Sport and the Color Line

Black Athletes and Race Relations in Twentieth Century America

Patrick B. Miller, David K. Wiggins, Patrick B. Miller, David K. Wiggins

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135941161
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: History
• Categoria: World History

The year 2003 marks the one-hundredth anniversary of W.E.B. Du Bois' "Souls of Black Folk, " in which he declared that "the color line" would be the problem of the twentieth century. Half a century later, Jackie Robinson would display his remarkable athletic skills in "baseball's great experiment." Now, "Sport and the Color Line" takes a look at the last century through the lens of sports and race, drawing together articles by many of the leading figures in Sport Studies to address the African American experience and the history of race relations.
The history of African Americans in sport is not simple, and it certainly did not begin in 1947 when Jackie Robinson first donned a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform. The essays presented here examine the complexity of black American sports culture, from the organization of semi-pro baseball and athletic programs at historically black colleges and universities, to the careers of individual stars such as Jack Johnson and Joe Louis, to the challenges faced by black women in sports. What are today's black athletes doing in the aftermath of desegregation, or with the legacy of Muhammad Ali's political stance? The essays gathered here engage such issues, as well as the paradoxes of corporate sport and the persistence of scientific racism in the athletic realm.

II

THE ORDEAL OF DESEGREGATION

WRITING IN OCTOBER, 1936, Roy Wilkins—activist and editor of the Crisis—took the occasion of a football game between the University of North Carolina and NYU to comment in expansive terms about race relations in America. The contest occurred in a northern venue during that fateful autumn, and significantly, it matched a team from the once-Confederate South against a contingent that included an African-American athlete. This was, in fact, one of the first intersectional, interracial match-ups in the history of intercollegiate competition.

Wilkins had discussed the game only briefly in his own journal—the organ of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People—but his vigorous account appearing in the pages of the New York Amsterdam News gave full voice to the integrationist ideals of the mass of black Americans of his era: This was a crossing of the color line that deserved to be headline news as well as a model for the future. He had heard “no boos” from Carolina fans, Wilkins reported, and “none of the familiar cries of ‘Kill the Negro.’ So far the University of North Carolina is still standing and none of the young men representing it on the gridiron appears to be any worse off for having spent an afternoon competing against a Negro player. It is a fairly safe prediction,” Wilkins continued, “that no white North Carolinian&s daughter will marry a Negro as a result of Saturday&s play, much to the chagrin of the peddlers of the bugaboo of social equality.”

Wilkins then cast his praise for the actions of UNC in a broader context, condemning those institutions that refused to advance even one small step on the issue of race. The theory behind the “shenanigans” generally called “Gentlemen&s Agreements” was “that the prestige of a Southern school suffers in some way if its sons compete in games with Negroes,” he asserted. “Not only that, but the South and the white race generally were supposed to suffer something or other. Sociology, anthropology, and political science were dragged into the argument, the whole thing topped off by a rehash of the war of 1860–1865.” When “the North Carolinians merely said they would not object and would not protest” if a black man competed, racial reformers knew they had accomplished something very simple and at the same time quite profound, breaking the tradition of southern schools forcing their hometown rules on northern institutions. Carolina&s decision to play NYU, with its African-American star, suggested to Wilkins “that a younger generation of white Southerners want to approach the difficult business of race relations on a different basis than that used by their fathers and grandfathers.” Ultimately, he hoped such an action would “set an example for other Southern schools,” and he anticipated upcoming contests that might have the same admirable outcome. (Roy Wilkins, “Watchtower,” New York Amster-dam News, October 24, 1936).

Clearly, the desegregation of sports at mid-century offers some of the most dramatic moments of the civil rights crusade. Sadly, though, Wilkins’ comments on the 1936 football contest were overly optimistic. In fact, for many years thereafter, the racial breakthroughs in the athletic realm had to be lined up against numerous setbacks. It is important to emphasize that there was nothing certain, no clear pattern of racial progress on the playing fields. Thus black leaders like Wilkins, along with a legion of African-American sportswriters, continued to extol victories won and records established, even as they applauded every act of enlightenment and denounced every instance of discrimination they discovered. Within the subtly crafted racial calculus of “muscular assimilationism,” the successes of African-American athletes in a widely popular realm of endeavor lent themselves to the larger prize: persuading white America that blacks should be allowed to participate fully in the social, political, and economic life of the nation.

