Passing the baton : black women track stars and American identity
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Passing the baton : black women track stars and American identity
(Sports and society)
University of Illinois Press, c2020
- : pbk
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Note
Revision of author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Miami, 2018, titled Sprints of citizenship : black women track stars and the making of modern citizenship in the United States and Jamaica, 1946-1964
Includes bibliographical references (p. [209]-221) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
After World War II, the United States used international sport to promote democratic values and its image of an ideal citizen. But African American women excelling in track and field upset such notions. Cat M. Ariail examines how athletes such as Alice Coachman, Mae Faggs, and Wilma Rudolph forced American sport cultures—both white and Black—to reckon with the athleticism of African American women. Marginalized still further in a low-profile sport, young Black women nonetheless bypassed barriers to represent their country. Their athletic success soon threatened postwar America's dominant ideas about race, gender, sexuality, and national identity. As Ariail shows, the wider culture defused these radical challenges by locking the athletes within roles that stressed conservative forms of femininity, blackness, and citizenship.
A rare exploration of African American women athletes and national identity, Passing the Baton reveals young Black women as active agents in the remaking of what it means to be American.
Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction
Chapter 1. Raising the Bar: Alice Coachman and the Boundaries of Postwar American Identity, 1946-1948
Chapter 2. Sprints of Citizenship: Identity Politics and Black Women’s Athleticism, 1951-1952
Chapter 3. Passing the Baton Toward Belonging: Mae Faggs and the Making of the Americanness of Black American Track Women, 1954-1956
Chapter 4. Winning as American Women: The Heteronormativity of Black Women Athletic Heroines, 1958-1960
Chapter 5. “Olympian Quintessence”: Wilma Rudolph, Athletic Femininity, and American Iconicity, 1960-1962
Conclusion. The Precarity of the Baton Pass: Race, Gender, and the Enduring Barriers to American Belonging
Notes
Bibliography
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"