I was brought up to believe that sports would be the salvation of the black race. Here, I was told repeatedly, was the one area of American life in which a man could proceed according to his own merit, and for proof I had only to look at the careers of Jesse Owens, Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays, with special attention to Paul Robeson at Rutgers and Jerome Holland at Cornell. I accepted the evidence, and when Holland won the job as United States ambassador to Sweden, what had been merely a theory became a fact. I often assured my friends that ‘for the Negro, sports are the highroad to upward escalation, the way he will escape from the ghetto.’
There was, of course, that awkward afternoon when a sociologist rebuked me: ‘All you’re saying is that if a young Negro has superhuman capacities … if he can sing like Marian Anderson or play football like Jerome Holland, he can win the normal decencies that the ordinary white man takes for granted. We’ll have no social justice in this country until the day when an ordinary Negro, with a ninth-grade education and no outstanding skills, has full equality.’
For a moment I caught a glimpse of what this scholar was proposing, but I soon dismissed both him and his argument; he was a known troublemaker and might even have been a communist. The facts were irrefutable: blacks were finding a place in sports, and this would be their salvation.
DRAWING BY PETER ARNO; © 1947 THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE INC.
I’ll never know why they picked her! She’s not at all musical.’
And then one evening in Hawaii in the late 1950s my whole sentimental structure collapsed. I sat in the midst of a huge crowd containing not one black to watch as the Harlem Globetrotters, the Clown Princes of Basketball, performed.
At first I laughed with the other spectators as Meadowlark Lemon put on his outrageous act, making a fool of his white opponents and the white referee. The other black players were hilarious, too, especially when they slyly introduced the basketball with a heavy weight inside the bladder, so that the ball bounced at preposterous angles, and when Meadowlark, keeping himself and the ball a few inches off the floor, dribbled completely around his befuddled guard, then slipped through the man’s legs for an easy basket, the crowd roared.
Other antics brought raucous laughter, but in the midst of the hilarity I happened to look at the face of one of the lesser Globetrotters, and it was the face of a man, not a clown. It was obvious that he found the evening distasteful, and I began to analyze the performance from his point of view.
What these blacks were doing for money was exhibiting proof of all the prejudices which white men had built up about them. They were lazy, and gangling, and sly, and given to wild bursts of laughter, and their success in life depended upon their outwitting the white man. Every witty act they performed—and some of them were intensely creative, as when Meadowlark, disgusted by the referee’s call against him, bounded the ball forcefully against the floor and in such a carefully calculated way that the ball went high in the air and landed precisely on the referee’s bald head—was a denigration of the black experience and dignity.
It was not the clowning that I objected to. In baseball I had been familiar with the antics of Al Schacht, the famous pitcher who in the later years when his career had ended put his cap on sideways and became an inventive clown. The difference was that Schacht did this at the end of his career, after compiling a distinguished record in the big time; the black players had to clown at the beginning of their careers, before having been allowed to attain anything in professional ranks.
As the exhibition progressed I began studying the players critically, and it was obvious that this clowning team had men who could go up against white professionals like George Mikan and Bob Pettit on even terms. When Wilt Chamberlain played for the Globetrotters he was one of the top athletes in the world, and so was Connie Hawkins when he was clowning it. I suppose one could argue that Abe Saperstein, the dictatorial owner of the Globetrotters, performed a service for black players, since he did employ them, making it possible for them to earn a meager living in a sport which was otherwise barred to them, but it was at the cost of their dignity.
In fact, I strongly suspect that the Harlem Globetrotters did more damage racially than they did good, because they deepened the stereotype of ‘the lovable, irresponsible Negro.’ (If there was one thing Wilt Chamberlain was not, it was lovable and irresponsible, yet that was the role he had to play.) At any rate, the last half-hour of that game in Hawaii was a most distasteful experience for me, for I was ashamed that I was contributing my money to an exhibition which degraded the principal participants. It was then that I started thinking about the role of the black player in American sports; it was then that I recalled what the sociologist had said regarding the impropriety of doling out privileges to only a few; and it was then that I stopped using the word Negro. If these proud men wanted to be called black, I would respect their wishes.
It was then, also, that I became aware of one phrase that seemed particularly insulting. ‘Joe Louis,’ the fight announcer would intone, ‘heavyweight champion of the world and a credit to his race.’ Jackie Robinson was a ‘credit to his race,’ and so was Willie Mays. Three questions bothered me. Were blacks so without dignity that they could be salvaged only by popular sports figures? And why should some rednecked prizefight announcer with an eighth-grade education judge who was a credit and who not? And what race were they talking about—the human race? In a lifetime of working with blacks I recall one man as preeminent by any standards the world might wish to apply. He was Randall Nelson, our town barber, a gentle person of such glowing humanity and spiritual generosity that when he died our whole town went into mourning, for we knew quality when we saw it. And he did not have to play games to prove that superiority. The phrase is presumptuous and arrogant and should be dropped.
