Sport and the Color Line: Black Athletes and Race Relations in Twentieth Century America

by Miller,Patrick B.

• ISBN13: 9780415946117
• ISBN10: 0415946115
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781135941161
• Additional ISBN(s): 9780415946100
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-11-24
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The year 2003 marks the one-hundredth anniversary of W.E.B. Du Bois'Souls of Black Folk, in which he declared that "the color line" would be the problem of the twentieth century. Half a century later, Jackie Robinson would display his remarkable athletic skills in "baseball's great experiment." Now,Sport and the Color Linetakes a look at the last century through the lens of sports and race, drawing together articles by many of the leading figures in Sport Studies to address the African American experience and the history of race relations. The history of African Americans in sport is not simple, and it certainly did not begin in 1947 when Jackie Robinson first donned a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform. The essays presented here examine the complexity of black American sports culture, from the organization of semi-pro baseball and athletic programs at historically black colleges and universities, to the careers of individual stars such as Jack Johnson and Joe Louis, to the challenges faced byblack women in sports. What are today's black athletes doing in the aftermath of desegregation, or with the legacy of Muhammad Ali's political stance? The essays gathered here engage such issues, as well as the paradoxes of corporate sport and the persistence of scientific racism in the athletic realm.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Introduction	ix
I SPORT AND COMMUNITY IN THE ERA OF JIM CROW
Sport and Black Pittsburgh, 1900--1930	3	(124)
Rob Ruck
Black Entrepreneurship in the National Pastime
The Rise of Semiprofessional Baseball in Black Chicago, 1890--1915	25	(20)
Michael E. Lomax
Year of the Comet
Jack Johnson versus Jim Jeffries, July 4, 1910	45	(18)
Randy Roberts
``A General Understanding''
Organized Baseball and Black Professional Baseball, 1900--1930	63	(20)
Neil Lanctot
``We Were Ladies, We Just Played Like Boys''
African-American Womanhood and Competitive Basketball at Bennett College, 1928--1942	83	(18)
Rita Liberti
A Special Type of Discipline
Manhood and Community in African-American Institutions, 1923--1957	101	(26)
Pamela Grundy
II THE ORDEAL OF DESEGREGATION
Joe Louis: American Folk Hero	127	(144)
William H. Wiggins
``End Jim Crow in Sports''
The Leonard Bates Controversy and Protest at New York University, 1940--1941	147	(20)
Donald Spivey
Jackie Robinson
``A Lone Negro'' in Major League Baseball	167	(24)
Jules Tygiel
More Than a Game
The Political Meaning of High School Basketball in Indianapolis	191	(20)
Richard B. Pierce
``Cinderellas'' of Sport
Black Women in Track and Field	211	(22)
Susan Cahn
Jim Crow in the Gymnasium
The Integration of College Basketball in the American South	233	(18)
Charles H. Martin
Civil Rights on the Gridiron
The Kennedy Administration and the Desegregation of the Washington Redskins	251	(20)
Thomas G. Smith
III IMAGES OF THE BLACK ATHLETE AND THE RACIAL POLITICS OF SPORT
Edwin Bancroft Henderson, African-American Athletes, and the Writing of Sport History	271	(34)
David K. Wiggins
The Greatest
Muhammad Ali's Confounding Character	289	(16)
David W. Zang
The Sports Spectacle, Michael Jordan, and Nike	305	(40)
Douglas Kellner
The Anatomy of Scientific Racism
Racialist Responses to Black Athletic Achievement	327	(18)
Patrick B. Miller
Crisis of Black Athletes at the Outset of the Twenty-First Century	345	(6)
Harry Edwards
Further Reading	351	(12)
Contributors	363	(4)
Permissions Acknowledgments	367	(2)
Index	369