Ninth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

In their text Sport and the Color Line: Black Athletes and Race Relations in Twentieth-Century America, Patrick B. Miller and David K. Wiggins explains the concept of “muscular assimilation,” a theory that captures the role that black athletes have played in advancing the civil rights agenda for African Americans. According to Miller and Wiggins muscular assimilation is a strategy that suggests that the achievements made by black athletes “translate[s] to other tasks and responsibilities and thus demonstrate[s] the readiness of African Americans for full participation in the social, economic and political life of the nation” (270). This paper, using Miller and Wiggins’ framework, will explore how, during the 1930s, the black press and, by extension, the black community, rested their hopes that the athletic achievements of Jesse Owen and Joe Louis would translate into racial fairness for all African Americans. Blurring the lines between sport and society, black journalists manipulated the image of Owens and Louis within the press to position them as representative men for the Race. Incorporating the strategy of “muscular assimilation,” I show how black journalists and newspapers, such as the Amsterdam News and the Chicago Defender, positioned these athletes as ordinary citizens whose exceptional labor and achievements were demonstrative of many African American men.