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Black Mercuries: African American Athletes, Race, and the Modern Olympic Games
Hardcover
FictionBlack American HistoryOlympics & Paralympics
ISBN13: 9781538152836
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: Feb 8 2023
Pages: 324
Weight: 1.43
Height: 0.88 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
An essential source on African American athletes and Olympic history. --Booklist, Starred Review, and Named a Booklist Top 10 Sports Book of 2023
The first book to fully chronicle the struggles and triumphs of African American athletes in the Modern Olympic summer games.
In Black Mercuries: African American Athletes, Race, and the Modern Olympic Games, David K. Wiggins, Kevin B. Witherspoon, and Mark Dyreson explore in detail the varied experiences of African American athletes, specifically in the summer games. They examine the lives and careers of such luminaries as Jesse Owens, Rafer Johnson, Wilma Rudolph, Florence Griffith-Joyner, Michael Johnson, and Simone Biles, but also many African American Olympians who have garnered relatively little attention and whose names have largely been lost from historical memory.
In recounting the stories of these Black Olympians, Black Mercuries makes clear that their superior athletic skills did not always shield them from the racial tropes and insensitivity spewed by fellow athletes, the media, spectators, and many others. Yet, in part because of the struggles they faced, African American Olympians have been extraordinarily important symbolically throughout Olympic history, serving as role models to future Black athletes and often putting their careers on the line to speak out against enduring racial inequality and discriminatory practices in all walks of life.
1 different editions
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Black Mercuries: African American Athletes, Race, and the Modern Olympic Games
Wiggins, David K.
Witherspoon, Kevin B.
Dyreson, Mark
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