My next awakening came in the spring of 1966, when the NCAA basketball championships were being decided. I have always applauded this tournament because of its efficiency, its compactness and its finality. Invariably three or four of the games are classics and occasionally, as in the 1974 double-overtime semi-final between North Carolina State and UCLA, an apex of sporting experience.
In 1966 Kentucky, under Adolph Rupp, was sweeping its regionals: Kentucky 86–Dayton 79; and Kentucky 84–Michigan 77. Rupp’s team occasioned much favorable comment in my area because it was composed solely of white players who were cleaning up.
In the meantime, the other regionals were in disarray. Loyola of Illinois, which had been touted to win their regionals, according to pre-tournament publicity, was eliminated early by Western Kentucky, 105–86. Another favorite, St. Joseph’s of Philadelphia, had been dumped by Duke, 76–74. The semi-finals had pitted high-riding Utah against the nondescript team from Texas Western at El Paso, and the Texans had scored an upset, 85–78. Sportswriters had used the word nondescript because the El Paso team, from an overwhelmingly white southern school, had conscripted a bunch of black players from New York City high schools. Only one player in the first eight was white, and he didn’t play much. I watched one of the early Texas Western games on television and concluded that whereas the team did have five tough New York playground types who might give the average college team a good tussle, they really had no chance against a disciplined, tall team like Kentucky, which had won its semi-final against Duke, 83–79.
Well, the final, played on Saturday night at College Park in Maryland, was a revelation. White Kentucky ran onto the court tall and beautifully coached and impressive in their pre-game drills. The Texas Western blacks straggled on, a bunch of loose-jointed ragamuffins ready for a brawl; they seemed hopelessly outclassed.
When the whistles blew, and the game began, the big men from Kentucky started moving the ball in their accustomed way, with precision and polish, and against an ordinary team they would have prevailed, but Texas Western was in no way ordinary. It was a gang of furious young men who had come to wrestle the ball away, flood the forecourt with shooters, and keep throwing the basketball tow
ard the basket until it went in.
Within a few minutes Kentucky was demoralized by this swarm of gangbusters, and I remember telling the men beside me at the bar of the local Maennerchor, ‘If Kentucky doesn’t stomp on those little bastards, this is going to be a rout.’ Kentucky tried to stomp, but by the time their heels hit the floor, the El Paso gang was far down the court on another fast break. Texas Western won, 72–65, and the following year Kentucky started recruiting blacks.
But this popular victory was not the real story of the 1966 play-offs. Later in 1967 stories began circulating to the effect that of the seven blacks who had won the championship for El Paso, only a few had stayed in college after the tournament; the others had no intention of coming back for a degree. Since this seemed a classic case of a university recruiting blacks, using them, and then tossing them aside when their eligibility was exhausted, considerable interest was evidenced, and in its issue of July 15, 1968, Sports Illustrated blew the whistle.
In an eye-opener five-part series of articles on black athletes in America, Jack Olsen provided the first in-depth look at a scandalous situation, and the highlight of his report dealt with the situation at El Paso, with special emphasis on the championship basketball team. The rumors I had been hearing were confirmed. The blacks who had been imported from New York had been treated as poorly paid gladiators, and of the seven black champions—no whites got into the final game—none had graduated. To maintain their eligibility, they had been encouraged to take Mickey Mouse courses of no possible substance which enabled them to get B grades but which did not count toward graduation credits in their major fields. They had not been allowed to take those difficult real courses which would have enabled them to earn degrees in physical education, and without such degrees they could not become coaches in black high schools.
And while still eligible they had not been treated well. They had no social privileges, were threatened with loss of their scholarships if they dated white or Mexican girls—there were no black girls—and were discriminated against in every particular. Several were married but their wives could not get jobs; they could not pick up extra money under the table the way white players did; they were used as cynically as one could imagine, and when their utility was ended, they were thrown aside to make place for a new batch.
The El Paso story is one of the most wretched in the history of American sports. I have merely alluded to the disgraceful details so well presented in the Olsen series, and anyone interested in the fundamentals of the problem should consult his article. In reflecting upon the El Paso incident, I have often thought how much luckier the white players were under Coach Adolph Rupp. He looked after his players; they had a shot at a real education; and they were secure within the traditions of their university, their community and their state. They may have lost the play-off, but they were winners in every other respect, and their black opponents from El Paso were losers.
It was from such beginnings that I started my study of black athletes, and wherever I looked, they were enjoying conspicuous success. In 1947 professional baseball had had room for only one black player. Jackie Robinson, but by 1970 the percentage had risen to 25. Over a span of twenty-two seasons a black has been chosen sixteen times as the most valuable player in the National League. Pittsburgh saw nothing wrong in fielding a totally black team in the closing days of a recent season, and the all-star baseball teams average about 36 percent blacks.
Professional football saw an equal growth in black players. As late as 1957 the combined rosters showed only 14 percent blacks; by 1971 the figure was 32 percent. One year all the Rookie-of-the-Year awards went to blacks; another year 44 percent of the All-Star team was black. Gradually all the important statistical records are falling into the hands of black players, and a heavy percentage of the superstars are black.
