African American Icons of Sport

Icons of African American Sports will highlight and analyze the athletes and teams that have defined and revealed truths about American culture through their talent, perseverance, stubbornness, and will, showing the central role that sports and athletes have played in the 20th century.

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.

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.