Sports and racial relations

• SIGNIFICANCE: Although sports are often prized by fans and participants alike as a refuge from mundane concerns, the sporting world has long provided a highly public forum for the debate and resolution of social issues. Matters of race and ethnicity have long been among the most contentious of these. 

The rise of organized sports in the mid to late nineteenth century coincided with the drawing of the “color line” and the institution of formalized, legally sanctioned modes of discrimination in virtually all walks of American life. In sports as in most other contexts, the most virulent discrimination has typically been directed against Black Americans. Although relations between Whites, Latinos, Native Americans, Jews, and other ethnic minorities were often be strained, both on the playing fields and in the stands, such tensions historically had been relatively minor in comparison to the intense feelings aroused by the participation of Black American athletes. As one baseball historian has remarked, “With the breaking of the color barrier, other ethnic identities ceased to have much meaning. . . . where the African Americans were, everybody else was just White”—a statement that encapsulates the history of race relations not only in baseball but also in most other American sports. By the latter half of the twentieth century, the integration of most sports franchises was an accomplished fact, but other issues of race and ethnicity continued to swirl around the world of sports well into the twenty-first century. 

Jesse Owens at the starting line. Library of Congress 

Baseball and Discrimination in Team Sports

Baseball, the most popular and most widely played team sport of nineteenth-century America, was also the first major sport to attain a secure organizational footing in North America. In many respects, it long set the pattern for other American sports. In the early years of organized baseball, a certain degree of racial freedom prevailed on American playing fields. Though Black Americans, Native Americans, and other ethnic minorities did not commonly compete with White players, neither was their participation formally barred. All-Black teams occasionally played all-White squads. Black Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans also competed with White players in front of racially mixed audiences in the earliest professional leagues. 

By the waning years of the nineteenth century, however, such tolerance was becoming increasingly rare. As White America grappled with the changed legal and social status of Blacks in the post–Civil War period, segregated facilities and institutions were established in virtually all walks of American life. In 1896, the US Supreme Court gave its blessing to such arrangements by endorsing the “separate but equal” doctrine in the landmark case Plessy v. Ferguson. Segregationists had their way in organized baseball as well, and by the century’s close, Black Americans had been effectively excluded from the sport’s highest levels by means of an unwritten but nevertheless effective agreement among team owners and managers. Sole responsibility for adoption of the ban is often assigned to Adrian “Cap” Anson, a star player and manager and a vocal proponent of segregation. Such an assessment, however, oversimplifies the reality. Although Anson was one of the game’s leading figures, he was only one among many who worked to exclude Black Americans from the sport. Black people were being systematically separated from White people in education, housing, and virtually every other arena, and the segregation of the country’s most popular spectator sport was virtually inevitable. 

No such restrictions, however, were placed on the participation of Native Americans and Latinos with lighter colored skin in organized baseball. Louis “Jud” Castro, for example, an infielder from Colombia, played in the inaugural season of the American League in 1902, and such Native Americans as Jim Thorpe and Albert “Chief” Bender had successful major league careers in the first decades of the twentieth century. As a consequence, White managers and owners made occasional attempts to pass off talented Black players as “Indians” or “Cubans." Legendary manager John McGraw, for example, tried unsuccessfully to play infielder Charlie Grant under his Cherokee name Charlie Tokohamo. Although White teams would sometimes play exhibitions against Black teams, and although players of all races competed together in Latin America, the color line had been firmly drawn. For more than half a century, no Black players were permitted in the White professional leagues. Moreover, although Latinos and Native Americans with light skin tones were not barred from the White leagues, they commonly experienced the same slights and racist treatments accorded ethnic minorities in all facets of American life—a fact perhaps reflected by the patronizing nicknames given even to star players. The nickname “Chief,” for example, was routinely applied to Native American players, while Jewish players were often nicknamed “Moe.” In addition to Bender and Thorpe, Native American pioneers included John “Chief” Meyers, a star catcher for the New York Giants; the most successful Latino player of the early century was Adolpho “Dolf” Luque, a Cuban American pitcher also nicknamed “the Pride of Havana.” In the early part of the century, when many Americans were first- or second-generation European immigrants, ethnic identification was strong even among White players, and the achievements of athletes of Irish, Italian, German, Polish, or Jewish ancestry were celebrated by their respective communities to an extent unparalleled in later generations. Nicknames that called attention to a player’s ethnicity were common. German American superstar Honus Wagner, for example, was known as “the Flying Dutchman.” 

