Sports and the Racial Divide, Volume II
A Legacy of African American Athletic Activism
New perspectives on the ways Black athletes wield their sports platform to address inequalities
Description
Contributions by Amy Bass, Ashley Farmer, Sarah K. Fields, Billy Hawkins, Kurt Edward Kemper, Michael E. Lomax, and David K. Wiggins
In Sports and the Racial Divide, Volume II: A Legacy of African American Athletic Activism, Michael E. Lomax and Billy Hawkins draw together essays that examine evolving attitudes about race, sports, and athletic activism in the US. A follow-up to Lomax’s Sports and the Racial Divide: African American and Latino Experience in an Era of Change, this second anthology links post–World War II African American protest movements to a range of contemporary social justice interventions.
Athlete activists have joined the ongoing pursuit for Black liberation and self-determination in a number of ways. Contributors examine some of these efforts, including the fight for HBCUs to enter the NCAA basketball tournament; Harry Edwards and the boycott of the 1968 Olympic Games; and US sporting culture in the post-9/11 era. Essays also detail topics like the protest efforts of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick; the link between the Black Power movement and the current Black Lives Matter movement; and the activism of athletes like Lebron James and Naomi Osaka. Collectively, these essays reveal a historical narrative in which African Americans have transformed the currency of athletic achievement into impactful political capital.
Reviews
"Sports and the Racial Divide, Volume II: A Legacy of African American Athletic Activism is the happy medium. It is brief but powerful and includes essays written by many scholars, including several women, and covers both historical and recent activism."
- B. D. Singleton, CHOICE
"The book’s prologue is essential because it not only exposes recent events that have transpired within sports where African Americans were racially profiled, but it also gives a detailed timeline of events that shaped the African American experience in sports. Lomax, for example, discusses the various protests that athletes have participated in because of being treated unfairly, and he highlights the racist history that most professional organizations have, historically excluding African Americans altogether. Throughout history, many people have tried to make sports apolitical. But what this volume argues is that for the vast majority of African American athletes, that is not possible."
- Dana Green, Journal of Sport History
"Sports and the Racial Divide, Volume II provides a rich sociohistorical account of the role sports and athletes play in contemporary political activism."
- John N. Singer, associate professor of sport management in the School of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M University