Sports and the Racial Divide, Volume II: A Legacy of African American Athletic Activism

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.

Michael E. Lomax is former professor of sport history at the University of Iowa. He is author or editor of several books, including Major League Baseball between World War II and the Korean War, 1945-1951 and Sports and the Racial Divide: African American and Latino Experience in an Era of Change, the latter published by University Press of Mississippi. His second book, Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 1902-1931: Negro National and Eastern Colored Leagues, won a book award from the Society for American Baseball Research. Billy J. Hawkins is professor of sport sociology in the Department of Health and Human Performance. He is author of The New Plantation: Black Athletes, College Sports, and Predominantly White NCAA Institutions and coauthor of Sport, Race, Activism, and Social Change: The Impact of Dr. Harry Edwards’ Scholarship and Service.