The ideal of equality and opportunity in sport—fair play in all its particulars— represented a substantial portion of the larger argument for racial justice. African Americans drew inspiration from champions such as Jesse Owens and Joe Louis, not merely as folk heroes, but also in the aftermath of the 1936 Summer Olympics and the second Louis-Schmeling bout, as national heroes. If someone like Wilkins could have created a narrative of racial reform from the 1936 football competition between UNC and NYU, then perhaps from the career of Joe Louis to the early exploits of Jackie Robinson in major league baseball, the path to integration would have been swift and sure. What the essays in this section reveal, however, is that massive resistance to the claims by blacks for full citizenship rights would play out on diamond and gridiron as well as at lunch counters and bus stops and high schools. During the 1950s and 1960s, at the very same moment in history that a battle flag of the Confederacy was first set within the state flags of Georgia and Mississippi, for instance, those states—and others —enacted new legislation prohibiting interracial athletic competition.

Racial reform in the sporting realm was fitful, at best, following no formula. It required that some athletes, like Jackie Robinson, make huge sacrifices in their personal lives so as to embody the hopes of myriad like-minded race men and women; it depended upon local activists, such as the NYU students who protested discrimination on their campus when a black athlete, a classmate, was banned from intersectional competition. The dynamic between the forces for civil rights on the playing fields and those in opposition was also embedded in deeper contexts: Cold War politics, for instance, and what desegregation and the civil rights movement in the United States meant to the emerging postcolonial nations of Africa and Asia. From different perspectives, the essays in this section also examine the politics of pursuing a national championship in basketball or a prestigious bowl appearance in football, the cultural dynamics in a city such as Indianapolis, Indiana, where the best basketball team happened to be from an all-black high school, and the ways and means of the nation&s capital, where the Kennedy White House finally wielded the clout sufficient to eradicate lily-whitism from the Washington franchise of the National Football League.

Ultimately, in the midst of so much that was, indeed, a political dimension of civil rights activism, the personal also needs to be addressed. How many athletes, and their families and friends, endured incivility and threats of violence as they simply stepped forward to compete in a new place? How do we measure the cost of the individual sacrifices made in behalf of the larger crusade? Is there a remedy for bitterness and alienation, stemming from so many injustices in the past, other than honest plans for something more affirmative for the future?

7

JOE LOUIS

American Folk Hero

William H.Wiggins, Jr.

Hail the king! Make way for the king… And everybody does.
Along Route 2
which leads to Pompton Lakes you see thousands of people
scattered, peering
through brush and over harvester machines all straining for
one purposeÐto see
Joe Louis¼as it (Joe Louis car) passes¼you hear screams
and yells by the
townfolks¼ Soon you begin to think this Joe Louis must be
a hero.

—Chicago Defender, February 15, 1936

WHO WAS JOSEPH Louis BARROW? What were the physical, personal, and spiritual qualities that he possessed that made him a genuine American folk hero? What were some of his heroic words and deeds at the time of the Great Depression and during World War II, which are still cited today by many Americans of all races, creeds, and colors? This chapter will attempt to answer these questions by looking at the first twenty-eight years of Joe Louis&s life. The period covered begins on May 13, 1914, when he was born, the seventh child of poor sharecroppers Lillian and Monroe “Mun” Barrow, on a farm near Lafayette, Alabama, and ends on March 10, 1942 in Madison Square Garden, where Joe Louis gave a memorable patriotic speech at a big World War II rally. In less than half of his life (he died of a massive, heart attack on April 12, 1981, a month shy of his sixty-seventh birthday) Joe Louis had risen from his humble birth as just another unknown brown baby to international celebrity status as the one and only “Brown Bomber.”

Joe Louis&s fistic comet flashed across a dark and foreboding America. It was the time of the Great Depression and World War II, two periods that left a deep and lasting impression on American culture. Both eras unleashed a sense of fear and uncertainty among Americans, the consequences of which are still evident in some aspects of contemporary life and thought. The economic devastation of the Great Depression seriously eroded the confidence that most Americans had in the free enterprise system and in the American Dream of success through hard work and thrift. Some of the unemployed who were forced to stand in soup lines for their daily sustenance began to doubt the reality of that dream. Their precious hopes for a better life lay dashed amid the rubble of the 1929 stock market crash. During the 1930s, a significant number of American parents went to bed each night fearful that they and their children would be doomed to a bleak, poor existence unless the economy turned around soon. They would always be one of the have-nots and never one of the haves.

