Description
African American athletes have experienced a tumultuous relationship with mainstream white America. Glory Bound brings together for the first time eleven essays that explore this complex topic. In his writings, well-known sports scholar David K. Wiggins recounts the struggle of black athletes to participate fully in sports while maintaining their own cultural identity and pride.
Wiggins examines the seminal moments that defined and changed the black athlete’s role in white America from the nineteenth century to the present: the personal crusade of Wendell Smith to promote black participation in organized baseball, the triumph of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics and the proposed boycott of the Games, and the response of America’s black press and community.
Glory Bound demonstrates how the civil rights movement changed the face of American athletics and society forever. With the genesis of the black power movement in sport, Wiggins notes a significant shift in black—and white—America’s attention to the African American athlete.
Table of Contents
Part One: From Plantation to Playing Field
1. The Play of Slave Children in the Plantation Communities of the Old South, 1820-1860
2. Isaac Murphy: Black Hero in Nineteenth-Century American Sport, 1861- 1896
3. Peter Jackson and the Elusive Heavyweight Championship: A Black Athlete's Struggle Against the Late Nineteenth-Century Color Line
Part Two: Civil Rights and the Quest for Equality
4. The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin: The Response of America's Black Press
5. Wendell Smith, the Pittsburgh Courier-Journal, and the Campaign to Include Blacks in Organized Baseball, 1933-1945
6. " The Year of Awakening": Black Athletes, Racial Unrest, and the Civil Rights Movement of 1968
7. "The Future of College Athletics Is at Stake": Black Athletes and Racial Turmoil on Three Predominantly White University Campuses, 1968-1972
8. Victory for Allah: Muhammad Ali, the Natron of Islam, and American Society
Part Three: Race Relations and the Ideology of Sport
9. "Great Speed but Little Stamina": The Historical Debate over Black Athletic Superiority
10. The Notion of Double-Consciousness and the Involvement of Black Athletes in American Sport
11. Edwin Bancroft Henderson, African American Athletes, and the Writing of Sport History
About the Author
David K. Wiggins, professor of physical education at George Mason University, is editor of Sport in America: From Wicked Amusement to National Obsession and coeditor of Ethnicity and Sport in North American History and Culture.
April 1997