From the Editor
Americans love their sports. Many of us watch the year flow by, not from
month to month, but from baseball to soccer to basketball to football
season—until spring training rolls around and the cycle begins once
more. Over our morning coffee we have been known to glance at the front
page of the newspaper and then turn with relish to the sports page. Our
daughters and sons decorate their rooms with team banners and grown men
and women show up at football games with cheese wedges on their heads
or the name of their favorite team painted on their faces. Analogies to
sports abound in our political and business conversations, as we declare
someone has “struck out” with a bad idea or “fumbled
the ball” with a clumsy response to a challenge. And, young or old,
we seem always ready to recount our most memorable sports experiences,
as players or fans.
As fans, athletes, or teachers, we know that sports instructs us in
valuable lessons in team work, self discipline, and the ability to accept
both victory and defeat with good grace. But how many of us realize
the value of sports history in our classrooms? In this issue of History
Now scholars, writers, and teachers remind us that sports history
is a window onto many of the key issues and events in modern American
history.
Mark Naison begins the issue with an overview of “Why Sports
History is American History,” reminding us that racial and gender
struggles played themselves out on the baseball field, track, and in
the boxing ring. New York Times columnist Gail Collins follows
with “The Battle of the Sexes,” an account of the famous
tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs that put an end
to the myth that women could not compete successfully against men on
the tennis court. In “Before Jackie: How Strikeout King Satchel
Paige Struck Down Jim Crow,” Larry Tye traces the battle against
racial discrimination in baseball through the career of one of the most
talented players of the twentieth century. African Americans and women
were not the only groups to face discrimination; in her account of the
Olympian Jim Thorpe, Kate Buford shows us the tragic consequences of
prejudice against Native American athletes. In his essay “The
Importance of Muhammad Ali,” Thomas Hauser focuses on the evolution
of the boxer’s political and social consciousness and the impact
of his refusal to serve in the armed forces. Next, Barbara Winslow analyzes
the far-reaching changes in sports generated by landmark legislation
in her essay “The Impact of Title IX.” And finally, in “The
History of Women’s Baseball,” Kerry Candaele uses his own
mother’s professional baseball career as a jumping-off point to
remind us of the wartime years when women had “a league of their
own.”
In their joint essay, “Sports: Illustrating U.S. History in the
Classroom,” our two master teachers, Bruce Lesh and Philip Nicolosi,
offer readers creative and useful suggestions for effectively turning
the major themes of this issue into classroom lessons. Our archivist
Mary-Jo Kline provides readers with a wide variety of additional sources
on American sports, while our contributing AP, high school, middle school
and elementary school teachers have produced excellent lesson plans
on the topic. Finally, our interactive feature, “Important Moments
in Sports: Video Clips” brings Muhammad Ali’s refusal to
be drafted and the prelude to the King/Riggs match to life, courtesy
of NBC News.
Spring training has begun—only a few weeks until we hear the
magic words “play ball.” We hope this issue of History Now
will help teachers everywhere use sports to illuminate critical moments
in modern American history, no matter what team you root for in the
coming season.
Carol Berkin
Editor
Carol Berkin
Editor, History Now
Carol Berkin is Presidential Professor of History at Baruch College
and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is the author
of several books including First Generations: Women in Colonial
America, A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution,
Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence,
and Civil War Wives: The Life and Times of Angelina Grimke Weld,
Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant.
Editor - Carol Berkin, Associate
Editor - Lesley S. Herrmann, Managing Editor - Karina Gaige, Designers
- Brian Santalone and Ana Giron, Archivist - Mary-Jo Kline, Contributors
- Kate Buford, Kerry Candaele, Gail Collins, Thomas Hauser, Bruce Lesh,
Roberta McCutcheon, Mark Naison, Philip Nicolosi, Sean O'Mara, Elizabeth
Berlin Taylor, Larry Tye, Elise Stevens Wilson, Barbara Winslow.
