{"product_id":"forty-million-dollar-slaves-isbn-9780307353146","title":"Forty Million Dollar Slaves","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES \u003c\/i\u003eBESTSELLER • “An explosive and absorbing discussion of race, politics, and the history of American sports.”—\u003ci\u003eEbony\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe, African American athletes have been at the center of modern culture, their on-the-field heroics admired and stratospheric earnings envied. But for all their money, fame, and achievement, says \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e columnist William C. Rhoden, black athletes still find themselves on the periphery of true power in the multibillion-dollar industry their talent built.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eProvocative and controversial, Rhoden’s \u003ci\u003e$40 Million Slaves\u003c\/i\u003e weaves a compelling narrative of black athletes in the United States, from the plantation to their beginnings in nineteenth-century boxing rings to the history-making accomplishments of notable figures such as Jesse Owens, Althea Gibson, and Willie Mays. Rhoden reveals that black athletes’ “evolution” has merely been a journey from literal plantations\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003ewhere sports were introduced as diversions to quell revolutionary stirrings\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003eto today’s figurative ones, in the form of collegiate and professional sports programs. He details the “conveyor belt” that brings kids from inner cities and small towns to big-time programs, where they’re cut off from their roots and exploited by team owners, sports agents, and the media. He also sets his sights on athletes like Michael Jordan, who he says have abdicated their responsibility to the community with an apathy that borders on treason.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe power black athletes have today is as limited as when masters forced their slaves to race and fight. The primary difference is, today’s shackles are invisible.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eForty Million Dollar Slaves\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“A provocative, passionate, important, and disturbing book.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Brilliant . . . a beautifully written, complex, and rich narrative.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eWashington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“A powerful call for more black athletes to give back to their communities.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Rhoden scores heavily with this Muhammad Ali of a book, one that blends autobiography  with history, clarity of insight with passion. . . . A series of invaluable and irrefutable  history lessons and contemporary cameos to illustrate Rhoden’s thesis that even the  best paid of black American athletes live a double life—highly compensated, but in  a state not unlike bondage.”\u003cb\u003e—Arnold Rampersad, author of \u003ci\u003eJackie Robinson: A Biography\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eDays of Grace: A Memoir\u003c\/i\u003e (with Arthur Ashe)\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e “Powerful and prophetic . . . Rhoden  courageously lays bare painful truths about a fundamental reality in American life:  the centrality of the excellence and exploitation of black athletes.”\u003cb\u003e—Cornel West,  author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eRace Matters\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A book that touches the soul . . . Cuts to the heart of  the matter, delivering a penetrating slice of the long and often painful journey  to success taken by black athletes.”\u003cb\u003e—Neil Amdur, former sports editor, \u003ci\u003eNew York  Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Reading this work is an emotional experience. . . . Once I started I couldn’ t stop. Informative, engaging, and extremely provocative, \u003ci\u003e$40 Million Slaves\u003c\/i\u003e caused  me to alternately shake my head in violent disagreement one moment only to find myself  nodding the next.”\u003cb\u003e—Calvin Hill, former NFL All-Star and father of NBA All-Star Grant  Hill\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A provocative contribution to the literature on race and sports . . . For  anyone who cares about America’s future and sport in America, it’s well worth reading.”\u003cb\u003e—Paul Tagliabue, commissioner, National Football League\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Breathtaking in scope  . . . If you want to honestly view race in America, \u003ci\u003e$40 Million Slaves\u003c\/i\u003e will give  you the prism of sports as a vehicle to see how far we still have to go to really  achieve equality in America. It’s a must read.”\u003cb\u003e—Richard Lapchick, director emeritus,  Center for the Study of Sport in Society; columnist, ESPN; and author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eSmashing  Barriers \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “This is the best contemporary writing—and best fuel for debate—on the  large role black athletes hold in American culture. Bill Rhoden is playing hardball  with stars from Michael Jordan to Mike Tyson on the issue of blacks and sports by  bringing history, politics, and race on the field.”\u003cb\u003e—Juan Williams, author of\u003ci\u003e Eyes  on the Prize\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Provocative and distressing—just the right combination for beginning  an important conversation.