Glory Bound: Black Athletes in a White America

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Syracuse University Press, 1997 - History - 302 pages
African American athletes have experienced a tumultuous relationship with mainstream white America. Glory Bound brings together for the first time eleven essays that explore this complex topic. In his writings, well-known sports scholar David K. Wiggins recounts the struggle of black athletes to participate fully in sports while maintaining their own cultural identity and pride. Wiggins examines the seminal moments that defined and changed the black athlete's role in white America from the nineteenth century to the present: the personal crusade of Wendell Smith to promote black participation in organized baseball, the triumph of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics and the proposed boycott of the Games, and the response of America's black press and community. Glory Bound demonstrates how the civil rights movement changed the face of American athletics and society forever. With the genesis of the black power movement in sport, Wiggins notes a significant shift in black—and white—America's attention to the African American athlete.

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Contents

The Play of Slave Children in the Plantation Communities
3
Black Hero in NineteenthCentury American
21
The Response
61
Copyright

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About the author (1997)

David K. Wiggins, professor of physical education at George Mason University, is editor of Sport in America: From Wicked Amusement to National Obsession and coeditor of Ethnicity and Sport in North American History and Culture.

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