Play Ball!: The History of African Americans
in Sport
Takes to the Web
The textual history of African Americans in sport has virtually exploded in the last twenty-five years, attributable in large measure to the growth of African American studies since the 1970s and the more recent advent of cultural history. Exploring the same subject on the web yields disappointingly sparse and shallow results, however. The problems fall into two broad categories – those that pertain to the genre and are plaguing its textual presentation as well, and those specific to new media. The most significant problem facing the genre concerns the presence of sports journalists with different standards and agendas than sport historians. Just as these journalists have peppered the textual genre with “popular” sport histories, so too are they entering the world of new media with web sites that provide little archival or analytical depth. Once inside the realm of new media, most of those choosing to use the web as a presentation vehicle for sport history are barely scratching the surface. Academic efforts are disappointing in terms of the historical analysis they offer when compared to textual alternatives. Moreover, they are sadly lacking in even moderately sophisticated web design, or in attempting to exploit some of the basic elements of web presentation, such as the combination of text and images; and the linking of related sites, documents and images. There is, in short, much waiting to be done in marrying the history of African Americans in sport to new media.
An Abbreviated Tour of the Web
One difficult piece of assessing sport history on the web is
locating the academic efforts. The intersection of sport and history attracts
both the history “buff” and the sport enthusiast. Moreover,
sports journalists with an incredible amount of knowledge have entered
the genre to produce a variety of works, in both old and new media, that
tend more toward celebrations and antiquarianism than scholarly analysis.
Unfortunately, it is often, though not always, these efforts that do a
better job of exploiting the benefits of the web and employing good web
design than the more academic products. In general, when it comes to exploring
African Americans in sport history, the format is remarkably static –
pictures and short biographical sketches of famous athletes of the twentieth
century that overcame racial barriers to pursue their sport.
“The Struggle of the Black Athlete” appears to be a “home grown” electronic essay that provides biographies and images for six twentieth-century black athletes that met and overcame racial barriers in their sport. The basic argument of the site is that these athletes helped change the perception of black inferiority in the minds of Americans not only by excelling in their sport but also by prevailing nobly against prejudice and injustice. Additionally, the site contains links to “updates” in the various sports these athletes participated in, which turns out to be current sporting news. There are several mistakes within the accuracy of the text, and there are no references to indicate where the author of the web site retrieved the biographical information.
Sports journalism is a popular vehicle for exploring African Americans in sport, and a brief look at three sites depicts the range. “Breaking the Barriers: African Americans in Sport,” produced by the Houston Chronicle to commemorate the fifty anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s entry into major league baseball (1997), follows the familiar format of athlete biography and image. Following an impressive image on the home page, the rest of the site is depressingly bare. Houston Chronicle sports columnist, John P. Lopez, handled the portion of the site focused on Jackie Robinson, and even delves into some of the central questions surrounding African Americans in sport, such as the barrier that still exists for blacks in coaching and management, as well as issues of salary and the commercialism of the multi-million dollar endorsement contracts. Unfortunately, a separate biography tries to make a case for Nike founder and mogul, Phil Knight, as a key figure in helping to break down racial barriers in sport.
Another avenue that sports journalists have used to enter the genre is in the area of producing web pages for black history month. Both Sports Illustrated Kids and ESPN have pages, both of which employ the bio/picture format discussed above. Althea Gibson is generally the lone female athlete discussed in these sites because of her success in breaking the color barrier in tennis in the 1950s. The Sports Illustrated and ESPN sites are flashier than that of the Houston Chronicle, but focus is on sport rather than history, and the lack of depth in all three is evident.
Assessing the “Academic” Options
While there is presently a dearth of academic history in the
area of African Americans in sport on the web, one site in particular
reveals that this intersection of popular culture and race holds bright
promise for using the web as an academic presentation medium. The Library
of Congress’“Jackie
Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s – 1960s”
in their “By Popular Demand” web series is another site that
was created to honor the fifth anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s
historic breaking of major league baseball’s color barrier. This
“web site reference aid,” as the site bills itself, explores
Robinson’s baseball and civil rights achievements while at the same
time examining the earlier development of the color line, and the emergence
and growth of the Negro Leagues in response to it. More broadly, however,
this archive/exhibit also wants to depict how materials that are physically
dispersed (in this instance, throughout the Library of Congress) can be
brought together to tell a story and serve as online reference materials.
