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Breaking the Line: The Season in Black College Football That Transformed the Sport and Changed the Course of Civil Rights
Author:
Freedman, Samuel G.
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Class:
796.332
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: GV950
Print Run: 50000
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ISBN-13: 9781439189771
LCCN: 2012042465
Imprint: Simon & Schuster
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Pub Date: 08/13/2013
Availability: Out of Stock Indefinitely
List: $28.00
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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xii, 318 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
H 9.25",
W 6.25",
D 1.3",
1.24 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
Brodart's TOP Adult Titles
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Bibliographies:
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Awards:
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Kirkus Starred Reviews
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Starred Reviews:
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Kirkus Reviews
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TIPS Subjects:
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Sports
Schools
Social Sciences/Sociology
African American & Black
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BISAC Subjects: |
HISTORY / General
POLITICAL SCIENCE / General
SPORTS & RECREATION / Football
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LC Subjects:
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African American football players, Biography
African American universities and colleges, Sports
College sports, United States, History
Discrimination in sports, United States, History
Football, United States, History
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SEARS Subjects: |
African Americans, Fiction
College sports, United States, History
Discrimination in sports, United States, History
Football, United States, History
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Reading Programs: |
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| Annotations |
| Brodart's TOP Adult Titles | 05/01/2013 |
| Never before had such a game been played. WItness the first game that set a white school and a black shool's college football teams against each other in the South. Follow two coaches and their quarterbacks as they show the nation that black athletes should not be taken lightly. 336pp., 50K, Auth res: New York, NY |
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| Starred Reviews: |
| Kirkus Reviews | 07/01/2013 |
| With campuses and the nation in an uproar over civil rights, two legendary coaches prepared their teams for a football classic. When Texas Western's all-black starting lineup defeated national powerhouse and all-white Kentucky in the 1966 NCAA title basketball game, everyone understood immediately the historic implications. The significance of the Grambling Tigers' narrow victory over the Florida A&M Rattlers in the 1967 Orange Blossom Classic, the de facto championship of black college football, however, emerged only over time. Freedman (Journalism/Columbia Univ.; Letters to a Young Journalist, 2006, etc.) memorably revisits an era when, due to still-widespread segregation, black colleges were at their athletic apogee. Tigers' coach Eddie Robinson and A&M's Jake Gaither had already sent scores of players to the NFL, but, notwithstanding their distinguished tenures, campus militants harshly criticized both for their public silence on civil rights. Innovative coaches, father figures to countless young men, by 1967, they were marginalized, even ridiculed by a new, impatient generation that knew little of each man's struggles and achievements. Neither responded directly to the turmoil of the times, but each harbored a private ambition: Robinson to groom a player sufficiently talented and self-possessed to become a quarterback in the NFL and Gaither to play one game against a predominantly white team, a potentially explosive event for the South. During the summer and fall, they laid the groundwork for breaking both barriers. As he takes us through the season for both teams and recreates their bowl matchup, Freedman mixes in revealing information about the cultures of the schools, their rivalries with other black colleges, sensitive portraits of the coaches and players, and an evocative description of a racial and political climate that Robinson and Gaither, each working quietly, did so much to alter. Much more than just a sports book. 320pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2013. |
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| Journal Reviews |
| Booklist | 06/01/2013 |
| The year 1967 represented a transitional point in the civil rights movement. As award-winning journalist Freedman states, it was a time of soaring hopes and dashed expectations. Integration was being challenged by black nationalism and faced a white backlash, as well. Caught in the middle were the historically black colleges, pillars within the separate-but-equal tradition. Their sports teams, a traditional source of pride to the community, were facing new issues, including competition to recruit black athletes from bigger universities in the North and, slowly, in the South. It was in this environment that legendary football coaches Eddie Robinson of Grambling and Jake Gaither of Florida A&M, at the point of establishing their legacies, were to meet in the championship game of black college football, the Orange Blossom Classic. Focusing on these remarkable men, their times, their institutions, and their players, Freedman, who has not previously written on athletics (though he has written about black culture), has produced an informative book. Though it doesn't quite fulfill the ambition of its subtitle, it does make a solid contribution to sports history. Levine, Mark. 320p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2013. |
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| Library Journal | 06/15/2013 |
| Freedman (columnist, New York Times) here looks at the nexus of 20th-century American culture, race, and civil rights through sports as he takes readers back to 1967 when two historically black college football powerhouses, Grambling and Florida A&M (FAMU), played against each other at the Orange Blossom Classic to determine the champion of black college football. He focuses on the coaches--Grambling's Eddie Robinson and FAMU's Jake Gaiter--and their quarterbacks, James Harris and Ken Riley, respectively. Robinson dreamt of Harris breaking the NFL barrier for black quarterbacks, while Gaither wished simply that a black college might play a white one in the Deep South. Ironically, while both coaches spent a lifetime effecting slow but real change by working within the system, they came in for blistering criticism from 1960s activists for not striking a more radical stance. Freedman's subtitle exaggerates: Harris indeed became a pioneer quarterback and executive in the NFL, while Riley transformed into a star pro defensive back, but they were part of a long and slow progression of change. VERDICT This story is expertly reported and engagingly written. Both sports fans and students of 20th-century American studies will be drawn to it. John Maxymuk, Rutgers Univ. Lib., Camden, NJ. 320p. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2013. |
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9781439189771,dl.it[0].title
| Review Citations |
| New York Times Book Review | 10/13/2014 |
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