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Title details for Passing the Baton by Cat M. Ariail - Wait list

Passing the Baton

Black Women Track Stars and American Identity

by Cat M. Ariail
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After World War II, the United States used international sport to promote democratic values and its image of an ideal citizen. But African American women excelling in track and field upset such notions. Cat M. Ariail examines how athletes such as Alice Coachman, Mae Faggs, and Wilma Rudolph forced American sport cultures—both white and Black—to reckon with the athleticism of African American women. Marginalized still further in a low-profile sport, young Black women nonetheless bypassed barriers to represent their country. Their athletic success soon threatened postwar America's dominant ideas about race, gender, sexuality, and national identity. As Ariail shows, the wider culture defused these radical challenges by locking the athletes within roles that stressed conservative forms of femininity, blackness, and citizenship.

A rare exploration of African American women athletes and national identity, Passing the Baton reveals young Black women as active agents in the remaking of what it means to be American.

|Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. Raising the Bar: Alice Coachman and the Boundaries of Postwar American Identity, 1946-1948

Chapter 2. Sprints of Citizenship: Identity Politics and Black Women's Athleticism, 1951-1952

Chapter 3. Passing the Baton Toward Belonging: Mae Faggs and the Making of the Americanness of Black American Track Women, 1954-1956

Chapter 4. Winning as American Women: The Heteronormativity of Black Women Athletic Heroines, 1958-1960

Chapter 5. "Olympian Quintessence": Wilma Rudolph, Athletic Femininity, and American Iconicity, 1960-1962

Conclusion. The Precarity of the Baton Pass: Race, Gender, and the Enduring Barriers to American Belonging

Notes

Bibliography

Index

|"What makes this book a priceless contribution to the field of sport history is Ariail's argument that the athletic victories of Black women in track and field surpassed the sports stage and directly impacted political relationships with the Unites States and forged America's image. . . . I highly recommend this book as it intermingles foreign politics, American values, and challenges experienced by Black women in track and field seeking to reach the epitome of athleticism." —Journal of Sport History
"Ariail's intersectional analysis of race and gender is detailed in explication of white and Black press representations of—as well as coaches', track-and-field officials', and politicians' public statements about—Black women track and field athletes. . . . Passing the Baton is an important reconsideration of Black women athletes' physical and representational performances as ideological work equivalent to other cultural workers and civil rights leaders." —Journal of American History
​"Passing the Baton is engaging, optimistic, and unsentimental—it elucidates a rarely discussed period of American athletic history and thus offers much value to any demographic." —Journal of African American Studies
|Cat M. Ariail is a lecturer in the Department of History at Middle Tennessee State University.

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Languages

  • English

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