Looking at Sports and Race in America

Jesse Owens crossing finish line in race in large stadium
"Thirty-seven years ago, the baseball player Curt Flood, fresh off his final, dismal year as a professional athlete, published a memoir titled 'The Way It Is.' It cannot be called a great book, but its literary quality was a secondary concern. In the autumn of 1969, Flood had refused to be traded from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies. He sat out the 1970 season, while he fought a lawsuit that eventually reached the Supreme Court. He lost his case, but it resulted, a few years later, in the creation of free agency.  ... The outlines of Flood’s story—black athlete takes a principled stand and is maligned for his 'ingratitude'—are familiar. The theme connects Flood to Muhammad Ali and, now, to Colin Kaepernick. Most significantly, it gives the lie to a facile mythology about sports transcending the divisions of American society; they have just as often been a barometer of the resistance to social change, even when that change might bring the country more in line with its purported ideals. ..."
New Yorker (Video)