Mixed Race Studies

Taffy Abel medaled in the 1924 Olympics. Few knew of his Indigenous heritage

National Public Radio
2022-02-07

Troy Oppie, Host/Reporter
Boise State Public Radio, Boise, Idaho

At the 1924 Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France, about two dozen American dignitaries and athletes trudged through snowy streets in the opening parade. The American flag – then with just 48 stars – was carried by hockey player Clarence “Taffy” Abel.

What few outside his family and close friends knew at that time: Taffy Abel was Native American – the first Indigenous athlete to carry the flag at the Olympics. Within days he’d become the first Native American to win a medal in winter games history.

“A Native American, carrying our stars and stripes, nearly 100 years ago,” reflects George Jones, Abel’s 73-year-old nephew by marriage. His voice quivered with pride as he spoke of that moment.

Family stories passed down tell how Abel, his sister Gertrude, and his mother Charlotte – a Canadian Chippewa (now called Ojibwe) – all passed themselves off as white, mostly by not talking about it.

“The main thing that they were fearful of,” says Jones, “[was] that Taffy and his sister would be taken away to an Indian residential school.”…

Read the entire story here.

Pioneers on the playing field: Bruno’s first Black athletes and coaches

The Brown Daily Herald
Providence, Rhode Island
2021-02-18

Peter Swope, Senior Staff Writer

Looking back at Jackie Court, other Black trailblazers in Brown Athletics program

While today’s Brown Athletics program displays diversity among its coaches and athletes, this has not always been the case. Throughout the history of Brown Athletics, trailblazing Black athletes and coaches have battled racism and adversity to earn athletic achievements while helping to build a more equitable program. This week The Herald will feature baseball player William White, class of 1883, football player Fritz Pollard, class of 1919 and gymnastics coach Jackie Court, who each contributed to the development of Brown Athletics on and off the field.

“William Edward White was the first African-American to play in the professional baseball ranks,” according to Brown Athletics archivist Peter Mackie ’59. “He played one game for the Providence Grays … (few people know) about him, but if you look at a picture of that 1879 team, there he is.”

White was born in Milner, Georgia; his mother was a formerly enslaved African-American woman and his father was a wealthy white man. White and his siblings attended Moses Brown School before being accepted to Brown through a connection via a local Baptist church. As a dually-enrolled student, White was a first baseman for the Brown baseball team while still a senior at Moses Brown…

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Effa Manley’s hidden life

SBNation
2020-04-30

Shakeia Taylor

The only woman in the National Baseball Hall of Fame had a fascinating — and confusing — past

She was sure and confident in everything she did. She was tall, smart, and intimidating, a shrewd businesswoman unafraid to speak her mind. For years I’d recognized Effa Manley for many things: her civil rights work, co-owning and managing a Negro League baseball team, her stint as Negro National League treasurer, her role in Larry Doby integrating Major League Baseball’s American League, and being the first African-American woman inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

But for everything Manley was, there is one thing she really wasn’t: Black.

“Everything in my life has been Black,” Manley told sportswriter Henry Hecht of the New York Post in 1975. For many years, that’s seemed like the last word on the matter. While I knew Manley was not the first woman to own a team — a distinction actually held by Olivia Taylor, who became the owner of the Indianapolis ABC Clowns after her husband C.I. Taylor died 1922 — I had always assumed she was African American. Her race, however, has been a source of quiet controversy for years, one of which I was unaware. It wasn’t until I started researching more into her life I found out perhaps Manley wasn’t exactly who she seemed…

Read the entire article here.

Colin In Black and White (or For Colored Boys Who Considered Suicide After Cutting Their Braids)

Black Power Media
2021-11-01

Jared A. Ball, Ph.D., Professor of Africana and Communication
Morgan State University, Baltimore

At 00:36:02, Dr. Ball discusses the new Netflix series “Colin in Black and White” about the early life of Colin Kaepernick.

Jeremiah Paprocki becomes Cubs’ first African American public-address announcer

The Chicago Sun-Times
2021-05-17

Russell Dorsey

Jeremiah Paprocki is the Cubs’ first Black PA announcer and at the age of 21 also becomes one of the youngest in baseball. Photo courtesy of the Chicago Cubs

Many fans dream of having their voices echo around historic Wrigley Field while reading the names of Cy Young Award winners, MVPs and future Hall of Famers.

One lifelong Cubs fan is getting a chance to do just that.

There’s a booming new voice in Wrigleyville, and it belongs to 21-year-old Jeremiah Paprocki. The Cubs hired Paprocki to be their new public-address announcer, making him the first African American in team history to hold the position. He also is thought to be the youngest P.A. announcer in Major League Baseball…

Read the entire article here.

Bubba Wallace Gets a Breakthrough NASCAR Victory at Talladega

The New York Times
2021-10-04

Andrew Keh

Going into Monday’s race at Talladega, Wallace said he believed he would win. Chris Graythen/Getty Images

Wallace’s NASCAR Cup win was the first by a Black driver since 1963 and also the inaugural victory in the sport’s top series for Michael Jordan, the co-owner of Wallace’s team.

A little more than a year after almost single-handedly forcing American auto racing to confront the sport’s longstanding issues with racism, Darrell Wallace Jr., known as Bubba, became just the second Black winner in NASCAR’s top series, finishing first at a rain-shortened event at Talladega Superspeedway on Monday afternoon.

