African American Icons of Sport

This title offers an examination of African Americans in sports from a variety of perspectives and through a lively range of rhetoric styles and illuminates the history of highly successful and influential individuals athletes and teams who have transcended mere celebrity to come to represent a given Zeitgeist to a sizable part of the world. It also explores the history and lives of complex multi-layered personages and groups. Finally it examines the extent to which modern mass media and popular culture have contributed greatly to the rise and sometimes fall of the these powerful symbols of athletic individual and group excellence.