At the forefront of racial tolerance?: African-Americans and high school football in Iowa in the 1930s

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the upper Midwest, at least until the late 1930s, there was a modest presence of black athletes in American football and track and field in particular, with a smaller number in basketball and other sports. We know a great deal about how the post-war desegregation in professional baseball and football began to slowly change the landscape of elite American sports. But despite this overarching national narrative of small numbers of black athletes in integrated sports in the north and segregated structures in the south, we still know very little about specific contexts, especially at the high school level where the vast majority of organized sporting competition is held in the USA Key questions remain: was there a qualitative difference between the treatment of African-American athletes in different regions of the United States during the first four decades of the twentieth century? Was there a difference in racial attitudes in places where African-Americans were resident in small numbers such as in the towns and medium sized cities of the upper Midwest? Indeed, Iowa was regarded as relatively welcoming of African-American athletes by the 1930s whether that reputation was fully deserved or not. In this article we examine this question from a case study point of view.