40 Million Dollar Slaves?

I first met William C. Rhoden a decade ago when I was a new Ph.D. teaching at Xavier University in Naw'Lins. Rhoden was flying down to the Big Easy to shoot The Sport Reporters (ESPN) and I was making my twice monthly sojourn back to the city from Worcester, Mass where my wife lived. Recognizing Rhoden, I struck up a conversation on the flight to New Orleans. He was finishing up the proposal that would eventually become his new book 40 Million Dollars Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete. Rhoden's thesis that black athletes were little more than highly paid slaves struck a chord in me at the time and there are literally 100s of times that I've referenced Rhoden's metaphor in conversation and in the classroom.

I wish that Rhoden had done more with the metaphor of well paid slaves. Clyde Woods, for example, in his beast of a book development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta , makes the point that while "slavery" may have died, the political economy of the plantation lives on. Nevertheless, Rhoden's combination of wit, respect for those who came before him, his autobiographical musings on playing football at Morgan State and his righteous indignation at the contemporary black athlete, makes 40 Million Dollar Slaves a major offering. My man David Leonard agrees. Here's an excerpt from his Washington Post review of Rhoden's book:

Presenting a history that is neither an "inspirational reel" nor an indictment of today's black athletes, Rhoden offers a "complicated tale of continuous struggle, a narrative of victory and defeat, advance and retreat, the story of an inspiring rise, an unnecessary fall, and uncertain future." He rightly challenges the conventional American notion of sports as a model of integration and meritocracy, where talent and athleticism trump bigotry. For example, Rhoden examines the distinctive styles that Willie Mays and R.C. Owens brought to baseball and basketball, respectively. He reveals how fans and media alike demonized them for violating the values of the game and for merely "having attitude." Persuasively, he finds echoes of their harsh treatment in the condemnation of flashy modern competitors such as the University of Miami football team of the '90s. Through each historic step, forward and back, Rhoden argues that black athletes, like blacks in general, have always been "largely feared and despised," relegated to the "periphery of true power" despite their talents and contributions to sporting life in America.

Forty Million Dollar Slaves is a beautifully written, complex and rich narrative. Rhoden offers a wonderful balance between the often-forgotten histories of great black athletes, such as bicyclist Major Taylor, Negro League entrepreneur Rube Foster and college football great Sam Cunningham, and nuanced social commentaries on the commercial exploitation of blackness, white control of the sporting world, and the devastating effects of integration on the Negro Leagues and the sports teams at historically black colleges and universities.

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Read Leonard's full review: Golden Shackles--A veteran journalist finds little racial progress in the world of pro sports.