Introduction -- Democracy in action: sports and the American dream -- White allies -- The press and the people: the final fight for fairness -- Deep down in Dixie: segregated sports in a Post-Brown era -- The ban and the banner: black Olympians in a Jim Crow society -- African American athletes and activism: everybody has a part to play -- The revolt of the black athlete -- Epilogue.
Summary:
"James "Mudcat" Grant would not sing the right words. He knew they were a lie. Home of the Brave. Land of the Free. For who? Not black Americans. Not in 1960. Grant remembered vividly growing up in poverty in Lacooche, Florida, in a shack that had no hot water, no electric lights, or an indoor toilet, while his widowed-mothered supported her family on her menial wages working as a domestic in white people's home and then trying to supplement her meager wages at the local citrus plant. He remembered the white kids who would bully the black kids and call them racist names, the white cop who pointed a gun at him while his partner kicked him in the rear, and the unequal school system where black kids received old school supplies deemed unfit for white kids, where he studied in a school that was really a house with blankets dividing the classrooms. There were the segregated spring training games in Florida, his Cleveland Indians teammates who yelled racist remarks at black fans, and his pitching coach, Ted Wilks, who in 1947 as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals tried to organize a boycott to avoid playing Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers, and as a pitcher regularly threw at the heads of black batters." -- Provided by publisher.
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