Editors Note: On March 8, 1971, Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali met in the ring for the first time, ushering in a “Golden Age” of prize fighting that extended well beyond the boundaries of the ring. The following post is excerpted from a chapter in “Slavery to Liberation: The African American Experience” (Joshua Farrington et al,…
50 years ago we didn’t know much about George Foreman. But the story of his first professional boxing match told us everything about the boxer and the businessman. In 1968, George Foreman was a largely unknown amateur boxer with only two years and 20 bouts of experience. His victory in the gold medal match of…
Moore, Louis. I Fight for a Living: Boxing and the Battle for Black Manhood, 1880-1915. Sport and Society Series. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017. Pp240. Notes, index, images. $27.95 (paper). Reviewed by Andrew R.M. Smith My favorite story about Sam Langford involves a large wager and a good size mule. Some white men bet…
Carlson, Chad. Making March Madness: The Early Years of the NCAA, NIT, and College Basketball Championships, 1922-1951. Sport, Culture & Society Series. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2017. Pp xvi+475. Notes, index, images and appendices. $44.95 (cloth). Reviewed by Andrew R.M. Smith It takes me about an hour to suck the air out of a…
This post is the final post in our Life and Legacy of Muhammad Ali Series guest edited by Andrew R.M. Smith. Muhammad Ali was a complex figure and he had a large influence beyond the United States. The goal of these posts is to explore various aspects of Ali’s life and reflect on his legacies, offering insight into understudied themes…
Leifer, Neil (with Diane K. Shah). Relentless: The Stories Behind the Photographs. Focus on American History Series. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016. pp400 + 276 photos. $45. Reviewed by Andrew R.M. Smith Make no mistake—Neil Leifer entered the sports world through its stomach. His job as a delivery boy for the Stage Deli, erstwhile…
On May 25-27, 1973, scholars gathered at Ohio State University’s Center for Tomorrow for the first North American Society for Sport History (NASSH) convention. The inaugural group was largely comprised of scholars with physical education backgrounds and an interest in sport history. Not surprisingly then, the first convention showcased thirty papers with ancient Greek athletics,…
Oppenheim, Gabe. Boxing in Philadelphia: Tales of Struggle and Survival. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Pp. xiv+202. Notes, bibliography, index. $45 hardcover, $30 paperback. Reviewed by Andrew R.M. Smith Historians of sport—especially the quasi-legal ones like prize fighting—are probably accustomed to nontraditional research practices and keenly aware that a lot of dirt will be…
By Andrew R.M. Smith PREFACE: To bowdlerize the intro of Dickens’ iconic A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, for this pedagogically-oriented, sport-centered riff on a seasonal classic: I endeavor in this blog about teaching sport history online, to raise the ghost of an idea, which shall not put my readers…
By Andrew R.M. Smith “The quality of heavyweight fighters, like the length of skirts and price of cabbage, is given to periodic fluctuations.” As the 1970s drew to a close William Nack lamented a depression in boxing’s signature division. At its height the sport thrived on a triumvirate of champions—Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, and George…
Sport in American History 