Out of the Shadows: A Biographical History of African American Athletes

The original essays in this comprehensive collection examine the lives and sports of famous and not-so-famous African American male and female athletes from the nineteenth century to today. Here are twenty insightful biographies that furnish perspectives on the changing status of these athletes and how these changes mirrored the transformation of sports, American society, and civil rights legislation. Some of the athletes discussed include Marshall Taylor (bicycling), William Henry Lewis (football), Jack Johnson, Satchel Paige, Jesse Owens, Joe Lewis, Alice Coachman (track and field), Althea Gibson (tennis), Wilma Rudolph, Bill Russell, Jim Brown, Arthur Ashe, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Venus and Serena Williams.

David K. Wiggins, a leading authority on African American sports, is a professor and director of the School of Recreation, Health, and Tourism at George Mason University. He is the editor of a number of books in the field, including The Unlevel Playing Field and Sport and the Color Line, both edited with Patrick Miller, and is the author of Glory Bound: Black Athletes in a White World.