This title offers an examination of African Americans in sports, from a variety of perspectives and through a lively range of rhetoric styles, and illuminates the history of highly successful and influential individuals, athletes and teams who have transcended mere celebrity to come to represent a given Zeitgeist to a sizable part of the world. It also explores the history and lives of complex, multi-layered personages and groups. Finally, it examines the extent to which modern mass media and popular culture have contributed greatly to the rise, and sometimes fall, of the these powerful symbols of athletic, individual, and group excellence.

MATTHEW C. WHITAKER is Associate Professor of United States History, African and American Studies, and Justice and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University. His articles have appeared in many journals and encyclopedias, and his latest book is titled Race Work: The Rise of Civil Rights in the Urban West (University of Nebraska Press, 2005).