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PROJECT: Black Sport History: Articles

USSA News

USSA News    August 14, 2013

Academy Capturing Oral History of Notable Black Athletes from Era of Segregation

The year 1963 was a defining one in the civil rights movement. It was highlighted by Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech Aug. 28 in Washington, D.C., where about 200,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in the March on Washington. It came after major unrest over segregation erupted in Birmingham, Ala., and spread across the South.

Now, 50 years later the United States Sports Academy in conjunction with alumni of the Mobile County Training School, an all-black school dating back to the 1880s, have begun an oral history project to capture and preserve the experiences of well-known black athletes from Mobile, Ala., during that tumultuous era of segregation beginning in the 1950s.

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The Sport Digest

The Sport Digest   May 14, 2013

Academy Sponsors Significant Black Sports Oral History Project

The period between 1955 and 1980 marked a sea tide of change throughout the United States, and especially in the states of the old Confederacy.  The U.S. Supreme Court decision in June 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education marked the beginning of the end for segregated schools across the South. In December 1955 black citizens of Montgomery, Ala., began an 11-month boycott of the city’s bus system. The boycott ended in November 1956 when the Supreme Court ruled that segregated public transit was illegal.

For the full article, please click here.