Thomas, Damion L. Globetrotting: African American Athletes and Cold War Politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012. 232 pp. $60.00 cloth. Reviewed by Andrew D. Linden In Globetrotting: African American Athletes and Cold War Politics, Damion L. Thomas analyzes the US government’s use of African American athletes as tools in the ideological battle between American…
By Kate Aguilar In the 2014 documentary Champs, director Bert Marcus interviews boxing legends Evander Holyfield, Bernard Hopkins, and Mike Tyson, providing an intimate look at how race, class, gender, and place converge in the making of a boxing superstar. The film begins with a voiceover from Philadelphia native Bernard Hopkins’ trainer, Naazim Richardson. Hopkins successfully…
Marc, David. Leveling the Playing Field: The Story of the Syracuse 8. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2015. 344 pages, 25 illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth $39.95. Reviewed by Matt Follett Leveling the Playing Field: The Story of the Syracuse 8 tells the story of how African American football players at Syracuse University protested discrimination in the…
“Kareem: Minority of One” documentary, produced by Mike Tollin, Rick Bernstein, and Deborah Morales (HBO Sports, Mandalay Sports Media, 2015) Reviewed by Frank Andre Guridy My earliest basketball memory is of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar shooting his patented “skyhook” shot over rival centers Darryl Dawkins and Caldwell Jones of the Philadelphia 76ers during the 1980 NBA Finals.…
By Alex Parrish There are two topics to never bring up at a dinner party, so we’re told – politics and religion. Few things simultaneously unite and divide people quite like politics and religion. Yet Americans seem to have an innate passion for discussing and debating these topics, often vehemently. Most people are fine with…
By Wesley R. Bishop and Andrew McGregor This weekend the University of Missouri, or “Mizzou” as it’s commonly called, became the latest front in the ongoing national movement against racism. Following a string of steady and increasingly hostile acts of hate, Mizzou’s football players joined a campus wide protest, refusing to participate in athletic events…
In early October I read an article in the Los Angeles Times about a new oral history project aimed at collecting and preserving the stories of African Americans in Major League Baseball. The project was launched in 2013 by Dr. Daniel Durbin, the Director of the Annenberg Institute of Sport, Media and Society (AISMS) at…
By Alexander Hyres In February, the Big Ten Conference held a lengthy discussion with faculty, administrators, and student-athletes about how to “keep education central to the mission of college sports.” Whether education has actually been the central to mission of college sports in the last one-hundred years is questionable; however, the discussion did produce a proposal…
By Josh Howard Our hope is that this exhibit inspires, educates and emotionally connects people of all ages…the remarkable story of the Negro Leagues. A lot of people say PNC Park is the best ballpark in America. Well, PNC Park just got a lot better. — Kevin McClatchy, then owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, speaking…
This is part 3 in a series of posts that explore the questions and issues of preparing a sport history course. The first post introduced the course and discussed selecting books and other materials. The second post explored issues of organization and choosing what to include. This is the final post in the series. It…
Sport in American History 