Table of Contents

I. Sport and Community in the Era of Jim Crow 1. Sport and Black Pittsburgh, 1900-1930, Rob Ruck 2. Black Entrepreneurship in the National Pastime: The Rise of Semiprofessional Baseball in Black Chicago, 1890-1915, Michael Lomax 3. Year of the Comet: Jack Johnson vs. Jim Jeffries, July 4, 1910, Randy Roberts 4. A General Understanding: Organized Baseball and Black Professional Baseball, 1900-1930, Neil Lanctot 5. We Were Ladies, We Just Played Basketball Like Boys: African American Womanhood and Competitive Basketball at Bennett College, 1928-42, Rita Liberti 6. A Special Type of Discipline: Manhood and Community in African American Institutions, 1923-57, Pamela Grundy II. The Ordeal of Desegregation 7. Joe Louis: American Folk Hero, William H. Wiggins 8. End Jim Crow in Sports: The Leonard Bates Controversy and Protest at New York University, 1940-1941, Donald Spivey 9. Jackie Robinson: A Lone Negro in Major League Baseball, Jules Tygiel 10. More Than a Game: The Political Meaning of High School Basketball in Indianapolis, Richard B. Pierce 11. Cinderellas of Sport: Black Women in Track and Field, Susan Cahn 12. Jim Crow in the Gymnasium: The Integration of College Basketball in the American South, Charles H. Martin 13. Civil Rights on the Gridiron: The Kennedy Administration and the Desegregation of the Washington Redskins, Thomas G. Smith III. Images of the Black Athlete and the Racial Politics of Sport 14. Edwin Bancroft Henderson, African American Athletes, and the Writing of Sport History, David K. Wiggin 15. The Greatest: Muhammad Ali's Confounding Character, David W. Zang 16. The Sports Spectacle, Michael Jordan, and Nike: The Paradoxes of Corporate Sport, Douglas Kellner 17. The Anatomy of Scientific Racism: Racialist Responses to Black Athletic Achievement, Patrick B. Miller 18. Crisis of Black Athletes at the Outset of the 21st Century, Harry Edwards Further Reading Contributors

About the Author

Patrick B. Miller is Professor of History at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. David K. Wiggins is Professor of Sport History at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

Reviews

"This wonderful, wide-ranging collection addresses--yet gets beyond--celebrations of individual black athletic achievement and indictments of persistent racial discrimination. Its essays meticulously examine the images and realities of black athletes and athletics, historic "firsts" and breakthroughs, the evolving color line in sports, and the centrality of athletic achievement in African-American communities. It also makes a critical contribution to our understandings of individual and collective strategies for winning civil rights in the United States and the cultural centrality of race and athletics today." -- Eric Arnesen, University of Illinois at Chicago and author of Brotherhoods ofColor: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle forEquality
"Miller and Wiggins bring together a noted collection of authors. Each uses sports to document the complexities of twentieth-century race relations in the United States. The articles analyze from a range of perspectives the changing contours of the color line in sports and society at large. Anyone wishing to understand the legacy of racism in the twenty-first century should read this thoughtful and well-edited set of articles." -- Jay Coakley, University of Colorado
"This brilliant collection appears at a crucial moment in history as scholars, journalists, activists, and politicians grapple with the persistence of racialized thinking in American culture. This book is a must for all individual and institutional libraries. Anyone interested in a critical history of African American sport must buy this book." -- S. W. Pope, De Montfort University and author of Patriotic Games: Sporting Traditions in theAmerican Imagination
"The editors have done a masterful job of assembling the influential voices of the past with newer scholarship that addresses gender and class as well as racial issues. The selections elucidate the central role and meanings of sport in the struggle for emancipation. This is an engaging text and a welcome addition to the scholarly literature." -- Gerald R. Gems, President, North American Society for Sport History
"Sport and the Color Line is one of the most informative, comprehensive and insightful sport history anthologies critiquing the African American sport experience at the high school, college and professional levels. Nationally acclaimed scholars such as Dr. Harry Edwards, Rob Ruck, Donald Spivey, David Wiggins, Thomas Smith, and Susan Cahn provide an in-depth analysis of the intersection of race, gender, social class, and sport during the era of Jim Crow and post desegregation of American sports." -- Dana D. Brooks, West Virginia University and co-editor of Racism In College Athletics: The African AmericanAthlete's Experience
"As the twenty-first century begins, the world of sport resides at the conflicted heart of American race relations. This remarkable collection of essays by leading historians and cultural critics of the intersection of race and sport in twentieth-century American life reveals why and how athletic spaces are so crucial to understanding the nation's racial geography. In Sport and the Color Line editors David Wiggins and Patrick Miller offer readers an enlightening foundation for the critical interpretation of the place of athletic achievement in the history of American racial struggles." -- Mark Dyreson, president-elect of the North American Society for Sport History, and a member of the faculties of kinesiology and history at the Pennsylvania State University