A Legacy of African American Resistance and Activism Through Sport
A Legacy of African American Resistance and Activism Through Sport

Author: Joseph N. Cooper

Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 9781433184987

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In recent years, there has been increased attention garnered toward activism in sport within the United States. In 2016, Colin Kaepernick's activist act of taking a knee during the national anthem before National Football League games sparked a nationwide debate on the intersection of sports, race, and politics. Kaepernick's actions were a part of a long lineage of activism in and through sport. Prior accounts of African American activism in and through sport have been limited in the following eight areas: (1) primarily focused on one type of activism (e.g., symbolic protests/boycotts); (2) a lack of differentiation between activism and borderline activist actions (e.g., agency, pioneering, and advocacy); (3) a lack of emphasis on hybrid resistance; (4) a focus on athletes and teams versus sportspersons (i.e., media, scholars, business leaders, and community members) and institutions (i.e., historically Black colleges and universities, athletic programs, and conferences) more broadly; (5) largely focused on one era of prominent athlete activism in the 1960s; (6) principally excluded and marginalized the importance of women's role in resistance efforts (e.g., activism for social change); (7) primarily focused on activism at the intercollegiate and professional levels with less attention toward youth and interscholastic levels; and (8) a lack of theoretically driven analyses of the resistance efforts exhibited by African American sportspersons, teams, groups, organizations, and institutions. Instead of exclusively using the term activism, the author uses the broader encompassing term of resistance as the focal framework for this text. Resistance is defined as intentional and/or unintentional actions by individuals, groups, organizations, and/or institutions that challenge oppressive systems and ideological hegemony. Using adaptive race- and ethnicity-centric typologies and interdisciplinary theories, this book offers a critical analysis of African Americans' intra- and inter-generational resistance actions where, when, why, and how sport has been utilized to express their humanity, preserve their cultural heritages, empower themselves and their communities, project political views, and pursue freedom, equality, and justice.

Black Sporting Resistance
Black Sporting Resistance

Author: Joseph N. Cooper

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2025-01-14

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 1978839871

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In recent years, there has been increased attention towards activism in sporting spaces. A vast majority of these contributions have focused on intra-nation tensions and impact. Yet, there is a dearth of scholarship that has engaged in a theoretically grounded analysis of how Black sportspersons have exhibited resistance in and through sport across national borders across time, space, and context. In this text, Joseph N. Cooper introduces the Black Sporting Resistance Framework (BSRF) as an analytic lens to examine how resistance actions in and through sport have contributed to the advancement of local and global racial justice efforts. Key concepts such as African (Black) diaspora, transnationalism, internationalism, sporting resistance typology, and sport activism typology are incorporated throughout the book. Black sporting resistance is also analyzed alongside broader social movements such as the Black Liberation Struggle, Black Nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and Black Radicalism. Insights on the ways in which sport can be used to advance social justice in the future are presented.

The Heritage
The Heritage

Author: Howard Bryant

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2018-05-08

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0807026999

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Following in the footsteps of Robeson, Ali, Robinson and others, today’s Black athletes re-engage with social issues and the meaning of American patriotism Named a best book of 2018 by Library Journal It used to be that politics and sports were as separate from one another as church and state. The ballfield was an escape from the world’s worst problems, top athletes were treated like heroes, and cheering for the home team was as easy and innocent as hot dogs and beer. “No news on the sports page” was a governing principle in newsrooms. That was then. Today, sports arenas have been transformed into staging grounds for American patriotism and the hero worship of law enforcement. Teams wear camouflage jerseys to honor those who serve; police officers throw out first pitches; soldiers surprise their families with homecomings at halftime. Sports and politics are decidedly entwined. But as journalist Howard Bryant reveals, this has always been more complicated for black athletes, who from the start, were committing a political act simply by being on the field. In fact, among all black employees in twentieth-century America, perhaps no other group had more outsized influence and power than ballplayers. The immense social responsibilities that came with the role is part of the black athletic heritage. It is a heritage built by the influence of the superstardom and radical politics of Paul Robeson, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith, and John Carlos through the 1960s; undermined by apolitical, corporate-friendly “transcenders of race,” O. J. Simpson, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods in the following decades; and reclaimed today by the likes of LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick, and Carmelo Anthony. The Heritage is the story of the rise, fall, and fervent return of the athlete-activist. Through deep research and interviews with some of sports’ best-known stars—including Kaepernick, David Ortiz, Charles Barkley, and Chris Webber—as well as members of law enforcement and the military, Bryant details the collision of post-9/11 sports in America and the politically engaged post-Ferguson black athlete.

Sisters in the Struggle
Sisters in the Struggle

Author: Bettye Collier-Thomas

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2001-08

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 0814716024

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Tells the stories and documents the contributions of African American women involved in the struggle for racial and gender equality through the civil rights and black power movements in the United States.

