The Unlevel Playing Field

by Wiggins, David K.; Miller, Patrick B.

• ISBN13: 9780252072727
• ISBN10: 0252072723
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-03-30
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

This extraordinarily rich collection of primary sources charts the significant, intertwining histories of African Americans and sport. The Unlevel Playing Field contains more than one hundred documents on both pioneering and modern-day athletes, ranging chronologically from a challenge issued by prizefighter Tom Molineaux in the London Times in 1810 to contributions from commentators like Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Eldridge Cleaver, as well as contemporary observers such as Nikki Giovanni, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and bell hooks. Introductions and headnotes by David K. Wiggins and Patrick B. Miller place each document in context, shaping a compelling narrative.David K. Wiggins teaches sport history at George Mason University. He is the author of Glory Bound: Black Athletes in a White America.Patrick B. Miller teaches history at Northeastern Illinois University. He is the editor of The Sporting World of the Modern South.A volume in the series Sport and Society, edited by Benjamin G. Rader and Randy Roberts

Author Biography

David K. Wiggins teaches sport history at George Mason University Patrick B. Miller teaches history at Northeastern Illinois University

Table of Contents

Preface	xiii
Acknowledgments	xvii
Introduction	1	(6)
1 Antebellum Ordeals: Slavery, Sport, and the Prospects of Freedom Introduction	7	(24)
1. Tom Molineaux
Black Pioneer in Sport	9	(4)
2. Frederick Douglass
"Holiday Times"	13	(4)
3. Francis Fedric
"A Corn Shucking"	17	(3)
4. Solomon Northup
"Patting Juba"	20	(3)
5. Benny Dilliard
"Preachin' and Baptizin"'	23	(1)
6. William Green
"Becoming a Race Rider"	24	(2)
7. Amos Webber
Reports on Thanksgiving Field Day	26	(5)
2 Striving for Success: African American Athletes in the Early Period of Jim Crow, 1865-1915
Introduction	31	(3)
A The Problem of Exclusion	34	(5)
1. The Color Line in Organized Baseball	34	(2)
2. Weldy Wilberforce Walker
"Why Discriminate?"	36	(3)
B Health, Recreation, and Sport in the Postbellum Era	39	(19)
3. W.E.B. Du Bois
"The Problem of Amusement"	39	(4)
4. Samuel Archer and J.B. Watson on Football at Southern Black Colleges	43	(3)
5. William Clarence Matthews
"Negro Foot-ball Players on New England Teams"	46	(4)
6. Thomas J. Clement
"Athletics in the American Army"	50	(2)
7. Sol White
"Managers Troubles"	52	(3)
8. "Baseball among the Fairer Sex Coming into Prominence"	55	(3)
C Black Athletic Heroes at the Turn of the Century	58	(27)
9. Isaac Murphy the Great Lexington Jockey	58	(5)
10. Marshall "Major" Taylor Champion Sprint Cyclist	63	(3)
11. George Dixon's Long Career in Boxing	66	(2)
12. Peter Jackson and the Elusive Heavyweight Championship	68	(3)
13. William Henry Lewis: Uplifting the Race	71	(3)
14. "Papa Jack": In the Ring and Out	74	(3)
15. Booker T. Washington and Jack Johnson: Race Men and Respectability	77	(2)
16. W.E.B. Du Bois and Jack Johnson: The Scholar's Pugilist and the Heavyweight Champ as Folk Hero	79	(6)
3 Parallel Institutions: Black Sports between the World Wars Introduction	85	(58)
A Leisure and Recreation: Some Considerations	88	(3)
1. Emmett J. Scott
"Leisure Time and the Colored Citizen"	88	(3)
B Baseball behind the Veil of Segregation: Negro Teams and Leagues	91	(11)
2. Beauregard F. Moseley
"A Baseball Appeal"	91	(1)
3. Andrew "Rube" Foster
"Will Colored Baseball Survive the Acid Test?"	92	(1)
4. Chester L. Washington