Barred from the White leagues, Black professionals competed against one another in the Negro Leagues, a loose association of teams that flourished in the first half of the twentieth century. Negro League stars such as Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, and Buck Leonard were widely regarded as the equals of the best White players, but they were allowed to compete against them only in exhibitions, barnstorming tours, and foreign leagues. 

In 1946, however, in a move that would have repercussions well beyond baseball or sports in general, Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey, signed Jackie Robinson, a rising star in the Negro Leagues, to a minor league contract. Robinson broke the color line in Major League Baseball when he moved up from the Minor Leagues the following season. Though he endured taunts and harassment both on and off the field, he quickly attained stardom. Among Robinson’s notable supporters was Hank Greenberg, a Jewish superstar who had long crusaded against anti-Semitism. Robinson’s on-field success was matched by the remarkable dignity and restraint with which he bore the torrents of abuse directed at him, and his shining example deprived baseball’s powers of any further excuse for continuing to segregate the sport. A flood of talented Black players entered the White leagues, and every major league team was integrated by 1958. As a consequence, the Negro Leagues, deprived of their reason for existing, soon shriveled and disappeared. 

Football, Basketball, and Integration

When the color line was drawn in baseball, football was in its infancy, and professional structures did not exist in the same way as baseball. In the early years of the sport’s evolution, however, a number of Black American players excelled at the collegiate level, often while playing for such all-Black schools as Howard and Tuskegee Universities. Several Black American players, moreover, attained collegiate stardom at predominantly White schools. Examples include William Henry Lewis, who was named an All-American in 1892 and 1893 while playing for Amherst, and Paul Robeson, who starred for Rutgers before becoming famous as a singer and actor. When the first professional leagues were formed in the 1920s, no color line existed, and Robeson, Brown University graduate Frederick Douglass “Fritz” Pollard, and University of Iowa product Fred “Duke” Slater, among others, were among the best of the early professionals. In the early 1930s, however, professional football followed baseball’s lead and excluded Black American players. Notable early players of other ethnic backgrounds included Jewish stars Sid Luckman and Bennie Friedman and the multitalented Native American Thorpe, whose football achievements surpassed his baseball success. 

At the same time that Robinson was integrating baseball to great publicity, the established National Football League (NFL) had to fend off a challenge from the upstart All-America Football Conference, which signed a number of Black American players in an effort to compete with the older league. Faced with these twin pressures, the NFL owners rescinded their ban on African American players. As in baseball, African Americans soon came to play important roles on every professional team. 

Basketball, like football, was slow to develop viable professional structures. As in football, therefore, the collegiate level of play was the highest level widely available. Although Black teams were generally unable to play White opponents, basketball flourished at Black colleges. Before the formation of solid professional leagues, traveling professional teams played all comers. Among the most successful of these teams were the all-African American Harlem Renaissance and the Harlem Globetrotters. Both teams enjoyed success against White competition. In order to deflect hostility from White crowds, the Globetrotters learned to supplement their play with minstrel-like antics, and the team eventually evolved into an entertainment vehicle rather than a competitive unit. Jewish players and teams were also important to the rise of the sport, and such stars as Moe Goldman, Red Holtzman, and Eddie Gottlieb endured anti-Semitic taunts from opposing teams and crowds while helping to establish the basis for the first successful professional leagues. 