Library of Congress Great Hall in the Jefferson Building
For example, the years that Jackie Robinson spent in a Dodger uniform are presented using letters, newspapers, as well as items drawn from popular culture such as sheet music, movies, and comics. For those interested in these baseball and civil rights sources for whom access to the Library of Congress is problematic, bringing them together in one virtual location does more than tell a story – it can also serve as a valuable, if limited, research tool.
Jackie Robinson's story inspired a comics series.
There is a disadvantage to doing this history on the web, however. Serious academic books and articles on the subject are attempting to elevate sport history beyond the antiquarian or sports enthusiast interest. For example, Jules Tygiel refashions the “Jackie Robinson story” in Baseball’s Great Experiment to go beyond Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey. [1] Tygiel examines not only the context within
Indeed, such “surface” treatment is especially noticeable when the subject does not have the “star power” of a Jackie Robinson. “Black Baseball’s Negro Baseball Leagues” showcases the Negro Baseball League that grew up in response to the exclusion of African Americans from major league baseball. This is a celebratory history designed to showcase the ballplayers that were denied the opportunity to play major league ball due to their race. Perhaps it is a stretch to term this an academic web site since much of the text on the site comes from James Riley, the author of several books on the Negro Baseball Leagues, all published by TK Publishers, the producer of the site. Yet the topic is an important one in the subject of African American sport history and the material used is at least cited. But the whole tone of the site is melodramatic, overdone, saccharine, and shallow, as the "History" link demonstrates. The three main links – “history,” “players,” and “teams” – contain little depth, and there is no effort to examine deeper cultural issues.
The real difference in the depth of research, analysis, and presentation reveals itself when we compare this site with an academic article on the subject of race and sport by scholars Patricia Vertinsky and Gwendolyn Captain. In “More Myth than History: American Culture and Representations of the Black Female’s Athletic Ability,” Vertinsky and Captain explore how the athletic prowess of African American female athletes has been tied to gender and race constructions that have long surrounded them in American society. [2] Perhaps it is unfair to compare these two historical presentations that are so vastly different in subject and even audience. Yet these web sites are some of the best that is currently available that deal with the history of African Americans in sport. At best they tell the story well, yet only touch the surface. At worst, they merely become a celebration of sports that ignores the deeper cultural issues of race, class, and gender constructions.
The final academic site that is part of this review is an online essay by Professor John C. Walter entitled “The Changing Status of the Black Athlete in the 20th Century United States.” Walter argues that the athletes who began integrating professional sports at mid-century did so under a double burden. Not only did they have to perform better on the playing field than their white counterparts but they also had to conduct their private lives more circumspectly than white players. Through the course of the essay, Walter tracks the slow and uneven progress athletes have encountered in different sports, addresses issues of income and education, and assesses the present dearth in the area of coaching and management positions. His indices of change in comparing the present with the last half century include the number of African Americans in professional sports, as well as the great strides made in the area of income and commercial endorsements.
Unfortunately, this online essay does not really measure up well when compared to either old or new media. When compared to scholarly articles, the depth of analysis, while greater than the other academic web sites, is lacking. Yet in terms of its use of new media, this site lags even further behind. There are no links to other references or related sites, and the only image is a photograph of the essay author. This site doesn’t think to the future. Indeed, it’s not even harnessing the tools of the web of today. In short, except for its potentially wider audience, it offers nothing over a textual presentation. Given the fact that it may be a bit more difficult to read online, I would have preferred to see this essay in a traditional format.
Wrapping Things Up
This review of the history of African Americans in sport as presented
in new media suggests that most of the sites available lack sophistication
in both the use of new media and scholarly analysis. Most sites are not
even attempting to utilize what new media currently has to offer, let
alone thinking to the future. The Library of Congress’“By
Popular Demand” site on Jackie Robinson and baseball’s color
line comes the closest, even though it was designed six or seven years
ago. A little updating would allow it to really utilize the advantages
that new media offers today. Rather than exploiting the benefits of new
media, most of the other sites exploit the antiquarian interests of sports
enthusiasts.
Indeed, this review speaks to larger issues of audience, popular history, and the use of new media by academicians. Should scholars “dumb down” history on the web, so that our visually-stimulated younger population won’t be turned off by the denser academic work we associate with text? Is popular history the better type of history for the web, or is there a place for truly academic work? If so, is there a way to utilize new media so that it does something different from or beyond text? This review has shown how important these questions are and will become as scholars look to new media for presenting research in a number of subject areas. As sport historians still work to overcome a bit of “disdain” in the textual academic world, it will be important to proceed carefully as we discover ways to utilize new media for presentation of our research and analysis. Since sport is such an active and visual topic, however, the possibilities do seem rich.
