Out of the Shadows: A Biographical History of African American Athletes (review)

Abstract

O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 305 Tennessee militia south into Creek country, and, on March 27, 1814, defeated the Redsticks at Tohopeka (a fortified refugee town located along a horseshoe-shaped bend of the Tallapoosa River). The resulting American massacre of the Creek Indians at Horseshoe Bend seemed to balance the Creek massacre of Americans at Fort Mims. During the following weeks American troops swept through Creek country, destroying food supplies, detaining refugees, and tracking the Redsticks. By early August 1814, with their food supply exhausted and nowhere to hide, the Creeks signed the Treaty of Fort Jackson, relinquishing some twenty -three million acres of land in the Mississippi Territory (present-day Alabama) and Georgia to the United States. Many of the Creeks who evaded capture fled to Spanish Florida, where they joined the Seminoles and continued their struggle against American incursions. Fort Mims, Fort Dearborn (at the site of present-day Chicago), River Raisin (in southeastern Michigan), Hampton (in Virginia), Bladensburg (in Maryland), and Washington, D.C., all experienced defeats during the War of 1812. Yet those defeats are trumped by the victories at Lakes Erie and Champlain, at Baltimore, Horseshoe Bend, and New Orleans. Understandably, selective American memory highlights the victories and minimized the defeats. Thus Jackson’s victory on the plains of Chalmette overshadows the sacking of the capital city of Washington. But, as Waselkov emphasizes, the conventional Fort Mims narrative represents the attack as a sinister massacre of innocent Americans by savage Indians and as justification for the removal of the Creeks and other Indians to western reservations. Removal enabled the expansion of cotton production , and with it the slave-based plantation system. Judiciously combining history, archaeology, anthropology, and ethnography , Waselkov has written a definitive account of the massacre and its consequences that fills a crucial gap in our understanding of the War of 1812. It deserves to be read by those interested in the War of 1812 generally , the southern theater specifically, and in Alabama’s early history. GENE ALLEN SMITH Texas Christian University Out of the Shadows: A Biographical History of African American Athletes. Edited by David K. Wiggins. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2006. xii, 459 pp. $34.95. ISBN 1-55728-826-7. Out of the Shadows is a collection of nineteen biographical essays on twenty African American athletes. The editor, David K. Wiggins, has been one T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 306 of the more thoughtful and prolific authorities on the African American sporting experience for the past twenty-five years. The essays provide a look into race relations and racial discrimination in America, from the 1890s to the present, through the lens of sports. They are split into four chronological sections. The first section, “Striving for Athletic Success in a Jim Crow Society,” includes essays on Jimmy Winkfield (horse racing), Marshall “Major” Taylor (bicycling), William Henry Lewis (football), and Jack Johnson (boxing). The second group, “Fashioning a World of Sport behind Segregated Walls and on an International Stage,” contains articles on Ora Washington (basketball, tennis), Satchel Paige (baseball), Jesse Owens (track), Joe Louis (boxing), Alice Coachman (track), and Jackie Robinson (baseball). The third part, “The Fight for Civil Rights through Athletic Performance, Persuasion, and Protest,” includes pieces on Althea Gibson (tennis), Wilma Rudolph (track), Bill Russell (basketball ), Jim Brown (football), Muhammad Ali (boxing), and Arthur Ashe (tennis). “Race, Sport, and Celebrity Culture,” the final section, contains essays on Michael Jordan (basketball), Tiger Woods (golf), and Venus and Serena Williams (tennis). Wiggins provides introductory comments that historically contextualize the essays in each section. As the title suggests, the book presents a collective “biographical history of African American athletes,” with the omnipresent power of race providing the common thread that connects the athletes and the essays. At the same time, the essays demonstrate that the African American sporting experience is not monolithic. The book’s organization is especially well-suited to highlight differences as well as similarities in the African American athletic experience. All of the athletes experienced racial discrimination; nevertheless, a variety of factors—such as class, gender...