"Satchel's Back in Town"	93	(6)
5. Nat Trammell
"Baseball Classic-East vs. West"	99	(3)
C An Array of Venues-and Accomplishments	102	(11)
6. The Harlem Rens, "Incomparable Courteers"	102	(3)
7. Gerald Norman
"National American Tennis Association Championships"	105	(3)
8. J. Elmer Reed on the National Negro Bowling Association	108	(2)
9. Frank A. Young
Cum Posey: Athlete and Entrepreneur	110	(3)
D Interscholastic and Collegiate Sport: Muscular Assimilationism	113	(17)
10. Developing a High School Basketball Tournament	113	(2)
11. African American Women Make Their Marks in Sport	115	(4)
12. Women's Basketball and the Shape of Things to Come: Bennett College vs. the Philadelphia Tribunes	119	(2)
13. "Nation Eyes Lincoln and Howard Game"	121	(5)
14. Hildrus A. Poindexter Discusses the Gridiron World: Lincoln, 1922-23	126	(4)
E Cultural Critiques	130	(13)
15. "The Colored Basketball Referee Finally Arrives"	130	(3)
16. "Tuskegee and `Force' Rapped for Tribute to Knute Rockne"	133	(2)
17. Wendell Smith
"A Strange Tribe": On the Loyalties of Black Fans	135	(2)
18. W.E.B. Du Bois, Allison Davis, and Langston Hughes on the Excesses of Black College Sport	137	(6)
4 The Quest for Racial Reform: Affirmation and Protest in the Sporting Realm, 1920's and 1930's
Introduction	143	(2)
A The "New Negro" in Sports	145	(9)
1. James Weldon Johnson on Sportsmen in Black Manhattan	145	(4)
2. Robert Hayden
"Free Fantasia: Tiger Flowers"	149	(2)
3. Paris Noir: Eugene Bullard on the Expatriate Experience	151	(3)
B Negotiating the Terms of Black Athletic Achievement	154	(12)
4. Harry Levette and Herbert Henegan: Two Considerations of the 1932 Olympic Games	154	(2)
5. "Black Mercuries": The Meaning of Black Athletic Achievement	156	(2)
6. W. Montague Cobb
"Race and Runners"	158	(5)
7. Walter White to Jesse Owens on Race Pride and the Nazi Olympics	163	(3)
C Reckoning with Joe Louis	166	(11)
8. Marcus Garvey
"The American Negro in Sport"	166	(3)
9. Richard Wright
"High Tide in Harlem: Joe Louis as a Symbol of Freedom"	169	(5)
10. Willis P. Armstrong
"A Toast to Joe Louis"	174	(3)
D Denouncing Racial Prejudice	177	(9)
11. Concerning the Snubbing of Paul Robeson	177	(3)
12. The Economics of Bigotry: New Orleans Bars Blacks, Loses a Track Meet	180	(2)
13. Integrationism in Public Recreation: Denver as a Case Study	182	(1)
14. Next Bout-The NAACP vs. Jim Crow: Charles Hamilton Houston on the Politics of Sport in Washington, D.C.	183	(3)
E Strategies of Appeal	186	(19)
15. Edwin Bancroft Henderson
"The Negro Athlete and Race Prejudice"	186	(4)
16. Roy Wilkins
"That Old Southern Accent"	190	(3)
17. Paul D. Davis
"Students, Teachers Blast Ban against Lacrosse Player": Harvard University and the Color Line	193	(3)
18. William A. Brower
"Has Professional Football Closed the Door?"	196	(9)
5 African American Athletes and Democratic Principles: Interpreting the Desegregation of Sport, 1940's and 1950's
Introduction	205	(2)
A The Meanings of Jackie Robinson	207	(15)
1. Walter White
"Jackie Robinson on Trial"	207	(3)
2. Sam Lacy
"Campy, Jackie as Dodgers"	210	(3)
3. Effa Manley
"Negro Baseball Is at the Crossroads"	213	(2)
4. Gerald Early
"American Integration, Black Heroism, and the Meaning of Jackie Robinson"	215	(7)
B Sport, Culture, and Community in Black America	222	(13)
5. E. Franklin Frazier
"Society: Status without Substance"	222	(1)
6. Dan Burley
"The Top Ten of the First Fifty Years"	223	(3)
7. Fritz Pollard
"Explains Reasons for Having a Negro Hall of Fame"	226	(3)
8. Nelson George on the Harlem Globetrotters	229	(6)
C The First Rounds of the Second Reconstruction	235	(15)
9. "New Faces in Pro Football"	235	(2)
