Sport and the Color Line

Abstract

The year 2003 marks one-hundredth anniversary of W.E.B. Du Bois' Souls of Black Folk, in which he declared that the color line would be problem of twentieth century. Half a century later, Jackie Robinson would display his remarkable athletic skills in baseball's great experiment. Now, and Color Line takes a look at last century through lens of sports and race, drawing together articles by many of leading figures in Sport Studies to address African American experience and history of race relations. The history of African Americans in sport is not simple, and it certainly did not begin in 1947 when Jackie Robinson first donned a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform. The essays presented here examine complexity of black American sports culture, from organization of semi-pro baseball and athletic programs at historically black colleges and universities, to careers of individual stars such as Jack Johnson and Joe Louis, to challenges faced by black women in sports. What are today's black athletes doing in aftermath of desegregation, or with legacy of Muhammad Ali's political stance? The essays gathered here engage such issues, as well as paradoxes of corporate sport and persistence of scientific racism in athletic realm.