ABSTRACT

Introduction Organized sports have played an important and highly visible role in African American life and culture since the late nineteenth century. For black men, much like their white counterparts, sporting activities provided a popular stage upon which to display their exceptional skills, experience the exhilaration and disappointment of competition, bask in adulation from adoring fans, and pursue fame and fortune. For spectators and fans, athletic events offered a welcome respite from the stress and disappointments of everyday life and afforded them the opportunity to form a collective identity around their favorite teams. At the same time, the sporting experiences of black athletes and their communities often differed in significant ways from those of the white mainstream. The widespread racism and discrimination that African Americans endured for over 100 years after emancipation affected virtually every aspect of their public life, including sports. Furthermore, racial restrictions in athletics exposed the glaring contradiction between the professed American values of liberty and equality and the harsh reality of discrimination and exclusion that existed on the playing fields. According to the prevailing egalitarian ideology of American athletics, sport was a democratic institution where individual success resulted from personal character and hard work on a level playing field, unaffected by external social and economic factors. As one idealistic black sportswriter remarked in 1957, “It doesn’t matter whether your parents came over here on the Mayflower or a slave ship. If you’ve got guts, a competitive heart, lightning speed, and the will to compete, then brother you’re in the game.”1