African-American Athletes

Anne O'Malley

When Olympic track star Billy Mills heard "Go get 'em, Chief" one too many times from the stands as a college athlete, he quit the race in despair and headed home. Native American athletes have long faced demeaning epithets from the public and the media. The fact that relatively few Indians have embraced the world of professional sports is symptomatic of a general cultural conflict between the world of big-time sports and Native American traditions, Aaseng notes in his illuminating opening essay. What follows are lively chapters written in crisp sports journalistic style and devoted to baseball stars Harley Bender, John Meyers, and Allie Reynolds; "world's greatest athlete" Jim Thorpe; Mills, and a host of other younger, less well-known athletes. This is a welcome addition to Native American, biography, and sports collections.