in Corinthians 15, which Mr. Davis' grandfather reads aloud. " 'I am what I am because of God's grace,' " says Mr. Quaid, " 'and may that grace God bestows on my life be used to great effect.' It's not just your goals that are important but how to get there, and Ernie Davis as a person embodied that in his short life.

"As a result, this is a movie that hits me in a place where I don't have words. Ernie Davis transcended football and color and race, and he did so because of grace."