Prior to 1950, Black Americans were excluded from the National Basketball Association (NBA) and its predecessor organizations. That year, three Black American players were signed by NBA teams and within two decades, Black American players would dominate the sport. Segregation at the college level would persist for decades, as a number of southern schools refused to field Black players or play against integrated teams. In 1966, in a game sometimes referred to as “the Brown v. Board of Education of college basketball,” an all-Black Texas Western team defeated all-White, heavily favored Kentucky for the national collegiate championship. Since 1950, Black American players have continued to join NBA teams. However, this has not stopped racism from entering the courts, the locker rooms, or coming from coaches and owners of the NBA teams. For example, in April 2014, Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers NBA team, ignited a high-profile scandal when he made disparaging remarks against Black American players. Sterling eventually sold his stake in the team after intense media pressure. 

Individual and Olympic Sports

Sports based on individual excellence rather than on team play have historically proven somewhat less amenable to overt racism than structured team and league sports. In addition, international competitions such as the Olympic Games have been relatively unaffected by parochial color lines. Nevertheless, issues of race have repeatedly reared their heads in international and individual sports. White boxing champions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often refused to fight Black American competitors, and the 1908 capture of the world heavyweight championship by Jack Johnson, a flamboyant Black American who flouted convention by consorting with White women, led to a prolonged search for a “Great White Hope” who could humble Johnsonwho was concurrently persecuted by police. 

In contrast, the midcentury heavyweight champion Joe Louis was applauded by many White commentators for his humility. When successors such as the irrepressible Muhammad Ali refused to defer to White sensibilities, racial alarms again sounded. Among his many celebrated and controversial actions, Ali in 1964 became the first of many prominent Black American athletes to change his birth nameCassius Clayto a name reflecting his African heritage. 

Among other individual sports, the “elitist” games of tennis and golf have proven least amenable to widescale integration. In part, this state of affairs has reflected economic realities, as relatively few minority competitors have been able to afford the club memberships and private instruction that most successful players require from a young age. Yet the intractability of racist sentiment has played an undeniable part in limiting minority success in both sports. Tennis stars of the 1950s and 1960s such as the Latino legend Pancho Gonzales and the Black Americans Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe often had to battle for permission to compete at race-restricted tournaments and clubs, as did leading Black American golfers Lee Elder and Calvin Peete. Even after the resounding successes of golfing sensation Tiger Woods brought legions of new minority fans and players to the sport in the mid-1990s, country clubs across the United States—including some at which leading tournaments were held—refused to admit minority members. 

International competitions such as the Olympic Games have traditionally been more open to minority participation. George Poage in 1904 became the first Black American Olympic medalist, and Thorpe, generally acclaimed the world’s greatest athlete, won two gold medals at the 1912 Games. In 1936, the African American track star Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics to the chagrin of the German Nazi hosts who hoped to use the Games to demonstrate Aryan supremacy. In 1968, many of the United States’ top Black American athletes refused to participate in the Games. Two Black American sprinters, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, engendered a worldwide controversy by giving a “Black power salute” and refusing to acknowledge the US national anthem while receiving their medals. They were subsequently stripped of their medals and removed from the Olympic team. Many Olympic Games have seen controversy due to racist remarks by prominent athletes, some of whom have then been released from their national teams, as was the case when Greek athlete Voula Papachristou and Swiss soccer player Michel Morganella made racist statements on social media in the lead up to the 2012 Summer Olympics. On other occasions, spectators have racially harassed opposing teams. 

Other Controversies

As the integration of most sports at the playing level became an accomplished fact, questions of race and ethnicity in the sports world came increasingly to focus on other issues. Perhaps the most persistent of these was the fact that although minorities had made vital contributions as athletes in every major sport, only a handful had risen to fill managerial, administrative, and executive positions. In 1987, a furor erupted when Los Angeles Dodgers executive Al Campanis—who, ironically, had been a teammate and longtime friend of Jackie Robinson—told a television interviewer that Black Americans were underrepresented in front-office sports jobs because they “lack the necessities” to fill such positions. Although many commentators dismissed Campanis’ remarks as the confused, out-of-context ramblings of a tired old man, the incident touched off a round of recriminations and investigations. Yet though baseball and other sports appointed panels to study the situation, more than a decade later, minorities had yet to achieve more than token representation in the power structures of most American sports. 

