The Black Athlete in West Virginia: High School and College Sports from 1900 through the End of Segregation by Bob Barnett, Dana Brooks and Ronald Althouse (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Black Athlete in West Virginia: High School and College Sports from 1900 through the End of Segregation by Bob Barnett, Dana Brooks and Ronald Althouse Raja Malikah Rahim The Black Athlete in West Virginia: High School and College Sports from 1900 through the End of Segregation. By Bob Barnett, Dana Brooks, and Ronald Althouse. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2020. Pp. x, 225.) In the late 1940s, West Virginia State University (WVSU), a Historically Black University, had one of the nation’s most dominant basketball programs. In 1948, WVSU’s basketball team was the only undefeated team in the country, with a 23–0 record, which caught the attention of college basketball promoter Frank Walsh. The following season, the WVSU Yellow Jackets became the first Black college team to compete in San Francisco’s Cow Palace against white college basketball teams. Led by Earl Lloyd, the first African American to play in the National Basketball Association (NBA), the Yellow Jackets competed in the Central Intercollegiate Athletic [End Page 121] Association (CIAA), the oldest and most prestigious Black college athletic conference, winning two CIAA basketball championships by 1950. The athletic prowess of Lloyd and WVSU basketball during the golden age of Black college sports is one of many stories captured by authors Bob Barnett, Dan Brooks, and Ronald Althouse. The Black Athlete in West Virginia: High School and College Sports from 1900 through the End of Segregation is a timely addition to the scholarship on race and sports and adds to the emerging field of African American sports history. In 10 chapters, divided into two parts, it examines the history of Black sporting communities and the experiences of Black athletes in West Virginia, a state deeply divided along racial lines, from the turn of the twentieth century to the integration of athletic programs in the early 1960s. Despite the inadequate resources in Black colleges and high schools, African Americans cultivated successful teams that bonded together Black communities throughout the state. Using archival documents, newspapers, photographs, and oral histories, the authors explore the value that Black people, communities, institutions, and culture placed on African American participation in sports. The book’s most compelling narrative centers on how African Americans and Black institutions grappled with civil rights and integration as the authors trace how the state’s two Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) transformed from predominately Black institutions to white-majority universities. In the immediate months following Brown v. Board of Education, Bluefield State and West Virginia State became the first HBCUs in the nation to join a historically white-college athletic conference, the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WVIAC). The authors depict how some African Americans viewed the integration of the WVIAC as racial progress, while others expressed disapproval, fearing the erasure of Black identity, culture, and traditions. In their chapter on Black high schools’ participation in a white basketball tournament in West Virginia, the state that hosted the nation’s first Black high school tournament, the authors also analyze the heavy cost of integration on Black athletes and sporting communities, a theme often ignored in the dominant scholarship on athletic integration. The Black Athlete in West Virginia is a well-researched book that contributes to the fields of sports history, African American history, and West Virginia history. Though heavily focused on football and basketball, Black participation in non-revenue sports is also mentioned, such as U.S. Olympic wrestler Bobby Douglas. The authors also provide discussions on gender by exploring the athletic experiences of Black women in basketball before and after segregation and how Black female athletes navigated and negotiated issues of racism and sexism in sports and society. Overall, this book is [End Page 122] recommended as it provides an important historical perspective to understand the current debates about race and sports in the United States, especially as the significance and relevance of HBCUs and Black colleges sports has garnered new media attention as a result of NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders’s arrival and departure from Jackson State University football in the last few years. Raja Malikah Rahim Appalachian State University Copyright © 2023 West Virginia University Press