BOOK REVIEWS Integrating the Gridiron
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BOOK REVIEWS Sport History Review, 2010, 41, 164-174 © 2010 Human Kinetics, Inc. Integrating the Gridiron: Black Civil Rights and American College Football By Lane Demas. Published in 2010 by Rutgers University Press (141 pp., $39.95 U.S.). Reviewed by Maureen M. Smith, California State University Sacramento Lane Demas provides detailed accounts of four episodes of racial integration in American college football in the twentieth century. Demas examines four time periods and geographic regions, and aptly reveals how the integration of college football was not a predictable process, but instead was one that was influenced by the cultural practices of each region and time period. Each episode receives a focused chapter, which is steeped in relevant cultural and social history related to the events. The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) between 1938 and 1941 is examined first, and remaining chapters follow chronologically, with the Johnny Bright scandal of 1951, the 1956 Sugar Bowl, and concluding with the University of Wyoming’s Black 14 between 1968 and 1970. Demas concludes with a brief epilogue. The selection of the four geographic regions and the chronological order of the events focus the reader on the nuances of the processes of integration. Even at loca- tions such as the UCLA—where integration of football teams occurred well before it did among U.S. professional sports and ahead of legislation that helped speed the process in the American South three decades later—Demas makes clear that there was no consensus among white or black communities as to the role sport might play in advancing social causes. Moreover, he contributes to the growing body of literature that documents the variety of sport experiences African American males endured in American sport in the years before and immediately after World War II and moving into the more active period of civil rights in the 1960s. Between UCLA’s failed attempt to gain entry into the 1939 Rose Bowl when they tied USC and the removal of the Black 14 from Wyoming’s football team in 1969, American society had experienced significant changes in racial practices, with legislation mandat- ing integrated schooling, visible social protests by African American athletes on a national and international stage, as well as other demonstrations of civil resistance, including marches, sit-ins, and boycotts. Sports, it was often argued, should remain outside the realm and influence of politics, but it seemed, and Demas’s accounts confirm, that the two spheres were inextricably linked. Demas’s work is excellent and well researched, and his writing is easy, inter- esting, and enjoyable to read. One minor issue of contention is his claim that his book establishes a new direction in sport history. This is a major point of his intro- ductory chapter, entitled “Beyond Jackie Robinson: Beyond Racial Integration in American College Football and New Directions in Sport History.” To suggest that his examination of college football is a new frontier in understanding the integra- tion of American sport simply ignores too many other quality works that he then 164 Book Reviews 165 cites in his book. Demas contends that too much emphasis has been placed on the barrier-breaking accomplishments of such athletes as Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, and Muhammad Ali in the writing of African Americans in sport history. Both Ali and Louis were boxers, athletes in an individual sport where racial codes were powerful in determining their opportunities and subsequent behaviors and actions. Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball, and his story merits the volumes of work devoted to his integrative efforts and subsequent career in baseball. American college football, unlike professional sports, was not governed in such a way that all teams followed a “gentlemen’s agreement” that restricted African Americans on teams. Certainly, Demas does a remarkable job of establishing this point—the integration of college football was not a one-person movement, and there is no comparable Jackie Robinson of college football. Of interest, though, is the role Jackie Robinson played on the UCLA team that Demas documents in his chapter on the Bruins in the late 1930s. Robinson’s teammate, Kenny Washington, later became one of the first African Americans to reintegrate the National Football League, reinforcing the relationship that existed between college and professional sport during the time periods covered in Demas’s book. Demas’s assertion to be forging a “new direction” in sport history is further diminished by two chapters, both well written and researched: “‘A Fist That Was Very Much Intentional’: Post- war Football in the Midwest and the 1951 Johnny Bright Scandal” and “‘We Play Anyone’: Deciphering the Racial Politics of Georgia Football and the 1956 Sugar Bowl Controversy.” Both have received previous scholarly attention by respectable sport historians, as cited by Demas.* Ultimately, Demas’s book makes clear that the integration of college football is more than worthy of scholarly focus. Demas’s work exemplifies the notion that American college football and its numerous stories of integration represent a movement of African American college athletes—many of whom would never play football beyond their university affiliation—who broke ground as hallowed as that of the playing fields ventured onto by Jackie Robinson. *See Jaime Schultz, “Photography, Instant Memory, and the Slugging of Johnny Bright,” Stadion 32(2006); and Charles Martin, “Integrating New Year’s Day: The Racial Politics of College Bowl Games in the American South,” Journal of Sport History 24, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 358–377. Demas cites a number of other works that also address the integration of American college football. Bowled Over: Big Time College Football from the Sixties to the BCS Era By Michael Oriard. Published in 2009 by the University of North Carolina Press (352 pp., $30.00 U.S.). Reviewed by Richard C. Crepeau, University of Central Florida Bowled Over is Michael Oriard’s fourth volume, completing his cultural history of American football. Three of the four volumes deal with the historical development of intercollegiate football and the other volume, the third in order of publication, treats the National Football League..