Gaither began his coaching career in 1927 at Henderson Institute, a secondary school in
Henderson, North Carolina. In 1935, he was hired by the Saint Paul Normal and Industrial School—later known as
Saint Paul's College—in
Lawrenceville, Virginia as an assistant coach in football,
basketball, and
track and field. The following year, he succeeded Theodore H. Smith as head coach and assistant director of physical education at Saint Paul's. Gaither led Saint Paul's football team to a record of 2–5–1 in 1936. His basketball team that winter had a record of 6–10. Gaither went to work as an assistant to head coach
William M. Bell at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes—now known as
Florida A&M University (FAMU)— in 1937. The FAMC Rattlers had an undefeated (8–0) season that year, and won their first
black college football national championship. The school won the national title again in 1942. Bell left to enter military service in 1943. After two years of problems in the football program, Gaither was hired as the head football coach for Florida A&M College in 1945. One story is that the president of the college could not find anyone else to take the job. Gaither worked very hard to motivate his players. He would say, "I like my boys to be agile, mobile, and hostile." It is reported that he would hide an onion in his handkerchief to work up tears in his pre-game pep talks. He built up an effective recruiting network; in the days of Jim Crow, he had the pick of every good black high school player in Florida. Indeed, by the 1960s did not even bother to recruit players from outside the state. Gaither was dedicated to his job. After retiring, he told his biographer, "I run into so many people who have no deep sense of morals—people who got a price tag on them, who'd sell their soul. I want to find the man who has no price tag on him. I'm not for sale." Gaither instituted an annual coaching clinic at FAMU in the late 1950s. He recruited major college coaches, including
Paul "Bear" Bryant,
Frank Broyles,
Darrell Royal,
Woody Hayes and
Adolph Rupp, among others, to staff the clinics. Gaither introduced the
Split-T formation in 1963, and it was soon adopted at other colleges. In 1969 Florida A&M defeated the
Spartans of the
University of Tampa, 34–28, in the
South's first football game between a white college and a
historically black college. Gaither later became director of athletics and chairman of the Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation at FAMU. He continued to hold the last two positions after he retired as coach until his retirement from teaching in 1973. ==Legacy and death==