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eWILLIAM C. RHODEN has been a sportswriter for the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e since 1983, and has written the “Sports of the Times” column for more than a decade. He also serves as a consultant for ESPN’s \u003ci\u003eSportsCentury\u003c\/i\u003e series, and occasionally appears as a guest on their show \u003ci\u003eThe Sports Reporters\u003c\/i\u003e. In 1996, Rhoden won a Peabody Award for Broadcasting as writer of the HBO documentary \u003ci\u003eJourney of the African-American Athlete\u003c\/i\u003e. A graduate of Morgan State University in Baltimore, he lives in New York City’s Harlem with his wife and daughter.Chapter 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Race Begins: The Dilemma of Illusion\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Long before there was race and even before there was politics, there   were Saturday mornings in the playground.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Every summer, on Saturday mornings my father and I would greet the   dawn. We’d have our breakfast, put on shorts and sneakers, walk across   the street to the Martha Ruggles Elementary School playground, and   practice basketball. My father was my first coach. He was a mathematics   teacher by training, and his penchant for teaching extended to sports.   He taught me how to catch a football and run a sprint. I played Biddy   Basketball at the Chatham branch of the YMCA; my dad was the coach. An   astute judge of talent, he recognized that his oldest son needed   tutoring. And that’s how those joyous Saturday morning sessions   evolved. I was eight years old, my shots barely reached the rim, but my   dad constantly reminded me that there was a lot more to the game than   shooting. He said that by the time I was able to hit the rim   consistently, I’d have an idea of how to play the game. So we worked on   fundamentals: dribbling, passing, catching. Now and then we’d play a   game of one-on-one. He always won. For a change of pace, we’d run a   foot race. He won that, too. But what I loved most about Saturday   morning was the bonding. Those practice sessions gave me an opportunity   to be with my father, and be with him on a relatively equal playing   field. At every turn, I measured my physical prowess against my   father’s. At every picnic, on every long walk, I’d challenge him to a   race, keeping mental notes all along, noting how long he had to run   hard before easing up and letting me win. He was still father, I was   son, but I knew that one day, if I became strong enough, quick enough,   big enough, competent enough, the dynamics of our athletic relationship   would change.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Those memories, carefully tucked away in my heart, are what make sports   reverberate in my soul. Not covering the big games, interviewing   celebrities and superstars, but childhood recollections of a boy trying   to please his parents. The deepest, most ancient pull of sports for me   has always been emotional. “Race” was something you did on the sidewalk   or on a dusty road on the way home from school. In the beginning, speed   and quickness didn’t have a color.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    My father tried to shield his three children from the brutality of the   racial struggles that swirled about us in the 1950s. Every now and then   he’d talk about some slight or indignity he’d suffered at the hands of   a white person. Mostly he insulated us from the unfolding drama of the   Civil Rights movement. Jackie Robinson desegregated Major League   Baseball three years before I was born, but my father wasn’t much of a   baseball fan, so I wasn’t shellacked in Jackie’s legend of black   Americans in the United States.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    My mother was not an avid sports fan, but she was the lion in my soul.   Her brother, my uncle Eddie, was a prizefighter in his younger days (my   father called him the Canvas Kid). One day, when I complained about   Billy Boy, our next-door neighbor, my mother didn’t advise me to turn   the other cheek, or to ignore him, or to tell his mother. She   essentially told me to go back and kick his ass. I remember the two of   us standing in our kitchen, my mother giving me an impromptu boxing   clinic. I can still hear her voice as she showed me how to throw a   combination: “Bop, bop—just like that,” she said, showing me how to   deck Billy Boy. I never did fight Billy Boy. I faced him in the yard   soon after my mother’s tutorial but couldn’t bring myself to throw the   first punch. This was my first lesson in combat: Power without heart   and strategy is meaningless.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    My mother laid out the racial facts of life for me. She burst my bubble   in our kitchen one afternoon when she said casually that there were   more white people than black people in the United States. I was   stunned. In my segregated world on Chicago’s South Side, black and   brown were the dominant colors. In my world, white people were there,   but they weren’t there. Invisible. The stores, the Laundromat, the   record shops, my schools. If whites were the majority, where were they?   Why didn’t I ever see any?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Of course, the answers to these questions flowed into the larger ocean   of segregation and racism. That, in turn, flowed back to the ritual my   dad and I enacted when we watched sports.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I learned about race and racism in front of the TV set. My father and I   watched football games upstairs, in our bungalow on 78th and Calumet.   