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THE NATION'S LARGEST AFRICAN AMERICAN ORAL HISTORY ARCHIVE
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September 29, 2017 - Vol. 1, Issue 4
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Dear Subscribing Institutions, Friends and Supporters:
Welcome to this week's edition of
The HistoryMakers Digital Archive Newsletter
. This week, as NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s year-long civil disobedience of silently taking a knee during the national anthem in protest of police brutality against the black community caused a renewed flurry following inflammatory comments from President Donald Trump, we shine a light on what it means to be a black athlete in America.
For this issue, join us in contemplating the chasm between black athletes and the right to peaceful protest.
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The Black Athlete in America
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The Black Power Salute
Tommie Smith, John Carlos and Peter Norman at the
1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, Mexico
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As Ben Carrington states in
Race, Sports and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora, “Even within a putatively post-racial era, the institutional forms of commodified and hyper-commercialized sports remains profoundly and deeply radicalized.”
1
From the historical roots of the black athlete in chattel slavery competitions, to the forced integration of professional athletic teams during the Civil Rights Movement, to the visibility and success of black professional athletes today, what does it mean to be a black athlete in America? As William C. Rhoden argues in
Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete, “Sports, like dance and musical forms, became tools of survival. But even as the power behind competitions was white, the slaves seized their own meaning from them. Athletic competition became a mode of expression and transformation.”
2
Carrington elaborates on this history of oppression:
“The black athlete was created at a moment of impending imperial crisis; the concern that the assumed superiority of colonial whiteness over all others could not, after all, be sustained.”
This fear was apparent to healthcare chief executive and HistoryMaker Otis L. Story while a sophomore basketball player at Cornell University:
“I was part of a great team. And out of the fifteen players, I believe eight were probably black. And out of those eight there were five who were capable of starting. The first game, the coach started four of the eight blacks. And subsequently what happened, was that he got so many telephone calls from the alumni complaining about the fact that he had started four black basketball players at Cornell University, that we learned that his job was placed at risk, and if he ever started four blacks again, he would probably lose his job. He never started four blacks again. The problem came to a head when he started a sophomore, who was ahead of the black senior, Tom Sparks [Thomas Sparks]. Tom was a senior, and he was the leader of not only the black ballplayers, he was the leader of the team... How do you sit your captain down who’s a senior, and start a sophomore who’s still trying to coordinate his hands and his feet? We obviously confronted our coach, Jerry Lace. And Coach Lace was a very humble man, and he found himself in a very, very precarious situation, and we realized that. He said in no uncertain terms that he was not in control of this team anymore; it was the chairman, it was the athletic director, and the alumni who were actually calling the shots. And they never did start four blacks during my tenure, which was short lived (laughter). We walked out. We wanted to support our white teammates and we would travel to games that were close by. People wanted to know, ‘Well if you want to support your team, why don’t you dress out?’ We said, ‘Well, if he couldn’t support all of his players,’ meaning blacks and whites equally, ‘we couldn’t go out there and represent and support Cornell.’ We’re trying to break these bonds, the slavery mentality--that we need to serve the master while the master is exploiting us as a people. And so, we refused to do it”
3
[Otis L. Story, THMDA 2.7.6]
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Former basketball star and HistoryMaker Charles Brown recalls similar discriminatory practices playing basketball at Indiana University in the 1950s:
“The unwritten rule across the country among all the division one coaches, you played one black, two max. And you don’t play more than two unless you’re losing. And I can remember being a part of a game against Michigan State University. We were losing like seventeen points and Coach Branch McCracken put in all four black guys. We caught up and I think we took a three point maybe four point lead. And he jumped up on the floor and called time out. There was mass substitution. All the blacks came out. And we won the game, but it was a very obvious move that we had worked our butts off to get to take this lead back from a seventeen point deficit and then we all came out”
4
[Charles Brown, THMDA 1.4.2]
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In fact, Billy Hawkins likens the modern day black athlete experience to that of his colonial predecessors in
The New Plantation: Black Athletes, College Sports, and Predominantly White NCAA Institutions, “The athlete is not necessarily the property of the institutions, but it’s the rights to athletes’ labor and the profit off of their labor that makes the plantation model appropriate in examining the experiences of Black male athletes.”