A similar reception greeted golfer Fuzzy Zoeller’s indiscreet 1997 remarks that Tiger Woodspartiallyy of African American heritagemight have a preference for stereotypically “Black” foods such as watermelon and fried chicken. Another issue that generated continued controversy is the use of Native American motifs and mascots for sports teams, whether through the concept of the "noble savage" as suggested by common team names such as "Warriors," "Chiefs," and "Braves," or by more overtly racist terms such as "Redskins." 2013 saw increased protest over Washington Redskins professional football team in particular, as well as over caricatures such as the Chief Wahoo logo of the Cleveland Indians professional baseball team. In June 2014, six trademarks of Washington's NFL team were ended by the US Patent and Trademark Office on the grounds that offensive or disparaging language is prohibited. 

During the NFL's 2016 preseason, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernickwho is biracialbegan protesting American society's continued oppression of people of color by refusing to stand during the traditional playing of the national anthem at the beginning of each game. At first, he remained seated on the players' bench. Eventually, he would take a knee during the anthem for the entirety of the regular season. Following high-profile cases of police brutality against Black Americans and other prominent civil rights issues largely increasing since 2014, Kaepernick's protest was widely discussed by the media and commentators. Largely supported in his protest by his teammates, he was awarded the Len Eshmont Award at the end of the season. The team award is perenially given to the 49ers player who best exemplifies the inspirational and courageous play of Len Eshmont. By early 2017, he had told reporters that he would not be continuing his protest into the 2017–18 season, as he felt that his message had been received and had sparked sufficient national debate regarding social inequality. Kaepernick became a free agent at the end of the 2016-17 season. He opted out of his contract with the 49ers and was not signed by any other team. In 2017, Kaepernick filed a grievance against the NFL, alleging that teams were colluding to deny him a job. He settled the grievance in 2019, but as of 2024, has not gotten another opportunity to work out for NFL teams.

Mascot Changes

In the late-twentieth and twenty-first centuries, public consciousness over racial insensitivities in team names led to a flurry of mascot changes. In many cases, these changes were made because of the negative financial repercussions incurred for holding to old, offensive mascots. This movement first started with universities when teams such as St. John’s University in New York City changed its mascot in 1994 from the “Redmen” to the “Red Storm.” Other mascot changes were made to be gender neutral. For example, in 2004 the Syracuse University Orangemen became simply “the Orange.” “Orangemen” itself had originated as a racial reference to Native Americans. Financial inducements assisted in these efforts as shoemaker and corporate sponsor Nike reportedly levied pressure on Syracuse University to force the change. Other colleges and universities maintained Native American team names by emphasizing they were names of Native American tribes and not racial epithets. These included the Florida State Seminoles and the University of Illinois Fighting Illini. 

In the more conservative realm of professional sports, changes were harder to come by, but eventually they did as offensive team mascots were realized to be bad for business. The signature case was the Washington Redskins, a team name that had existed for 87 years. In the 2020s, team owner Dan Synder came under increasingly heavy pressure to retire the team mascot and logo as they were increasingly recognized as stereotypically offensive and a slur.  

Synder had, for over two decades, publicly proclaimed he would never change the team's name. Synder’s own tenure as team owner, however, was under fire. His front office had been subjected to multiple lawsuits and investigations for promoting a toxic work environment, including that of sexual harassment. Even among the conservative body of NFL owners, Synder’s antics were too much and there was speculation they would move to strip ownership from him. Last, his teams were substandard, and he had decimated what was once a loyal fan base. Finally, in 2020, FedEX, a major corporate sponsor that held the naming rights to the stadium where the Redskins played, threatened to end its support if the team logo was not changed. Synder finally capitulated and ended the logo the same year. For the next two seasons the Redskins were known simply as “The Washington Football Team.” In 2022, the new name was announced as “The Commanders.” In April 2023, Snyder sold the Commanders to private equity investor Josh Harris. 

Other major league professional teams later followed suit. In 2022, the Major League Baseball team the Cleveland Indians became the Cleveland Guardians.  

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