We sat and cheered on the red leather seat my dad had pulled out of our   ’56 Mercury station wagon. Televised football didn’t make a lot of   sense to me back then. The images were too crowded, too small, too   gray. The fun of it was cheering; and cheering interests were simple in   our house. We rooted for the team with the most black players. We   cheered for the hometown clubs, the Bears and White Sox, but aside from   that, the general rule of thumb was that we cheered for the team with   the most colorful presence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In those days, when black faces were few and far between, we cheered   for the color of the skin. We had some variations to the general rule:   If the team was from the South and had just one Brother, his team was   our team; he was our man. Didn’t matter who the athlete was underneath   his uniform or his skin—his true character was less significant than   his presence. Out there on the field, he became the torchbearer for the   race. Content of character mattered only to the extent that we prayed   these pioneers wouldn’t embarrass The Race.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The ritual my dad and I engaged in was one that took place among black   sports fans and non-fans throughout the United States. The ritual went   further back than Jackie Robinson, Joe Louis, or Jesse Owens. It   probably went all the way back to the heavyweight prizefighter Jack   Johnson in 1910, when the telegram runners passed through black   neighborhoods calling out round-by-round progress of Johnson’s historic   fight with Jim Jeffries, the first Great White Hope. When Johnson   defeated Jeffries on July 4, 1910, black communities across the country   exploded in celebration. Other parts of the nation exploded with   violence. As news of Johnson’s victory spread, mobs of angry whites   beat up and, in some instances, murdered blacks. Many whites feared   that the black community might be emboldened by Johnson’s victory over   a white man. And they were not mistaken. Those early symbolic victories   were soul food.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Symbolic representation was the rule of the day, part of a timeless   ritual throughout the United States’ melting pot of ethnicity: Jews   cheered for Jews, Irish for Irish, Italians for Italians. But the   predicament of black Americans was more complex, precarious, and   sometimes seemed even hopeless. African Americans were so disconnected   from the American dream that sports often seemed the only venue where   the battle for self-respect could be vigorously waged.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    My parents and their parents sat around their radios listening to Joe   Louis fights, living and dying with every punch. Louis was fighting for   himself and his country, but he was also fighting for a black nation   within a nation. Every time Jackie Robinson went to bat, he did so for   that elusive, ever-evolving state of mind called “Black America.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In those days of suffocating, uncompromising segregation, we cheered   black muscle with a vengeance. The fate of black civilization seemed to   rest on every round, every at bat. “Knock his white ass out,” or   “Outrun his white ass,” or “Block that white boy’s shot.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Or, worst of all: “You let that white boy beat you?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Each group has had its cross to bear, but although Jews and Italians   and Irish and all the other mingling European races could look forward   to assimilating, assimilation was practically impossible for African   Americans. The indelible marking of skin color made it so.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Early in the formation of the United States, blacks became the   designated drivers of the Scapegoat Express. We were the “outside   others.” The nation needed a permanent workforce and a permanent   pariah. African Americans, by virtue of some seventeenth-century   decree, got the job. No amount of education, no amount of wealth, could   remove the stigma of race. The paradox and dilemma of virulent racism   is that our exclusion became the basis of our unity. The next two   hundred years of our existence were defined by reacting to racism.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    So our cheering assumed a deeper meaning: we were cheering for our very   survival. Black athletes became our psychological armor, markers of our   progress, tangible proof of our worth, evidence of our collective Soul.   Our athletes threw punches we couldn’t throw, won races we couldn’t   run. Any competition or public showing involving an African American   was seen as a test for us all; the job of the athlete was to represent   The Race. This was a heavy burden on one hand, but at the same time it   represented a noble, time-worn responsibility. You always represented.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Paul Robeson—All-American football player, activist, orator, singer,   actor—never forgot his first day as a freshman football player at   Rutgers when white teammates tried to kill him—and nearly succeeded.   Robeson never forgot his father’s angry reaction when informed that his   son was thinking about quitting the team—and Rutgers. His father told   him that quitting was not an option, regardless of how trying   conditions became. “When I was out on the football field or in the   classroom or anywhere else, I was not there just on my own. I was the   representative of a lot of Negro boys who wanted to play football and   wanted to go to college, and as their representative, I had to show   that I could take whatever was handed out.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The attitude exemplified by Robeson’s father was widely embraced by   African Americans—the idea that we were each connected to a national   black community by a common experience, a common condition, and a   common cause was commonplace.