A Spectacular Leap: Black Women Athletes in Twentieth-Century America

Abstract

A review of A Spectacular Leap: Black Women Athletes in Twentieth-Century America by Jennifer H. Lansbury (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2014. 317 pp., ISBN 978-1557286581) by Drew Brown (drew.brown@temple.edu), Ph.D. Candidate, Department of African American Studies; Temple University.Jennifer H. Lansbury writes on the largely ignored topic of Black woman athletes in her book, A Spectacular Leap. Here she chronicles the lives of six Black woman-Alice Coachman, Ora Washington, Althea Gibson, Wilma Rudolph, Wyomia Tyus, and Jackie Joyner-Kersee- throughout their athletic and personal lives as they confronted race and gender stereotypes. This timely book is critical to the subjects of race, sports, and gender given the lack of literature centered on Black women athletes. While the scholarship around race and sports seems to be growing, the history and experiences of Black woman in sport has yet to be adequately being addressed. Lansbury, a former history and sports culture professor at George Mason University, takes on the task of uncovering this often overlooked subject. She does this by using primary sources gathered from interviews and archives to document the inspiring stories found in this book.Lansbury argues that nearly all of the six. Black women used sports to flee poverty, escape working-class environments, travel, and take on educational opportunities. In addition, sports helped them contest racial and gender stereotypes that were often used to define them. Lansbury suggests that the image of Black women athletes experiences several transitions. She suggests that White middle-class women monopolized the conceptualization of Womanhood, while Black woman have been de-feminized by their participation in certain sports. This book shows how these particular Black women reject the stereotypes placed on them. However, Lansbury states, "rejecting the stereotypes of White society was not the same as ignoring them" (67). After an attempt to maintain its femininity, the image of the Black woman athlete became hyper-sexualized. What can be taken from this book is that throughout the transition of their image, Black women have struggled to assert a self- defined, and often differing, image of Black womanhood.The insightful "Introduction" presents the main themes of the book and contextualizes the forthcoming narratives with theories of race, gender, and class. The book is divided into six major chapters, one for each of the selected athletes in chronological order. The final section is an Epilogue, "Performance-Enhanced Athletes and 'Ghetto Cinderellas': Black Women Athletes Enter the Twenty-First Century," that discusses several related contemporary issues. In the "Introduction," the aim of the book is clearly laid out. Lansbury states,This is the story of African American women's relationship with competitive sport during the twentieth century. It is a relationship that allowed athletically talented Black women, many of them from poor backgrounds to attend college, travel, and experience life in ways that otherwise would have been unknown to them. (p. 4)The theme of each chapter is suggested in the chapter titles. In the first chapter, "Queen of the Courts: Ora Washington and the Emergence of America's First Black Female Sports Celebrity," Lansbury gives the early history of Black woman's inclusion in American sports and the criticism that came with it. Through Washington's participation in multi-sports, Lansbury argues that there was a fear among White (and some Black) critics that sports would "strip woman of their femininity and damage their reproductive organs..." (28). The second chapter, "'The Tuskegee Flash': Alice Coachman and the Challenges of 1940s U.S. Women's Track and Field," follows Coachman's road to winning three Olympic gold medals. In the third chapter, "'A Nationwide Community Project': Althea Gibson, Class, and the Racial Politics of 1950s Black Tennis," the focuses on the way the illustrious and hyper-confident Gibson navigated through the fame and criticism of a Black woman dominating a sport historically reserved for Whites, all while rejecting the role of a "race hero. …