Sports history is Black history as its intersection paves social and racial progress

by JAIME C. HARRIS AmNews Sports Editor

Woodson, a historian, journalist and author aptly referred to as the “father of Black history” for his extensive study and chronicling of the African diaspora, even with the breadth and depth of his knowledge and vision, couldn’t have fathomed how momentous sports would become to the pursuit of Black liberation. Consequential triumphs in the boxing ring, playing fields and courts by those of African descent would markedly shape American society and culture.

Woodson, the son of slaves, was born December 19, 1875 in New Canton, Virginia, in Buckingham County, the same county where this writer’s father, David Harris, was raised in his early years. On March 31, 1878,  in Galveston, Texas, John Arthur “Jack” experienced his born day. Only 13 years prior, on June 19, 1865, enslaved African Americans in Galveston were finally informed by Union General George Granger they had gained their freedom, two and half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, declaring freedom for enslaved people in all Confederate states. That day in Galveston is now celebrated as the national Juneteenth holiday.

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As Woodson would go on to become one of the world’s eminent scholars, Johnson’s parallel timeline saw him surface as arguably the most famous man on the planet as the first Black heavyweight boxing champion. On December 26, 1908, Johnson completed a fourteen-round, commanding one-sided victory over Canadian Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia — a fight eventually stopped by local police due to the pounding Johnson was putting on his overmatched opponent.

Johnson was the first notable American Black athlete who openly flaunted his riches and standing as he amassed sizable financial resources inside the ring, endorsing products and engaging in entrepreneurial ventures, including owning an integrated restaurant in Chicago named Cafe de Champion.

“The possession of muscular strength and the courage to use it in contests with other men for physical supremacy does not necessarily imply a lack of appreciation for the finer and better things of life,” Johnson once said.

Even before Woodson’s birth, Blacks in sports were by extension also cultural vanguards. Seven months prior, in 1875, Oliver Lewis, a Black jockey, won the first Kentucky Derby. Of the 15 jockeys in that race to cross the finish line, 13 were Black. In fact, Black men were the preeminent jockeys in horse racing before Jim Crow laws ended their reign in the early 20th century. Boxing and horse racing were the two most popular sports in the United States as well as abroad, making Johnson and jockeys like Lewis lofty figures in the late 1800 and early 1900s.

As African Americans endured slavery and post-Reconstruction betrayals, when baseball began to rise, and in the immediate ensuing years Black players such as Bud Fowler, William Edward White and Moses Fleetwood Walker etched themselves as pioneers of the sport, unbeknownst to them, like Jack Johnson and Oliver Lewis, they would become the original threads in the fabric of sports history that would become part of the massive quilt of Black history.