Summary Of The Opening Chapter Of Charles H. Martin's Benching Jim Crow

In the book, Benching Jim Crow: The Rise and Fall of the Color Line in Southern College Sports, written by Martin H. Charles. Charles H. Martin is an associate professor of history at the University of Texas at El Paso. The book, is divided into different eras that range from 1890 to 1980. Charles’ reveals how southern colleges implemented their racially exclusive programs and then integrated to a diverse competition. The first section of the book is called “Gentlemen’s Agreement” which occurred from 1890 to 1929. During this time spanned, racism and discrimination were huge, and predominantly located within the south. When intercollegiate athletics started to rise, most Northern universities or colleges had no issues with integrating races

It soon became evident that college athletics can create a large amount of revenue. Therefore, Northern Universities started to break down the wall and compete against southern teams. Martin suggests that Northern football players had a great influence on southern players because of the recent return of World War II veterans. Often times, veterans would threaten to cancel games to the south unless their teammates were permitted to play in the game.

In summation, Charles gives the readers a board understanding of conference integrations. Starting with Texas Western College, to Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), and lastly Southeastern Conference (SEC). And each chapter of this section, provides evidence that could be the motivation to break the color barrier in intercollegiate athletes. These sections are a great example of how Charles book is written, I feel like he has given the readers a perfect amount of background information to understand the topics and now moves on too facts and stories that relate to what was previous told to the

Charles does his best to reveal to his audience about the flaws in collegiate sports, and how the barriers were broken and created a environment were talent was based on skill not color. However, I still believe that racism in sports exists in rural and not industrial areas of the United States. In addition to my liking to this book, I feel that it is well written and can be beneficial society. The book, Benching Jim Crow: The Rise and Fall of the Color Line in Southern College Sport, is impactful to changing the view of race and practicing equality. All in all, this book is set out to inform his readers about the history of race in intercollegiate