Don't Stick to Sports

A significant examination of how athletes have fought for inclusion and equality on and off the playing field, despite calls for them to "stick to sports." The claim that sports are-or ought to be-apolitical has itself never been an apolitical position. Rather, it is a veiled attempt to control which politics are acceptable in the athletic realm, a designation intricately linked to issues of race, gender, ethnicity, and more. In Don't Stick to Sports: The American Athlete's Fight against Injustice, Derek Charles Catsam carefully explores this disparity. He looks at how, throughout recent sports history in the United States, minority athletes have had to fight every step of the way for their right to compete, and how they continue to fight for equity today. From African Americans and women to LGBTQ+ and religious minorities, Catsam shows how these athletes have taken a stand to address the underlying injustices in sports and society despite being told it's not their place to do so. While it's impossible for a single book to tell the entire history of exclusion in the sporting world, Don't Stick to Sports looks at key moments from the World War I era to the present to shatter the myth of sports as a meritocracy, of sports-as-equalizer, highlighting the reality as something far more complicated-of sports as a malleable world where exclusion and inclusion are rarely straight-forward.

Derek Charles Catsam is professor of history and the Kathlyn Cosper Dunagan Professor in the Humanities at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin where he teaches courses on race, politics, and sports in the US and South Africa. He is the author of Freedom's Main Line: The Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides and has published extensively on the history of race and politics in the US and South Africa. Catsam is a senior research associate at Rhodes University and serves as reviews editor of Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies. Most recently, he appeared in the award-winning PBS American Experience film Freedom Riders.

Acknowledgments
Introduction The Binded and the Protected
Chapter 1 "The Highest Point of the Game's Enthusiasm": The National Anthem, Patriotism, and the 1918 World Series
Chapter 2 Of "Dead Sparrows" and "Muscle Molls": Gender Expectations and Women's Sport
Chapter 3 Jackie Robinson, The Army, and Sam Huston College: The Dilemma of the Black Athlete in 1940s
Chapter 4 A Tale of Two Cities: The Integration of Professional Sports in Boston and Cleveland
Chapter 5 The 1960s and the Limits of "Integration" in American College Sports
Chapter 6 Oh Say Can You See?: Rebellion, Anger, and Contested Americanisms
Chapter 7 Raised Fists, Black Shorts, and a Fallen Queen: Race, Politics, and Sex-pectations in Track and Field
Chapter 8Gaps Between Ideals and Reality: Exclusion and Modern Sport
Conclusion Taking a Knee: Sport and Politics in 21st Century America
Bibliography
Index
About the Author