Fritz Pollard

Fritz Pollard PDF Author: John M. Carroll
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252067990
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
This is the inspiring story of an African American whose athletic and entrepreneurial achievements -- from being the first black quarterback and head coach in the National Football League to founding one of the first all-black investment securities companies -- were equaled by his courage in confronting racial barriers.

Fritz Pollard

Fritz Pollard PDF Author: John M. Carroll
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252067990
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
This is the inspiring story of an African American whose athletic and entrepreneurial achievements -- from being the first black quarterback and head coach in the National Football League to founding one of the first all-black investment securities companies -- were equaled by his courage in confronting racial barriers.

Fritz Pollard

Fritz Pollard PDF Author: John Martin Carroll
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description


Breaking the Color Barrier

Breaking the Color Barrier PDF Author: Frank Foster
Publisher: BookCaps Study Guides
ISBN: 1629173517
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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Book Description
The history of sports and race is messy. In baseball Jackie Robinson is universally touted as the first black major league player, which conveniently forgets Moses Fleetwood Walker and other players of color who appeared on 19th century diamonds. Football deals with the messiness a different way. The sport employs the term "modern era" instead. So Kenny Washington is the first black player of the "modern era." James Harris was the first black quarterback to start an NFL game in the "modern era." Art Shell was the first black head coach of the "modern era." The reason football has to append the qualifier to its historical racial milestones is because there was a man who was doing all those things back when the National Football League began. His name was Fritz Pollard, and this is his story.

Race and Sport

Race and Sport PDF Author: Charles Kenyatta Ross
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781578068975
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
An examination of the connection between race and sport in America

Advancing the Ball

Advancing the Ball PDF Author: N. Jeremi Duru
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199792801
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Following the NFL's desegregation in 1946, opportunities became increasingly plentiful for African American players--but not African American coaches. Although Major League Baseball and the NBA made progress in this regard over the years, the NFL's head coaches were almost exclusively white up until the mid-1990s. Advancing the Ball chronicles the campaign of former Cleveland Browns offensive lineman John Wooten to right this wrong and undo decades of discriminatory head coach hiring practices--an initiative that finally bore fruit when he joined forces with attorneys Cyrus Mehri and Johnnie Cochran. Together with a few allies, the triumvirate galvanized the NFL's African American assistant coaches to stand together for equal opportunity and convinced the league to enact the "Rooney Rule," which stipulates that every team must interview at least one minority candidate when searching for a new head coach. In doing so, they spurred a movement that would substantially impact the NFL and, potentially, the nation. Featuring an impassioned foreword by Coach Tony Dungy, Advancing the Ball offers an eye-opening, first-hand look at how a few committed individuals initiated a sea change in America's most popular sport and added an extraordinary new chapter to the civil rights story.

Outside the Lines

Outside the Lines PDF Author: Charles K. Ross
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814776833
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Explores the often overlooked role of the NFL in the American civil rights movement Watching a football game on a Sunday evening, most sports fans do not realize the profound impact the National Football League had on the civil rights movement. Similarly, in a sport where seven out of ten players are Black, few are fully aware of the history and contributions of their athletic forebears. Among the touchdowns and tackles lies a rich history of African American life and the struggle to achieve equal rights. Outside the Lines traces how football laid a foundation for social change long before the judicial system formally recognized the inequalities of racial separation. Integrating teams to include white and Black athletes alike fifty years before the reversal of Plessy v Ferguson, the National Football League served as a microcosmic fishbowl of the highs and lows—the trials and triumphs—of racial integration. In this chronicle of the important stories of Black NFL athletes in the early twentieth century, Charles K. Ross has given us an important insight into the role of sports in the fight for racial justice.

Sports Superstars from Black History

Sports Superstars from Black History PDF Author: Sophia Murphy
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1646047192
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Discover how 12 Black athletes overcame seemingly impossible odds and insurmountable challenges to achieve their dreams and make a name for themselves in the fields of football, baseball, basketball, tennis, track and field, and gymnastics—a perfect gift for young sports fans and young athletes! Kids will immerse themselves in the world of sports as they follow iconic figures, from stars of the past to celebrities of today, through the highs and lows of their careers. Young readers will discover the inspirational stories of 12 people—some that they might know and love, and some that they may have never heard of before—all winners in their own right. But this book goes beyond touchdowns and home runs. Each of these figures has overcome many struggles, and kids will learn valuable life lessons from this book’s deeper themes of leadership, perseverance, tenacity, and triumphing over adversity. Featuring stories about: Serena Williams and Althea Gibson Aaron Judge and Jackie Robinson Lebron James and Earl Francis Lloyd Russell Wilson and Fritz Pollard Simone Biles and Dominque Dawes Allyson Felix and Alice Coachman

