Better than the Best

In these engaging and forthright interviews, thirteen African American athletes talk about how they endured through pain, loneliness, and rejection to become champions. In sports as diverse as football and fencing, wrestling and track and field, these men and women triumphed over the odds to become better than the best. Their legacy is in their accomplishments and in their determination to continue contributing to the societal transformation their efforts helped make possible.

A V Ethel Willis White Book

Vorwort

This collection of thirteen engaging and forthright interviews brings together the life stories of Black athletes who have risen to the top rank of their sport since the early 1950s.

Autorentext

John C. Walter is professor emeritus of American ethnic studies, University of Washington. He is the author of The Harlem Fox: J. Raymond Jones and Tammamy and coeditor (with Johnnella Butler) of Transforming the Curriculum: Ethnic Studies and Women's Studies. In 1953 he came to the United States from Jamaica on a track scholarship to Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas. Malina Iida is a student at William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai'i.

Inhalt

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Sam Lacy | Sports Journalism

2. Mal Whitfield | Track and Field

3. Mae Faggs Starr | Track and Field

4. Don Benning, Ed.D. | Wrestling

5. Lenny Wilkens | Basketball

6. Ken Hudson | NBA Referee

7. Arthur Ashe Jr. | Tennis

8. Wyomia Tyus | Track and Field

9. Alan Page, J.D. | Football

10. Jennifer Johnson | Paralympic Table Tennis

11. Nikki Franke, ED.D. | Fencing

12. Peter Westbrook | Fencing

13. Maurice Smith | Martial Arts

Black Athletes Interviewed for the Blacks in Sports Oral History Project

Selected Bibliography

Index