Humanities & Social Sciences
Political bodies. Sport in Black American struggles for justice since the late 19th century
by Nicolas Martin-Breteau
At the end of the nineteenth century, racist violence directed against the African-American community destroyed the historic gains made through the abolition of slavery a generation earlier. Because the body is the primary target of racial oppression, Black Americans then made sport one of the supports in their struggles for dignity, equality and justice. Through extensive archival work, Nicolas Martin-Breteau shows how the city of Washington was the little-known cradle of this programme of individual and collective upliftment and emancipation that continues to influence Black mobilisations in the United States.
