Dixieball: Race and Professional Basketball in the Deep South, 1947–1979
University of Tennessee Press, 2019
eISBN: 978-1-62190-464-9 | Cloth: 978-1-62190-463-2
Library of Congress Classification GV885.72.S85A54 2019
Dewey Decimal Classification 796.323640975
eISBN: 978-1-62190-464-9 | Cloth: 978-1-62190-463-2
Library of Congress Classification GV885.72.S85A54 2019
Dewey Decimal Classification 796.323640975
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
In this book Thomas Aiello considers the special cultural function of professional basketball in the Deep South over the half century between 1947 and 1979. Next to their counterparts in baseball and football, basketball fans enjoyed a unique intimacy with their favorite players, who showed more of their bodies and had nothing covering their face and head. For this and other similar reasons, blackness simply mattered more in basketball than it did in other sports. By the time Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, professional basketball was 47.5 percent black and becoming known as a “black sport.” That being the case, the South’s relationship with professional basketball was more fraught, and made the survival of southern teams more tenuous, fan support more fickle, and racial incidents between players and fans more hostile.
See other books on: Aiello, Thomas | Basketball | Deep South | Racism in sports | Southern States
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