“The Revolt of the Black Athlete”: The Black Power and Black Students movements’ use of sport as a platform for protest, state repression, and public memory

• In Event: Black Power, Community Justice, and Student Movements

Abstract

The presentation explores Civil Rights-Black Power-era Black activists, athletes, and students use of sports as a platform for protest. In response to the “riots” that began in the mid-1960, several Black activists proposed that Black athletes boycott sports as a more constructive means of attracting attention to institutionalized racism, the poverty and structural and cultural racism that continued to denigrate Black lives and communities in the period. These activists understood that sports often attracted international attention and that the state used Black athletes as evidence of the declining significance of racial discrimination and the increasing efficacy of racial democracy in American society. Sports, however, were sacrosanct in American society. Thus, from the outset, the sports establishment, federal government, and other elements of the state attempted to protect their Cold War and financial interests in sports by terming the protests unpatriotic and the product of Black “militants.” Although their protest was widespread and their activism apexed with Muhammad Ali’s refusal to participate in the U.S. war in Vietnam, the Olympic Project for Human Rights, a campaign to organize a Black boycott of the 1968 Olympics, and protest by Black male student-athletes on white campuses in the late 1960s, the state’s control of the narrative in the media and public discourse both helped stymie the effectiveness of the protests and demonized understandings of the movement for decades afterwards. Because of the demonization of the protests, colleges and sports association passed legislation that allowed schools to repress activist-athletes and tarnish their names and legacy, both without recourse, ultimately deterring the humanity and citizenship that the activist-athletes’ sought.

Author

• Dexter Blackman, Morgan State University