In the Shadow of Jim Crow

Résumé du livre

Abstract: This dissertation provides a historical study of Jim Crow in the North via the interplay of race and sport. It analyzes the 1934 benching of Willis Ward, an African-American football player at the University of Michigan and reveals the racialized social order maintained by Michigan's famed Athletic Director Fielding Yost. This study probes how Ward's benching affected his career, especially his work directing hiring practices at the Ford Motor Company. It also explores Ward's conservative politics and his espousal of policies and practices aimed at maintaining the racial status quo. This project also chronicles how racism toward Ward shaped the politics of his teammate and future U.S. President Gerald Ford who supported affirmative action and civil rights legislation but opposed busing as a means to carry out school desegregation. A significant body of scholarship has examined the history of Jim Crow in the South. This dissertation, in contrast, provides an opportunity to examine the North's separate but unequal practices. This previously unstudied history of Ward and other black athletes at Michigan offer four significant insights regarding Northern race relations: it demonstrates how Northern institutions maintained segregationist practices without having the same legal underpinnings that existed in Southern states; it emphasizes the opposition that black athletes faced and exposes how institutions such as Michigan actively engaged in constructing racial barriers that constrained African American performance and compelled these players to exceed standard athletic expectations in order to earn spots on top college teams; it underscores how racial intolerance toward black athletes catalyzed resistance, created race advocacy and opposition, and contributed to a long history of black conservatism; and finally, it stresses how the racism black athletes met on the court and gridiron mirrored the racial prejudice they and other African Americans experienced in their interactions on campus, in the community, and throughout the country. By probing the entrenched restrictions that African Americans encountered in the North, this study provides a more comprehensive view of race relations in America.