Pigskin

Pigskin PDF Author: Robert W. Peterson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195353307
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
If the National Football League is now a mammoth billion-dollar enterprise, it was certainly born into more humble circumstances. Indeed, it began in 1920 in an automobile showroom in Canton, Ohio, when a car dealer called together some owners of teams, mostly in the Midwest, to form a league. Unlike the lavish boardrooms in which NFL owners meet today, on this occasion the owners sat on the running boards of cars in the showroom and drank beer from buckets. A membership fee of $100 was set, but no one came up with any money. (As one of those present, George Halas, the legendary owner of the Chicago Bears, said, "I doubt that there was a hundred bucks in the room.") From such modest beginnings, pro football became far and away the most popular spectator sport in America. In Pigskin, Robert W. Peterson presents a lively and informative overview of the early years of pro football--from the late 1880s to the beginning of the television era. Peterson describes the colorful beginnings of the pro game and its outstanding teams (the Green Bay Packers, the New York Giants, the Chicago Bears, the Baltimore Colts), and the great games they played. Profiles of the most famous players of the era--including Pudge Heffelfinger (the first certifiable professional), Jim Thorpe, Red Grange, Bronko Nagurski, and Fritz Pollard (the NFL's first black star)--bring the history of the game to life. Peterson also takes us back to the roots of the pro game, showing how professionalism began when some stars for Yale, Harvard, and Princeton took money--under the table, of course--for their services to alma mater. By 1895, the money makers--still unacknowledged--had moved to amateur athletic associations in western Pennsylvania and subsequently into Ohio. After the NFL formed in 1920, pro football's popularity grew gradually but steadily. It burst into national prominence with the Bears-Redskins championship game of 1940. As one sportswriter put it: "The weather was perfect. So were the Bears." The final score was 73-0. Peterson shows how, after World War II, the newly-created All America Football Conference challenged the NFL. Though dominated by a gritty Cleveland team, the AAFC was never viewed by NFL teams as much of a threat. That is, not until 1950 when the two leagues merged, bringing about the Cleveland Browns-Philadelphia Eagles game in which the Browns buried the Eagles 35-10. An elegy to a time when, for many players, the game was at least as important as the money it brought them (which wasn't much), Pigskin takes readers up to the 1958 championship game when the Baltimore Colts beat the New York Giants in overtime. By that time, the great popularity of the game had moved from newspapers and radio to television, and pro football had finally arrived as a major sport.

Walter Camp

Walter Camp PDF Author: Julie Des Jardins
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199925623
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
In Walter Camp: Football and the Modern Man, Julie Des Jardins chronicles the life of the clock company executive and self-made athlete who remade football and redefined the ideal man.

Olympic Pride, American Prejudice

Olympic Pride, American Prejudice PDF Author: Deborah Riley Draper
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501162179
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
In this “must-read for anyone concerned with race, sports, and politics in America” (William C. Rhoden, New York Times bestselling author), the inspirational and largely unknown true story of the eighteen African American athletes who competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, defying the racism of both Nazi Germany and the Jim Crow South. Set against the turbulent backdrop of a segregated United States, sixteen Black men and two Black women are torn between boycotting the Olympic Games in Nazi Germany or participating. If they go, they would represent a country that considered them second-class citizens and would compete amid a strong undercurrent of Aryan superiority that considered them inferior. Yet, if they stayed, would they ever have a chance to prove them wrong on a global stage? Five athletes, full of discipline and heart, guide you through this harrowing and inspiring journey. There’s a young and feisty Tidye Pickett from Chicago, whose lithe speed makes her the first African American woman to compete in the Olympic Games; a quiet Louise Stokes from Malden, Massachusetts, who breaks records across the Northeast with humble beginnings training on railroad tracks. We find Mack Robinson in Pasadena, California, setting an example for his younger brother, Jackie Robinson; and the unlikely competitor Archie Williams, a lanky book-smart teen in Oakland takes home a gold medal. Then there’s Ralph Metcalfe, born in Atlanta and raised in Chicago, who becomes the wise and fierce big brother of the group. From burning crosses set on the Robinsons’s lawn to a Pennsylvania small town on fire with praise and parades when the athletes return from Berlin, Olympic Pride, American Prejudice has “done the world a favor by bringing into the sunlight the unknown story of eighteen black Olympians who should never be forgotten. This book is both beautiful and wrenching, and essential to understanding the rich history of African American athletes” (Kevin Merida, editor-in-chief of ESPN’s The Undefeated).