But it has been basketball which has shown the most conspicuous explosion of black talent. When the National Basketball Association was reorganized in its present form, only 5 percent of the players were black; by 1971 over 54 percent were. The most valuable player has been black twelve times in thirteen years; in one series of all-star games, 63 percent of the players were black, as were most of the superstars. In the old days, before blacks were totally accepted in professional basketball, the rule was, ‘You start two blacks at home, three on the road, and five when you’re eighteen points behind.’ Now it is not uncommon to see a starting line-up with five black stars, and at the end of each season the all-league team is dominated by blacks.
In college the same improvement has been made. All the major teams recruit black athletes extensively, and the path to a college education, all expenses paid, is easier for a black now than ever before. No university could presume to stay in the big time if it discriminated against blacks, and even in the Southeastern Conference, last bastion of white supremacy, in schools like Mississippi, Louisiana State and Alabama the linemen and backfield starters are apt to be black. Bear Bryant, who led the way in accepting black players when the south reluctantly decided to accept them, has said, ‘At Alabama we don’t have any black players, or any white ones for that matter—we just have players. I don’t care if they’re green if they can play.’ Even the University of Texas, which had no blacks during the years when the branch at El Paso was winning national championships with them, has succumbed and now depends upon black stars for much of its power. As a matter of fact, the superior black athlete probably has an easier time in the south than in the desolate north, for in the south he has a black community near the college and a social life in which he can participate. He is therefore not sequestered, as he might be if he played in certain northern areas where there are few blacks either in school or in the community.
In other sports, too, the black has been making his mark. Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe have won the major championships in tennis; Lee Elder has finally cracked the hitherto restricted Masters; and a dozen great track and field performers have dominated our Olympic teams. In the future there will be many black hockey players in the NHL, whether the conservative patrons like it or not, and it would seem that there never was a time more favorable for the black athlete.
And yet, when one studies the basic literature on this subject, and talks late at night with blacks, he finds this supposed Garden of Eden overrun with reptiles. The white reader who wants to acquaint himself quickly with problems of which he has not been aware should read the book by Dr. Harry Edwards listed in the opening chapter, The Revolt of the Black Athlete. Or he should study the eminently sane report of the black faculty members who assembled the complaints of black athletes in the Big Ten, one of our best conferences and one which should have been alert to this problem decades ago, but which was almost as discriminatory as the south. It can be found in Integrated Education (May 1972). And finally, for a bitter attack on the manner in which white educational institutions use black athletes and discard them, nothing so far is more succinct than a remarkable document prepared by Dr. Henry P. Organ, a member of the Board of Directors of Nairobi Schools. It appears in The Nairobi Schools Digest (April 1974). If the serious student can read only one publication on this subject, I would recommend this, because of its uncompromising determination to look at the subject with a cold, fresh eye.
Finally, there is a series of outstanding interviews and studies made by Dr. Roscoe C. Brown, Jr., dealing with the impact of athletics on the black community. The gist of his position is summarized in an interview given The New York Times on April 16, 1972, but I have been privileged to see an unpublished report he made for the American Council on Education which spells out his basic philosophy. I hope this will be published and widely read.
From these and similar sources I should like to present the thinking of many men and women who are deeply disturbed by the idolization of sports which dominates black communities. We had better listen to these criticisms, for if present imbalances are allowed to continue and perhaps intensify, we are headed for trouble.
Black salvat
ion through sport is an enervating myth. What actually happens is that a few superstars win spectacular contracts, almost always inflated in the press. They usually detach themselves from the black community from which they sprang, return no social good to that community, and leave it worse off than it was. And they themselves too often wind up with nothing to show for their years of prowess, for they do not win the good jobs that accrue to the white superstars.
Obsession with sports is destructive of black youth. Blinded by the dazzling temporary success of a few black stars, the ghetto boy dreams only of success in sports. His chances for ultimate stardom are not great; in the meantime he has destroyed whatever chances he had for becoming a good doctor, or engineer, or social expert. More black talent is aborted on the ghetto playground than can be calculated, leaving the black community impoverished.
The damage starts in junior high school and is compounded in high school. It is downright shameful to contemplate the number of potentially gifted black boys whose entire education is perverted in junior high school, where overenthusiastic coaches start them on the downward course of athletic specialization, indifference to scholastic accomplishment, and dedication to a dream that can never be realized. For a few years of adolescent glory, the black boy surrenders his chance for a lifetime of meaningful participation in the community.
Acceptance of a college athletic scholarship may be the first step to a truncated career. If the college intends to use the black athlete merely as a performer, while accepting no responsibility for his education, the chances are really great that he will terminate his college career without an education, without a job, and without adequate preparation for any. The young black might be much better off rejecting the scholarship, enrolling like an honest student, finding a job washing dishes in some all-night restaurant, and winding up with a degree in accounting. At present the chances of his playing four years of college football or basketball and graduating are not good. And if he does manage to graduate, it will often be with a mangled, second-rate degree that qualifies him for nothing.