Passing the Baton: Black Women Track Stars and American Identity
Passing the Baton: Black Women Track Stars and American Identity
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Abstract
In the post–World War II period, nations and territories used international sport to codify and communicate their ideal citizenries. For the United States, black women who competed in track and field complicated these efforts. This book analyzes the ideological influence of black women track stars, examining how they destabilized dominant ideas about race, gender, sexuality, and national identity. The strivings and successes of black American track women, such as Alice Coachman, Mae Faggs, and Wilma Rudolph, at the Olympic Games and other international sporting events from 1948 to 1962 repeatedly forced white and black sport cultures in the United States to wrestle with the meaning of black women’s athleticism. Both white and black sport cultures struggled to fit black women athletes into their respective visions for the postwar American nation, reflecting and reinforcing how the Cold War, civil rights movement, and their intersection encouraged broader reconfigurations of the racial, gender, and sexual associations of ideal American identity. Ultimately, these American sport cultures marshaled racialized gender expectations to contain the threat that black women track stars embodied, interpreting and reinterpreting the meaning of their athletic efforts in ways that bolstered established hierarchies of race and gender.
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Front Matter
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Introduction
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1
Raising the Bar: Alice Coachman and the Boundaries of Postwar American Identity, 1946–1948
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2
Sprints of Citizenship: Identity Politics and Black Women’s Athleticism, 1951–1952
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3
Passing the Baton toward Belonging: Mae Faggs and the Making of the Americanness of Black American Track Women, 1954–1956
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4
Winning as American Women: The Heteronormativity of Black Women Athletic Heroines, 1958–1960
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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
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End Matter
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