An African American and Latinx History of the United States
An African American and Latinx History of the United States

Author: Paul Ortiz

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2018-01-30

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 0807013102

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An intersectional history of the shared struggle for African American and Latinx civil rights Spanning more than two hundred years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history, arguing that the “Global South” was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Scholar and activist Paul Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress as exalted by widely taught formulations like “manifest destiny” and “Jacksonian democracy,” and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms US history into one of the working class organizing against imperialism. Drawing on rich narratives and primary source documents, Ortiz links racial segregation in the Southwest and the rise and violent fall of a powerful tradition of Mexican labor organizing in the twentieth century, to May 1, 2006, known as International Workers’ Day, when migrant laborers—Chicana/os, Afrocubanos, and immigrants from every continent on earth—united in resistance on the first “Day Without Immigrants.” As African American civil rights activists fought Jim Crow laws and Mexican labor organizers warred against the suffocating grip of capitalism, Black and Spanish-language newspapers, abolitionists, and Latin American revolutionaries coalesced around movements built between people from the United States and people from Central America and the Caribbean. In stark contrast to the resurgence of “America First” rhetoric, Black and Latinx intellectuals and organizers today have historically urged the United States to build bridges of solidarity with the nations of the Americas. Incisive and timely, this bottom-up history, told from the interconnected vantage points of Latinx and African Americans, reveals the radically different ways that people of the diaspora have addressed issues still plaguing the United States today, and it offers a way forward in the continued struggle for universal civil rights. 2018 Winner of the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award

This Era of Black Activism
This Era of Black Activism

Author: Mary Marcel

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2023-10-15

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1666940658

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While much focus has been placed on Black Lives Matter activism in response to police and civilian murders of Black men and women, the contributors argue that Black activism in this era has addressed a broader range of issues in a wide array of settings, both on the street and inside institutions and communities. This Era of Black Activism includes chapters on this era of Black activism from 2000-2022. It describes how previous activism has influenced this generation, while showing innovations in political approaches, leadership and organizational formations, and the use of social and other media for movement purposes. Topics include the innovations of #BlackLives Matter as a movement; the Florida activist group Dream Defenders; policing and discrepancies in reporting on Ferguson; the role of citizen cameras in Black activism; social media for Black community coping and well-being; BIPOC Gay Power activism vs. Gay Pride; academic activism by Black and White professors; corporate responses to #BLM; #MeToo and healing within the Black community; Black health activism and the Covid pandemic; and bridging activism and policy for a new social contract. It also offers an additional bibliography on Black activism for environmental justice, athlete anti-racist activism, and the role of the Black Church in this era.

In This Land of Plenty
In This Land of Plenty

Author: Benjamin Talton

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2019-08-23

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0812251474

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On August 7, 1989, Congressman Mickey Leland departed on a flight from Addis Ababa, with his thirteen-member delegation of Ethiopian and American relief workers and policy analysts, bound for Ethiopia's border with Sudan. This was Leland's seventh official humanitarian mission in his nearly decade-long drive to transform U.S. policies toward Africa to conform to his black internationalist vision of global cooperation, antiracism, and freedom from hunger. Leland's flight never arrived at its destination. The plane crashed, with no survivors. When Leland embarked on that delegation, he was a forty-four-year-old, deeply charismatic, fiercely compassionate, black, radical American. He was also an elected Democratic representative of Houston's largely African American and Latino Eighteenth Congressional District. Above all, he was a self-proclaimed "citizen of humanity." Throughout the 1980s, Leland and a small group of former radical-activist African American colleagues inside and outside Congress exerted outsized influence to elevate Africa's significance in American foreign affairs and to move the United States from its Cold War orientation toward a foreign policy devoted to humanitarianism, antiracism, and moral leadership. Their internationalism defined a new era of black political engagement with Africa. In This Land of Plenty presents Leland as the embodiment of larger currents in African American politics at the end of the twentieth century. But a sober look at his aspirations shows the successes and shortcomings of domestic radicalism and aspirations of politically neutral humanitarianism during the 1980s, and the extent to which the decade was a major turning point in U.S. relations with the African continent. Exploring the links between political activism, electoral politics, and international affairs, Benjamin Talton not only details Leland's political career but also examines African Americans' successes and failures in influencing U.S. foreign policy toward African and other Global South countries.

Sports and the Racial Divide, Volume II
Sports and the Racial Divide, Volume II

Author: Michael E. Lomax

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2024-01-15

Total Pages: 124

ISBN-13: 1496848551

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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.

Athletic Activism
Athletic Activism

Author: Jeffrey Montez de Oca

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing

Published: 2023-08-08

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1802622039

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Rooted in a global, transnational perspective, Athletic Activism: Global Perspectives on Social Transformation demonstrates how athletic activism can not only impact global discourse about inequity across various social location, but foster institutional change that advances social justice.

To Make the Wounded Whole
To Make the Wounded Whole

Author: Dan Royles

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2020-07-21

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 1469659514

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In the decades since it was identified in 1981, HIV/AIDS has devastated African American communities. Members of those communities mobilized to fight the epidemic and its consequences from the beginning of the AIDS activist movement. They struggled not only to overcome the stigma and denial surrounding a "white gay disease" in Black America, but also to bring resources to struggling communities that were often dismissed as too "hard to reach." To Make the Wounded Whole offers the first history of African American AIDS activism in all of its depth and breadth. Dan Royles introduces a diverse constellation of activists, including medical professionals, Black gay intellectuals, church pastors, Nation of Islam leaders, recovering drug users, and Black feminists who pursued a wide array of grassroots approaches to slow the epidemic's spread and address its impacts. Through interlinked stories from Philadelphia and Atlanta to South Africa and back again, Royles documents the diverse, creative, and global work of African American activists in the decades-long battle against HIV/AIDS.