Sidelined (33 page)

In the years following the black athletic revolt an embrace of this black athletic style has been combined with a reassertion of the ideal that sporting competition offers an important route to racial integration and progress. Nevertheless, critics of the sporting establishment have pointed to continued examples of racial prejudice inherent in the American sports world many years after the black athletic revolt. Dave Zirin argues that NBA executives tapped into the rise of hip-hop music to craft a new and exciting image for professional basketball teams in the 1980s. The music was used to help frame a black aesthetic that glorified a new generation of exciting new players, the leaders of which were black stars like Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. When other black players like Allen Iversen brought a more confrontational and aggressive style to the court and highlighted the less commercially attractive elements of street culture and hip-hop, then NBA executives reacted. A new policy document and dress code were introduced with the express intention of curtailing the “negative” influence of black culture within the league.
¹⁰

A double standard surrounding African American athletes has continued years after Edwards led the black athletic revolt. When a black athlete such as Michael Jordan, Michael Johnson, or Tiger Woods succeeds it is presented as a story of possibility for African Americans. Nevertheless, reaction to the problems of a Mike Tyson or Terrell Owens reveals the reality that off the field the black athlete is still, in the words of Tommie Smith, “just another nigger.” Amy Bass has explained, “The realm of commercial endorsement working in concert with athletic excellence … portrays sport as one of the most democratic vehicles of social mobility.”
¹¹
The popular image of sport as the most successful force for racial progress perpetuates a legend that ignores the realities of racism in the United States. The aftermath of the black athletic revolt has seen the reinvigoration of the very myth of sport as a universally positive racial force that the revolt tried to expose. Furthermore, many of the contradictions at the heart of African American athletes' engagement with mainstream sporting culture have evolved rather than been eradicated.

This restoration of the color-blind sporting ideal displays the potency of the myth of unequivocal racial progress through sport. This myth and the history of the black sportsman's largely submissive persona help to explain the strong backlash against the black athletic revolt. The raw
exposition of the racism that existed in the sporting arena and wider society confronted white athletes and administrators with a repudiation of prevailing racial stereotypes and attacked the ideal of racial liberalism in sport. In this sense we see one element of the response to the black athletic revolt as a white backlash. We can see, therefore, the reaction to the black athletic revolt as part of the wider response of the white majority to perceived liberal excess in the late 1960s. The “silent majority” sought to end the countercultural threats to American values and to combat increasingly radicalized expressions of the civil rights struggle, one of which was the use of sport to dramatize racial inequality in wider society.

Historians of race and sport in the United States must probe the relationship between these powerful influences on American life in all of their nuanced forms. It is undeniable that successful black sports stars, both now and in the 1960s, provide an inspiration to the grassroots of their community. Sport was and is used as a vehicle through which to bring greater racial understanding. It is clear that in the era after the late 1960s black southerners were able to tap into a southern identity in a way that had previously been absent because of their full participation in the sporting culture of the region. Nevertheless, this same culture had long been used to deny equality and protect white supremacy. The institutions of sport themselves, and the written and unwritten rules of conduct that dominated the environment they governed, played a crucial role in restricting the ability of black—and white—athletes to fully engage in the black freedom struggle. Those who tried faced a double backlash, both racial and sporting.

In many respects the black athletic revolt represented an incomplete revolution, and one that remains unfinished. That revolt emerged amid a period in which the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements intersected and created probably the most dramatic era of the black freedom struggle. During the aftermath of this process the vital messages of both movements were blurred and the meaning of the black freedom struggle was redefined by the New Right. In the 1980s President Ronald Reagan used both the words and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. to reduce the civil rights struggle to a call for individual action. The federal government had delivered civil rights legislation and now it was up to black Americans to lift themselves the rest of the way to equality.
¹²
Radical messages about poverty and the structure of American society were lost. The radical imagery of Smith and Carlos on the podium in 1968 has been woven into a narrative that reinforces the ideal that sport unequivocally promotes racial equality.
The nuance and significance of their message and the movement that they represented have been blurred. We must focus sharply and critically on the true meanings of their stand and the problems activist athletes faced in the late 1960s if sport is to fully play its part, along with other aspects of society, in the development of the black freedom struggle.

Acknowledgments

The people who deserve the most acknowledgment for their contributions to this book are the former athletes, activists, and coaches who so generously gave of their time to speak with me about their experiences. Without their stories the wider narrative that unfolds in the pages of this book could not have been told. I thank you all sincerely.

The genesis of this work was in the PhD thesis that I completed in 2010. The first debt of gratitude is therefore owed to my supervisor, Keith Brewster, and my secondary supervisor, Susan-Mary Grant. Susan-Mary was an excellent sounding board for many of my ideas and she inspired my interest in American history as an undergraduate. Keith was the perfect supervisor. He allowed me time to develop my ideas in my own way but always provided critical and insightful advice that developed the depth and quality of the project. Without Keith and his wife, Claire, this book would not have been possible.