Wallace, 27, rose from relative obscurity to national prominence last year when he added his voice to the widespread national protest movement for racial justice and equality after the murder of George Floyd. It was not unusual to hear an athlete speak on the subject — but it was unusual to hear a NASCAR driver do so.

It was stirring for many, then, to see Wallace, currently NASCAR’s only Black driver in the Cup Series, wear an “I Can’t Breathe” shirt — referring to the last words of Floyd and of Eric Garner, who died in 2014 after a New York City police officer placed him in a prohibited chokehold — and display the slogan “Black Lives Matter” on his car last year. He spoke out about the racism he experienced on a daily basis as a Black man in an overwhelmingly white sport. His burst of activism, most notably, persuaded NASCAR to ban the display of Confederate flags, long a fixture at American auto races…

Read the entire article here.

Colin Kaepernick Netflix Series ‘Colin in Black and White’ Drops New First-Look Clip

Variety
2021-09-25

COURTESY OF NETFLIX

Netflix has released a new first-look clip of “Colin in Black and White,” which tells the story of former NFL player Colin Kaepernick during his high school years growing up in central California.

The clip was released as part of the Netflix Tudum fan event. Kaepernick explained during his introduction of the clip that the six-part narrative drama produced with Ava DuVernay focuses on his high school years growing up in Turlock, Calif., a mid-sized city 60 miles east of San Jose, as the Black adopted son of white parents in a largely white community. As depicted in the clip, in high school Kaepernick set his sights set on becoming a professional baseball player.

The half-hour series is set to debut on Netflix on Oct. 29. Jaden Michael will star as a young Kaepernick, with the real Kaepernick appearing throughout as the narrator…

Read the entire article here.

Lewis Hamilton bought a Met Gala table for emerging Black fashion designers

Road Show
2021-09-13

Daniel Golson, Social Media Editor

Lewis Hamilton’s influence extends far beyond F1. Theo Wargo/Getty Images

Tables run upwards of $275,000 and can be exclusionary to young, diverse talent, so the seven-time F1 world champion hosted his own.

If you needed any more proof that Lewis Hamilton is an incredible force in the racing world and beyond, not even two days after a near-death Formula 1 crash in Italy he stepped onto the Met Gala red carpet in New York on Monday to promote emerging Black fashion designers.

The theme of this year’s Met Gala was “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion,” centered on American style and independence. Individual tickets to the Met run upwards of $30,000 while full tables are over $275,000 and typically major designers or fashion houses will buy them and invite the celebrities they’re dressing for the night, making it difficult for up-and-coming designers and stars to make an impact at the event, which is referred to as “fashion’s biggest night.” That makes what Hamilton did especially powerful: The seven-time world champion bought his own table and invited four young Black designers as his guests…

Read the entire article here.

Lewis Hamilton: ‘Everything I’d suppressed came up – I had to speak out’

The Guardian
2021-07-10

Gary Younge, Professor of Sociology
University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

Lewis Hamilton: ‘I don’t just want to be remembered as a driver.’ Styling: Law Roach. Photograph: Ike Edeani/The Guardian

He’s the most successful driver Formula One has ever seen, and its only Black star. Now Lewis Hamilton has a new mission: to change the sport that made him.

As Lewis Hamilton rose through the ranks of competitive go-karting, his father, Anthony, told him: “Always do your talking on the track.” Lewis had a lot to talk about. Bullying and racial taunts were a consistent feature of his childhood in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, a new town 30 miles north of London; his dad taught him the best response was to excel at his sport.

The trouble was he didn’t have many people to talk to about what he was going through. Lewis is mixed-race, born to a white mother, Carmen Larbalestier, who raised him until he was 12, when he went to live with his Grenadian-British father, from whom she had separated. “My mum was wonderful,” he tells me. “She was so loving. But she didn’t fully understand the impact of the things I was experiencing at school. The bullying and being picked on. And my dad was quite tough, so I didn’t tell him too much about those experiences. As a kid I remember just staying quiet about it because I didn’t feel anyone really understood. I just kept it to myself.” Sport offered him an outlet. “I did boxing because I needed to channel the pain,” he says. “I did karate because I was being beaten up and I wanted to be able to defend myself.”

I understand where he’s coming from; I too grew up in Stevenage. Hamilton’s mother and I went to the same school – though not at the same time. As close to London as it was, it might as well have been in a different universe. In London the Black experience appeared authentic; in Stevenage it felt synthetic. Race in London was something you read about in the papers; race in Stevenage was something you didn’t even acknowledge. I was 22 before I found my first Black male friend…

Read the entire article here.

Bubba Wallace Welcomes Fans Into His Garage With New Netflix Docuseries

The Root
2021-04-23

Jay Connor

Photo: Chris Graythen (Getty Images)

Being the only Black driver in NASCAR’s top racing series comes with more than its fair share of trials and tribulations.

In the last year alone, we’ve seen Bubba Wallace succeed in his quest to get Confederate flags banned from the sport and face subsequent backlash, endure the infamous noose saga, and have his own mother detail the racism he continually faces. But while the lows were low, he also had his fair share of triumphs.

Wallace was named the 2020 Comcast Community Champion of the Year for his work “to lift up individuals seeking a means to fulfill their potential, no matter their race, gender, disabilities or socio-economical situation,” and joined Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin’s 23XI Racing, with Jordan serving as the first Black principal owner of a full-time Cup team in nearly 50 years.

Again, it’s been a hell of a year, and thankfully, it’s about to get a lot better…

Read the entire article here.