Benching Jim Crow: The Rise and Fall of the Color Line in Southern College Sports, 1890-1980 (Sport and Society)

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Charles H. Martin has written a much needed explanation of how intercollegiate sports programs finally accepted black athletes as part of college games. If you like the Jackie Robinson story in the film "42", you will be enlightened by BENCHING JIM CROW. Jim Crow laws in the South prohibited blacks from "social" occasions such as dances, games and schools that mixed the races.1. The South insisted that northern teams leave black players at home when visiting the South to play games.2. A "good Negro" was a black player who did not complain about being dropped from a game just to suit southern racists.3. Southern "culture" was to be respected by the North, even though that culture was full of hate and racism.4. Northern universities were also very slow in finding places for blacks on their teams.5. Black athletes in the South could not eat or sleep with their white teammates.6. Blacks could not play basketball in the South because their sweat would touch white players and because more of their bodies were exposed by abbreviated uniforms.7. Southern racists feared that black players would increase the rate of "mixed marriages."8. Southern universities finally allowed black participation when their teams could gain more fame and fortune if they could play against good intersectional teams from the North.9. The football bowl games earned big bucks for colleges, so these bowl games included more and more teams who had black football players.10. Southern colleges used the term "Gentlemen's Agreement" to describe the North's willingness to drop black players off their teams when playing southern schools.11. Boston College and the University of Virginia were especially willing to ignore racism.12. Author Martin briefly mentions the civil rights movement and the Viet Nam protests as other influences changing the color line in sports.13. But, mainly, money and greed by the universities' athletic departments led to the acceptance of blacks in sports.