During the course of this project I received help from many archivists and librarians. There is a strong likelihood that there are some individuals missing from the list below, whom I have forgotten to mention. Apologies to those who have fallen through the cracks of my memory or are buried too deeply in the recesses of my e-mail inbox. Ellen Summers and Lisa Greer provided help in accessing the archives of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Cindy Slater was very generous with her time and resources at the United States Olympic Committee library and archives. Thanks also to Shannon Bowen at the University of Wyoming; Brad Aldridge and Rich Bunnell at the University of California, Berkeley; Anne Bridges at the University of Tennessee; Michelle Sweetser at Marquette University; Barry Bunch and Becky Schulte at the University of Kansas; Jan Mazzucco at the University of Georgia; Melanie Gray at the University of Alabama; Tyra Whittaker at USA Track and Field; Linda Stahnke at the University of Illinois; Simon Elliott at UCLA; and Claudia Rivers at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Thanks to the Bulletin of Latin American Research book series and the
International Journal of the History of Sport
for permission to reproduce elements of this research published during an earlier stage of my studies.
I would like to thank Robert Mason and members of the Scottish Association for Study of the Americas for giving me the opportunity to share my ideas during an early stage of this project. Brian Ward provided many pertinent pieces of advice in the period immediately after the completion of my PhD thesis and Ben Houston pointed me in the direction of some possible publishers. A huge thanks to Anne Dean Watkins and Bailey Johnson at the University Press of Kentucky for their help, support, and encouragement during the development of this project. I could not have asked for more skillful acquisitions editors. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the anonymous readers who helped me turn a promising thesis into a readable book and to Joy Margheim for her excellent editing.

The love and support of my family continues to be an inspiration and they all deserve thanks for their interest and encouragement as I worked toward completing this book. My mother and father remain the very best teachers. To the newest members of the family, Joseph and Neve, if you are old enough to be reading this on your own then you are old enough to understand how much I love you. Finally, this book is dedicated to my lovely Laura. Thanks for everything you do, both the things you know about and the things you don't.

Notes

Preface

1
. Branch,
Parting the Waters,
922.

2
. Fairclough,
Better Day Coming
.

3
. P. E. Joseph, “Black Power Movement,” 752.

4
. Hall, “Long Civil Rights Movement.”

5
. Cha-Jua and Lang, “‘Long Movement' as Vampire.”

6
. P. Joseph,
Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour,
9–34.

7
. Bissinger,
Friday Night Lights
.

8
. Hartmann,
Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete
.

9
. Bass,
Not the Triumph
.

10
. Martin,
Benching Jim Crow
.

11
. Demas,
Integrating the Gridiron
.

12
. Kemper,
College Football
.

13
. Grundy,
Learning to Win
.

14
. Rogers, “Oral History,” 576.

15
. Nasstrom, “Beginnings and Endings,”

16
. Rogers, “Oral History,” 568.

1. Locating the Black Athletic Revolt in the Black Freedom Struggle

1
. Gitlin,
The Sixties,
305.

2
. Douglas Roby to Harry Parker, November 5, 1968, copy in author's possession, courtesy of Paul Hoffman.

3
. Edwards,
Revolt of the Black Athlete,
1.

4
. D. Wiggins, “Leisure Time,” 36–37.

5
. Frederickson,
Black Image,
241–55.

6
. Wiggins, “Great Speed,” 159–60.

7
. Wiggins, “Prized Performers,” 165–67.

8
. Gems, “Blocked Shot,” 140–45.

9
. Shropshire,
In Black and White,
29–31.

10
. Ibid., 31.

11
. For a discussion of black protest and the symbolism it exploited from the 1930s, see Sandage, “Marble House Divided.” Rick Halpern draws attention to the increasingly interracial nature of unionism in the 1940s in “Organised Labour, Black Workers and the Twentieth-Century South: The Emerging Revision”; see also Korstad,
Civil Rights Unionism
. Darlene Clark Hine, in “Black
Professionals and Race Consciousness: Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 1890–1950,” shows the ways in which the black professional class pushed for racial change during and immediately after the Second World War. All of these studies help to show that the seeds of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and many of the tactics used during that decade emerged in a previous era.

12
. Shropshire,
In Black and White,
30.

13
. Spivey, “End Jim Crow,” 282–84, 300–302.

14
. Marcello, “Integration of Intercollegiate Athletics,” 316.

15
. T. Smith, “Civil Rights and the Gridiron,” 196–98, 204–8.

16
.
New York Times,
November 25, 1967.

17
. Gems, “Blocked Shot,” 136.

18
. Interview with Phil Shinnick, July 23, 2004.

19
. Kellner, “Sports, Media, Culture, and Race,” 462–65.

20
. Meade, “Joe Louis,” 329–34.

21
. Van Deburg,
Black Camelot,
99.

22
. Marcello, “Integration of Intercollegiate Athletics,” 311–12.

23
. Interview with Willie Brown, October 4, 2004.

24
. Moore, “Courageous Stand,” 66.

25
. Interview with T. J. Gaughan, October 27, 2004.

26
. Interview with Larry Young, May 31, 2004.

27
. Interview with David Hemery, March 25, 2004.

28
.
San Jose Mercury News,
September 18, 1967.

29
. Ibid.

30
. Kemper,
College Football,
42.

31
.
San Jose Mercury News,
September 22, 1967.

32
. Fairclough,
To Redeem the Soul of America,
316.

33
. M. L. King, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?,” in Washington,
Testament of Hope,
589.

34
. P. Joseph, “Black Power Movement,” 753.

35
. Tyson,
Radio Free Dixie,
3.

36
. Ibid., 88–93.

37
. Ibid., 155.

38
. Umoja, “Ballot and the Bullet,” 570–72.

39
. Raines,
My Soul Is Rested,
148.

40
. Fairclough,
To Redeem the Soul of America,
149.

41
. Umoja, “Ballot and the Bullet,” 570–73.

42
. Edwards,
Revolt of the Black Athlete,
58.

43
. Van Deburg,
New Day in Babylon,
88.

44
.
New York Times,
May 12, 1968.

45
.
San Jose Mercury News,
September 23, 1967.