10. "Are There Too Many Negroes in Baseball?"	237	(3)
11. To Desegregate the Golf Courses of America	240	(2)
12. Rufus Clement
"Racial Integration in the Field of Sports"	242	(4)
13. "And They Call This a Democracy": Little League Baseball and the Struggle for Equality	246	(1)
14. "Weekend at the Penn Relays"	247	(3)
D Up Close and Personal	250	(21)
15. Adam Buckley Cohen
The Mugging of Johnny Bright	250	(4)
16. Andrew W. Ramsey
"The Skies Refused to Fall": Crispus Attucks High School and Indiana Basketball	254	(3)
17. Is Ralph Dupas Negro or White?	257	(3)
18. Althea Gibson
"What Now?"	260	(3)
19. Alex Haley on Wilma Rudolph
"The Queen Who Earned Her Crown"	263	(8)
6 Sport, the Civil Rights Movement, and Black Power, 1960's and 1970's
Introduction	271	(2)
A Speaking Out and Hanging In	273	(4)
1. "Negro Athletes and Civil Rights"	273	(4)
2. Chet Walker
"On the Road in the South, 1960"	277	(8)
3. A.S. "Doc" Young
"Rebellion at Cal"	282	(3)
B The Politics of Protest: The 1968 Olympic Games	285	(11)
4. Harry Edwards
"Mounting the Revolt"	285	(4)
5. The Boycott Debate: Tommie Smith on "Why Negroes Should Boycott" the Olympics, and Ralph Boston on "Why They Should Not"	289	(7)
C Culture and Dissent: Boxing	296	(21)
6. James Baldwin
"The Fight: Patterson vs. Liston" (1963)	296	(7)
7. Eldridge Cleaver
"The Muhammad Ali-Patterson Fight"	303	(3)
8. Elijah Muhammad Disciplines Muhammad Ali	306	(4)
9. "Muhammad Ali Faces the Nation"	310	(7)
7 Progress, Protest, and Alienation in the Sports Factory, 1970's and Beyond
Introduction	317	(2)
A Challenging the Color Line	319	(17)
1. Jesse Jackson on Blacks and the Sports $$$	319	(4)
2. Phil Petrie
"The NFL Sacks the Black Quarterback"	323	(5)
3. Eddie Robinson on Grambling's First White Player	328	(4)
4. Lloyd V. Hackley
"We Need to Educate Our Athletes": Higher Education and Sports	332	(4)
B The Limits of Integration	336	(43)
5. Marian E. Washington
"Black Women in Sports: Can We Get off the Track?"	336	(3)
6. Frank Robinson
"In America's National Pastime ... White Is the Color of the Game off the Field"	339	(3)
7. Jim Brown
Racism in Context	342	(5)
8. Rafer Johnson
The Decathlete as Community-Builder	347	(8)
9. David Aldridge
"A Team's True Colors": Washington Redskins on and off the Field	355	(6)
10. David Zang
An Interview with Calvin Hill	361	(10)
11. Margo Jefferson on Arthur Ashe: "On the Court, in the World"	371	(8)
8 Black Cultural Commentary: Race Relations and Sport at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century
Introduction	379	(2)
A School and Society: Athletics and Academics	381	(17)
1. Henry Louis Gates Jr.
"Delusions of Grandeur"	381	(2)
2. Anita DeFrantz
Overcoming Obstacles	383	(4)
3. Welch Suggs
"Left Behind": Title IX and Black Women Athletes	387	(6)
4. bell hooks
"Dreams of Conquest"	393	(5)
B The Pros	398	(23)
5. Jackie Joyner-Kersee, a Woman of Substance	398	(3)
6. Michael Eric Dyson
"Be Like Mike? Michael Jordan and the Pedagogy of Desire"	401	(6)
7. John Edgar Wideman
"Playing Dennis Rodman"	407	(4)
8. Nikki Giovanni
"Iverson's Posse"	411	(2)
9. Michael Wilbon on Tiger Woods: "History in Black and White"	413	(4)
10. William C. Rhoden
"NFL's Silent Majority Afraid to Force Change"	417	(4)
C Dispatches from the Business Page and Some Thoughts for the Future	421	(22)
11. Venus Williams's Star Endorsements	421	(2)
12. Kenneth Shropshire
"The Next Millennium"	423	(5)
13. Gerald Early
"Performance and Reality: Race, Sports, and the Modern World"	428	(7)
14. Harry Edwards
"The Decline of the Black Athlete"	435	(8)
Conclusion	443	(4)
Bibliographic Essay and List	447	(32)
Index	479