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Floyd Patterson was the first African American athlete I can personally   remember who carried the burden of The Race into the ring. Patterson   became heavyweight champion in 1956—the youngest ever at the time.   Soft-spoken and self-effacing, Patterson was the perfect media story: a   young, wayward black boy, transformed by a caring white patron—Cus   D’Amato—into a champion. In June of 1959 he defended his title against   Ingemar Johansson and was pummeled without mercy. Johansson knocked   Patterson down seven times in three rounds, and to many of us it felt   as if black folks had been knocked out. But Patterson came back and won   the rematch in June 1960, becoming the first fighter ever to regain the   heavyweight championship. This was one of those psychic victories for   black America, all the sweeter because Patterson proved all his   doubters wrong. But then things got complicated. Patterson’s next   opponent was Charles “Sonny” Liston, an illiterate former convict with   mob connections, whom the New York State Athletic Commission described   thus: “A child of circumstances, without schooling and without   direction or leadership, he has become the victim of those with whom he   has surrounded himself.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The scholar Maurice Berube called Liston the “stereotypical nightmare   of the bad nigger, the juvenile delinquent grown up.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    That was the first time I was confronted with the new complexities of   race brought on by the nascent Civil Rights movement. Liston was no   Floyd Patterson. That is, he was not the model Civil Rights Negro,   beloved by all, especially by whites. So here were two black men   fighting for the championship. Liston was regarded as a pariah;   Patterson was cast as the Good Black. Even John F. Kennedy, the   President of the United States, weighed in, telling Patterson that he   had to “beat that guy” because a Liston victory would not be in the   best interests of the Negro image. The fight definitely was not in   Patterson’s best interest. Liston pulverized Patterson in their first   fight in September 1962, knocking him out in two minutes of the first   round.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Even Malcolm X, like Liston a threat to both white and the Civil Rights   model, weighed in on the 1963 Liston-Patterson rematch, expressing the   hope that Liston would “shake Patterson up.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    That he did. Liston beat Patterson even worse in their 1963 rematch.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Then along came Cassius Marcellus Clay.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Clay triggered an odd transformation in the country, in my household,   and within the African American community. Liston’s mob connections   were one thing, but Clay’s connection to the Black Muslims frightened a   lot of blacks and whites a whole lot more. He had been recruited into   the Nation of Islam by none other than Malcolm X, the radical minister   who spoke of whites as blue-eyed devils.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Suddenly, big, bad Sonny Liston was redefined. He became reassuring to   an older generation of blacks who liked the old heavyweight model   Liston represented and were intimidated by Clay’s brashness and   connection to the Nation of Islam. A conservative segment of the   community was screaming, “Enough of this militant business. Enough of   this talk of separation, of blue-eyed devils.” They hoped that Clay   would be crushed, silenced, dashed to bits by the Bear. It didn’t   happen. Ali, the radical, defeated Liston, the thug, to become   heavyweight champion. Later he fought Patterson and humiliated him in   defeat because the former champion refused to call Clay by his new   name, Muhammad Ali. Those of us who were younger and beginning to   develop a more militant racial consciousness were thrilled by Ali. We   called any black person who refused to call him by his name Old   Negroes, Uncle Toms, or the white man’s niggers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Ali became the first universal, seemingly omnipresent black man. He   said things we only imagined saying, did things many of us had never   conceived of doing. He shunned his slave name, Clay, for Ali; he   refused to be inducted into the U.S. Army and risked everything,   including the heavyweight championship, for principle. When Ali was   stripped of his title, it was as if he were being whipped by the   overseer, like those “bad nigga” slaves of old. Publicly. We were   outraged at the injustice, but inspired by his courage and   fearlessness, which were as strong outside the ring as they were within   the four corners. Ali was my Jackie Robinson, the sports figure who   transcended sport to become a true role model. His example gave many of   us strength—black and white, rich and poor. For me, Ali brought home   the concept of principle, that there was something greater in life than   wealth, though wealth has its place; something greater in life than   fame, though fame has its place. And he taught me that in the right   hands, wealth and fame, the fruits of athletic success, could be used   as a tool in the ongoing struggle.","brand":"Crown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303088050405,"sku":"NP9780307353146","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307353146.jpg?v=1767727591","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/forty-million-dollar-slaves-isbn-9780307353146","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}