Culture and Identity
House Our Father Built: John B. McLendon and the Rise of Black College Basketball in the 20th Century
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Raja Rahim
Black College Basketball was not formed primarily as a tool of assimilation into white culture through sports. In fact, Black College Basketball offers a powerful prism through which the history of black manhood, race, and the black family can be better understood. While scholars have demonstrated the centrality of the church and civil rights organizations such as NAACP to black politics and culture, sports, particularly the game of basketball, became a tool no less important than education, church, or politics in black institutional building and affirming black humanity during the Jim Crow era. Using the extended black family as a metaphor, this paper explores the autonomous formation of Black College Basketball (BCB) at Historically Black Colleges Universities (HBCUs) that was created, sustained, and expanded by black men in the 20th century. In doing so, this paper argues that John B. McLendon is the father of Black College Basketball. As originator of the fast break and four corners offenses and the match-up zone defense, McLendon implemented a full court game that embodied an elaborate and flamboyant style that infused the dramas of racial pride and cultural expression that existed in black American culture. It is through McLendon’s house of hoops that we can best understand the centrality of black men and importance of the black family as a self-determined stabilizing force, defensive mechanism, and a foundation for black men and historically black institutions that expressed concerns about and interest in manhood, race, and culture during the 20th century.
Britain, Sport and the South African War, 1899-1902
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Peter Donaldson
Through extensive press coverage, as well as a spate of memoirs and novels, the British public was fed an on-going diet of war stories and reportage in which athletic endeavour and organised games featured prominently. This contemporary literary material sheds light on the role sport was perceived to have played in the lives and work of the military personnel deployed in South Africa. It also, however, reveals a growing unease over the importance attached to the cult of athleticism in late Victorian and early Edwardian society. Early reverses against the Boers gave cause for both military professionals and the wider public to reassess the validity of the games culture that underpinned the amateur-military tradition and lay at the heart of the British perception of itself as a "sporting" nation.
Japanese Sports before Westernization: Kemari and Sumo
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session John Van Sant
Japanese sports, like most of Japanese society, underwent significant changes with the onset of Western based industrialization, imperialism, and capitalism starting with the Meiji Era in the latter half of the 19th century. In this paper, I intend to demonstrate how Japanese sports historically were connected to religion, primarily through festivals related to Japan's native religion of Shinto. The history of kemari (literally "kick ball") and sumo wrestling will be discussed in this context. Moreover, the religious aspect of these historic sports provided a distinctive element of Japanese identity before the rise of modern nationalism.