World War II was their second cultural nightmare. With each successive conquest, Nazi Germany, with its impressive military might and political ideology of Aryan supremacy, loomed ever larger as a nation that just might be able to topple America from its prominence as a world power and replace its democratic government, in which all citizens are free to express their opinions and elect their leaders, with Nazi fascism, a political system that would deny all of these constitutionally guaranteed rights. It was this national climate of fear and uncertainty that prompted President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to attempt to reassure his fellow citizens by saying during one of his radio fireside chats: “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.”

The first eight years of his boxing career (1934–1942) cut a swath of boxing brilliance across these two watershed eras in American history. Also during this time, Joe Louis came to be perceived by a significant number of Americans as a folk hero, one they could entrust to defend their threatened cultural values. During the Great Depression, Joe Louis came to symbolize the cultural values of the work ethic, honesty, and fair play for a large segment of black Americans. Walter White, executive secretary of the NAACP and other black leaders of the time proudly cited the Brown Bomber&s rigorous training habits as a refutation of the popular racial stereotype held by some whites, especially southern whites, that all blacks are lazy. During World War II, Joe Louis symbolized the cherished American values of patriotism, freedom, and democracy for a significant segment of white Americans. Eleanor Roosevelt, the nation&s First Lady, although not an avid boxing fan, was nonetheless greatly impressed with Joe Louis&s unparalleled patriotic acts of donating his entire purses from matches with Buddy Baer and Abe Simon in 1942 to the United States Navy and Army Relief Funds, respectively.

I have organized this chapter into four parts. “Joe Louis Becomes a Man” examines his life from his birth in 1914 to the end of his amateur boxing career in 1934. “Joe Louis Becomes a Great Depression Hero” chronicles his Horatio Alger climb from earning just fifty dollars for his first professional fight with Jack Kracken (1934) to the end of the 1930s when he was earning close to two million dollars from fights with such heavyweight boxers as Primo Carnera and Max Baer (1935), Max Schmeling (1936), Jim Braddock (1937), Max Schmeling (1938), and “Two Ton” Tony Galento (1939). “Joe Louis Becomes a World War II Hero” discusses the emergence of the Brown Bomber as America&s patriotic hero, with special attention to such fights as the rematch with Max Schmeling in 1938 as well as successful title defenses against Billy Conn (1941) and Buddy Baer and Abe Simon (1942). “The Champ Is Dead, Long Live the Champ” explores the significant impact that Joe Louis continues to have on American life and thought, long after he lost the heavyweight title to Rocky Marciano on October 26, 1951.

JOE LOUIS BECOMES A MAN

As the years go by, I often reflect on the things that influenced me. Sometimes I look and think, ªHow come me? How come I&m a world champion? How come I&ve got all the responsibilities it carries, when I only looked forward to a simple, poor country life?º I guess it has something to do with having a strong mother, a good stepfather, and a special God-given talent.

—Joe Louis in Joe Louis: My Life, (1978)

Joseph Louis Barrow, like many black children born during the first two decades of this century, came from the South and was reared in very humble circumstances. His parents, Munrow “Mun” Barrow and Lillian Reese Barrow, were hardworking, God-fearing Alabama sharecroppers who struggled to eke out a living for themselves and their eight children from the sale of cotton and vegetables they grew on the 120-acre red-clay farm they rented from a wealthy, white, absentee landowner. The emotional strain, however, proved too much for Mun Barrow. In 1916, when Joe Louis was only two years old, Mun Barrow was placed in the epileptic ward of Searcy Hospital for the Negro Insane in Mt. Vernon, Alabama. But his mother refused to break under the burden of rearing eight children by herself. At the age of sixty-four, when recalling his childhood and his seven brothers and sisters (Susie, Lonnie, Eulalia, Emmarell, De Leon, Alvanius, and Vunice), Joe Louis paid tribute to his mother&s iron will and unwavering work ethic with these words: “My momma was Lily Reese before she got married…and she was, for those days, a big woman—five foot six and 170 pounds She could plow a good straight furrow, plant and pick with the best of them— cut cord wood like a lumberjack then leave the fields for an hour earlier than anyone else and fix a meal to serve her family. God! I loved that woman.”¹

In the intervening years, Lillian Barrow married Patrick Brooks, a widowed sharecropper with eight children of his own. Joe Louis paid his stepfather this glowing tribute: “Patrick Brooks was all the father I really knew. He was a good stepfather who worked hard and did the best he could. He was always fair and treated all those sixteen children as equally as a man could. His kids and my brothers and sisters fit in like one big family.”²

Soon after he remarried, Mr. Brooks was visited by some of his relatives who had moved north to Detroit...