Why did black athletes become prominent during the 1930s and 1940s?

In 1936, Jesse Owens represented the US on its Olympic track and field team in Berlin. At the time, Germany had fallen to Hitler and Nazism. When Owens won four gold medals and broke two world records, his performance at the games undermined Hitler's assertion of a German master race—that is, the false belief that German and other Northern European people (Aryans, as he called them) were superior to other "races" of humanity.
Owens's triumphs were well-timed, for they put a chink in the armor of the Nazis' belief system and, as a representative of the United States (a country with its own white supremacist values), he was a living example of a democratic ideal.
A year later, on June 22, 1937, Joe Louis knocked out the world heavyweight champion James J. Braddock. Louis was not the first black man to become heavyweight champion (that title belongs to Jack Johnson who was the champion from 1908 to 1915), but he held the title longer than any other champion in any weight class. He lost it on March 1, 1949, due to his decision to retire.
Joe Louis was indomitable and a champion to black people who loved to see him knock down every Great White Hope—that is, a white boxer whom white supremacists hoped would defeat Louis—who entered the ring with him.
The 1930s and 1940s were also a period of more political engagement for black people, some of whom had become Socialists or Communists. A. Philip Randolph, a prominent Civil Rights leader at the time, followed his successful organization of the Sleeping Car Pullman Porters with a mass march in the 1940s, protesting against discrimination in the war industry. Black people also played a more significant role in the Second World War. For instance, in this war, black men were allowed to become fighter pilots (e.g., the Tuskegee Red Tails). In the First World War, black American pilots were allowed to fly for the French, but not for their own country. Thus, the athletes were symbolic of the ways in which black people were capable of being sources of national pride but also could demonstrate resistance against systemic discrimination.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How does Bilbo show leadership and courage in The Hobbit?

Bilbo’s increase in confidence and courage is the defining aspect of his character arc. At the beginning of the novel, he is shut away content in his Hobbit hole, happy to remain separate and coddled from the rest of the world. In the movie, Bilbo chooses to join the dwarves on their quest out of a sense for adventure. In the book, however, Bilbo wants nothing to do with them and only joins because he had been duped into signing a contract. Despite being on the adventure somewhat against his will, Bilbo still proves himself time and again, saving the dwarves from the spiders, the trolls, and a number of other dangers they encounter along the way. Bilbo’s character arc has even been cited as a sort of Christian metaphor for the growth of the soul, though how much Tolkien intended on this front is up for debate. From a thematic standpoint, the ring of invisibility also plays into Bilbo’s brand of bravery. If Hobbits are the overlooked creatures of Middle Earth, then it is noteworthy that...
Read more

In “Goodbye to All That,” Joan Didion writes that the “lesson” of her story is that “it is distinctly possible to remain too long at the fair.” What does she mean? How does the final section of the essay portray how she came to this understanding, her feelings about it, and the consequences of it?

In this classic essay, Didion describes moving to New York City from her native Sacramento at the age of twenty-one, and, as she freely admits, a somewhat naive twenty-one, her mind, "programmed by all the movies I had ever seen and all the songs I had ever heard about New York," with the typical feeling, at that age, that, "nothing like this...has ever happened to anyone before." Intending to stay for only six months, she falls in love with the city. As she says, "I do not mean 'love' in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city the way you love the first person who ever touches you and never love anyone quite that way again." This initial love led her to prolong her residency, since, "I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month." But as the next years roll past, and the "new faces" she encounters...
Read more

Why does the poet say "all the men and women merely players"?

It's one of the most famous lines in literature: All the world's a stage,And all the men and women merely players . . . This famous saying comes from Shakespeare's play As You Like It, and it's spoken by Jacques. What he's saying here is that simply going about our daily lives is a type of performance. Just like actors on a stage, we all have roles to perform: Daughter. Student. Sister. Captain of the soccer team. The fact that Shakespeare writes that men and women are merely players suggests that the roles are preordained and that a person's choice in being a mother, for example, or a doctor or starting point guard for the Brooklyn Nets is out of their hands. What roles a person performs over the course of their lifetime is up to fate. The notion that "all the world's a stage" has entered pop culture, but within the context of the play, this idea does not sit well with Jacques. He's a pessimist, and the idea that everything is up to fate makes...
Read more