Black Collegiate Athletes and the Neoliberal State. Albert Y. Bimper Jr.
it too, brought forth opportunities for blacks to participate in sports. The earliest of black athletes preceding Emancipation quickly distinguished themselves as formidable competitors in their sport. Their successes were likely not just results of a combination of talent and passion, but one could argue a by-product of survival and necessity to combat the racial temper of a nation attempting to mature after hundreds of years of racial tyranny. The early prominence of the black athlete sat horseback in the successes of black jockeys, such as Isaac Murphy, and raced bicycles with never-before-seen speed and grace, such as the renowned national and international champion, Marshall “Major” Taylor (Wiggins, 1989). Even the game of baseball would showcase black athletes many decades before Jackie dawned a Dodger’s jersey in Brooklyn.
Out of New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1872, the first known black professional baseball player, Bud Fowler, would debut on an all-white team. Fowler excelled at the top of the diamond as a second baseman. It is been noted that baseball historians have pointed to Fowler or Frank Grant, another black second baseman entering organized baseball behind Fowler, as the catalysts for the invention of shin guards in baseball (Tygiel, 2008). The need for an early edition of wooden shin guards was a manifestation of the racism of their day. Even the baseball diamond was rot with racial hate as displayed by white players frequently brandishing their spikes while sliding into second, most particularly if occupied by Fowler or Grant (Tygiel). Nevertheless, Fowler’s debut gave way to a couple dozen black players that followed his steps into the dugouts of baseball. Among this cadre of black ball players were brothers, Moses Fleetwood Walker and Weldy Walker. Moses Walker would be the first to attain the ranks of major league baseball with Toledo in 1884.
Any of baseball’s, then, propensities and undertakings to be an institution that might escape the sentiments and spite of Jim Crow would quickly fade as a result of the league’s anti-black organizing efforts to form “professional” societies whose membership criteria fundamentally excluded black players.5 By July of 1887, Jim Crow took seize of white baseball’s morality and curtailed any common and decent sensibilities of justice that might have enabled racially integrated baseball to endure in the major leagues. A gentleman’s agreement to omit black ball players did not happen by happenstance. Rather, baseball’s newly established social contract was issued by vote and edict of International League officials. Thus, as the watered-down history books of my own K-12 education suggested, and likely yours as well, the absence of black players was not simply driven by racial sentiments of a few. Anti-black beliefs were met with an institutional structure advancing anti-black policy to functionalize racism and normalized racist beliefs. In its entirety, the 1887 ban on future contracts to black ball players was drawn out of the privileges of whiteness, that on the one hand, enabled whites to author a racist policy through a distorted democratic process, and on the other hand, perpetuated a social contract that corroborated the marginalization, oppression, and devaluing of black humanity via the omission of black ball players. Baseball historian, Jules Tygiel, posited the color line of baseball, with exception of a few brief appearances by black players, was otherwise cemented by 1892. By no means, did black baseball come to an end as a result of the color line chalked in whiteness. Despite the grit of black baseball being relegated to the barnstorming backroads of America’s white privilege and oblivious consciousness, the contradictions of whiteness could be seen across the incipient football gridirons of America.
A handful of black athletes made debuts in the game of football in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. William Henry Lewis was not only one of few, but the first of black athletes to debut on an all-white collegiate team after enrolling at Amherst College in 1888. Upon graduating from Amherst, he then enrolled into Harvard Law School and continued to play football for Harvard. Lewis was selected to Walter Camp’s All-America team in 1892. In the following year, Lewis would be honored, once again, with this national recognition. One should not overlook the significant irony in the successes of Lewis and the few other black football players who helped cement the game of football into American culture through white college campuses throughout the north (see Ashe, 1988). By the 1890s, there were approximately 100 black colleges and universities, many of which spanning much of the South (Allen & Jewell, 2002). The majority of black public education, at this time, happened at the investments of separate and behind the perversion of equal.
At the core of the black freedom struggle, and even more existentially, that of the possibilities of democratic freedom, has been the attainment of truth, knowledge, and justice through education. An important constituent and contributor to black education were the activities of campus life outside the classroom walls (Little, 1980). Widespread segregation, intensified racialized hate, coupled with geographic locations of many rural black colleges often exacerbated feelings of isolation for black collegians. The swell of extra-curricular activities to contribute to black education and the black collegiate experiences under the cloud of racial hate and segregation became essential to offering a robust education for black collegians. Among the earliest of extra-curricular activities in these settings were literary societies and opportunities to participate in student government (little). However, burgeoning interests to include sport among these activities was spurring a popular rationale to further stimulate campus spirit and prestige across black colleges. Sport, as social venue, was adopted into this menu of extra-curricular activities. Analogous to the impacts on white college campuses, the incremental growth of sport culture across black colleges invoked senses of community, while reinforcing superordinate ideas and desires for black empowerment.
The first intercollegiate sporting match took place in 1852 between Harvard and Yale as their rowing teams raced across Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. In subsequent years, the first baseball contest between Williams and Amherst, and later, the first football game between Princeton and Rutgers would unfold on the intercollegiate sport scene of 1859 and 1869, respectively. The culture of intercollegiate sport that proceeded the initial Harvard-Yale rowing contest offered minimal opportunities, at best, for black participants to partake. Early black athletes able to make a presence behind the curtains of de facto and de jure segregation were doing so in near isolation at mostly northern institutions. Consequently, the culture and ethos of intercollegiate sport was evolving outside the assemblies of black colleges.
That was, until, late December of 1892. Two days after Christmas, on December 27, 1892, Biddle University and Livingstone College would come together to compete in the first black intercollegiate football game (Hodge, Bennett, & Collins, 2013).6 In nearly every sense of the meaning, this first meeting epitomized the determined sacrifices that undergird the black freedom struggle. You see, for the hopes of this first football game to come to fruition, it would insist upon the dreams and efforts of more than just a few determined athletes, but that of a determined village of black college students filled with innovative spirits and unremitting resolve. Team members from Livingstone pooled what money they had available and any they could acquire elsewhere to purchase a single regulation football uniform from a Spaulding Sporting Goods Company store. They would also buy one football. With the single uniform as the prototype, women from the college’s industrial department sewed together multiple patterns for other uniforms out of duckling cloth. The ball players engineered their own footwear by puncturing cleats through the soles of their street shoes. They would routinely outfit their shoes with cleats for practice and then remove the cleats afterwards. The game was played in Salisbury, North Carolina on the front lawn of Livingstone. The make-shift game field was covered in snow so deep that the boundary markings were near impossible, at best, to recognize. Nevertheless, under the snowy conditions and in homemade uniforms, these two teams convened on a front lawn with a single waterlogged football to write a page in American history, if they knew it or not. The teams played two 45-minute halves. A Livingston player would score the only touchdown of the game on a fumble recovery. Biddle contested the touchdown, arguing the fumble recovery happened out of bounds. With a seemingly difficult decision to make, considering the snow-covered ground that blanketed the field markings, the official ruled in Biddle's favor. As such, Biddle maintained its 5-0 lead and went on to defeat the home team, Livingstone, it the first ever football game between black colleges.
Historical memories of the endeavors of black athletes in a post-civil war America frequently echo an uplifting story of racial progress beneath the themes of black resolve, black persistence, and even black entrepreneurialism. These positive and affirming themes have served to articulate how people