5
When black athletes like Colin Kaepernick use media exposure as a platform for social justice dialogue, the invisible chains repressing black athletes become apparent in the violent resistance of the white majority. Hawkins elaborates,
“This speaks to an interesting practice some whites in this context have managed to master: the compartmentalization of race. This is the ability to either ignore race or tolerate racial difference during times of convenience. The reality of black male athletes being adored, honored, and cheered while black males (nonathletes) are ostracized.”
Former TV One chief executive and HistoryMaker Johnathan Rodgers, who covered the plight of the black athlete for
Sports Illustrated
in the late 1960 and the salute by track stars Tommie Smith and HistoryMaker John Carlos during the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, reflects upon the sacrifice of the black athlete who protests:
“They paid a very high price for standing up for the rest of us...they made the ultimate sacrifice, they created one of the everlasting images of our time and bless their hearts for doing it, it cost them greatly.”
6
[Johnathan Rodgers, THMDA 1.4.7]
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Colin Kaepernick, we kneel with you.
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"I Hope I Did Some Wordly Good"
THE HISTORYMAKERS REMEMBERS BERNIE CASEY
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On September 19, 2017, the world lost a true artist, poet, actor and NFL legend in the passing of HistoryMaker
Bernie Casey
. Casey is best characterized as a lifelong student, a man who believed in earning things on his own merit in any field. While with the San Francisco 49ers, he pursued his M.F.A. in art during the football off season, and later went on to produce over thirty solo exhibitions. Best known probably for his acting roles in 'Revenge of the Nerds' and 'I'm Gonna Git You Sucka,' Casey stated of his own legacy in his interview with The HistoryMakers:
"As we get older we want to believe that we are of some worth and consequence. You don’t think much about that when you’re young. Once...you realize that there’s more time behind you than in front of you and you want to think, I hope I did some worldly good. I hope I was graceful and contributory and a God-fearing man, and that when my name is mentioned you pray that they’ll say, 'You know what, he was a nice man.' You want to believe that, I’ll leave some footprints in the sand"
7
[Bernie Casey, THMDA 2.7.2]
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NEW CONTENT IN
THE HISTORYMAKERS DIGITAL ARCHIVE
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This week,
6
new interviews were added to The HistoryMakers Digital Archive:
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Norma White
Association chief executive Norma White (1934 - ) was the 25th International President of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
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Jewell Jackson McCabe
Nonprofit chief executive Jewell Jackson McCabe (1945 - ) founded the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, and was the first female candidate for the executive directorship of the NAACP.
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Ann Dibble Jordan
Community leader Ann Dibble Jordan (1934 - ) was a professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. She served on numerous corporate boards, including Johnson & Johnson and Revlon.
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Dr. Levi Watkins
Medical professor and cardiac surgeon Dr. Levi Watkins (1944 - 2015 ) was a professor of cardiac surgery and dean at Johns Hopkins University. He performed the world’s first cardioverter defibrillator implantation.
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Sonny Rollins
Jazz composer and saxophonist Sonny Rollins (1930 - ) composed the jazz standards “Oleo,” “Airegin,” and “Doxy,” and released over sixty albums in his name, including
Saxophone Colossus
(1956) and
Freedom Suite
(1958).
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Ken Smikle
Marketing chief executive Ken Smikle (1952 - ) founded Target Market News and co-founded the African American Marketing and Media Association.
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1.
Ben Carrington,
Race, Sports and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora
. SAGE Publications Ltd., 2010
2. William C. Rhoden,
Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete
Crown Publishers, 2006
3.
Otis L. Story (The HistoryMakers A2007.256), interviewed by Larry Crowe, March 20, 2012, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 2, tape 7, story 6, Otis L. Story describes the black basketball players' strike at Cornell University
4.
Charles Brown (The HistoryMakers A2004.154), interviewed by Larry Crowe, August 31, 2004, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 4, story 2, Charles Brown talks about the restrictions against African Americans playing division one college basketball in the 1950s
5.
Billy Hawkins,
The New Plantation: Black Athletes, College Sports, and Predominantly White NCAA Institutions.
Palgrave Macmillan, February 12, 2010
6.
Johnathan Rodgers (The HistoryMakers A2004.179), interviewed by Racine Tucker Hamilton, September 24, 2004, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 4, story 7, Johnathan Rodgers talks about journalism chronicling the treatment of African American athletes during the 1960s
7.
Bernie Casey (The HistoryMakers A2005.229), interviewed by Paul Brock, October 8, 2005, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 2, tape 7, story 2, Bernie Casey reflects upon his legacy
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