In Playing for Power, Marvin T. Chiles offers a fascinating account of amateur sports in Jim Crow Virginia, revealing how, in addition to churches, workspaces, and civil rights organizations, sports were also a key arena for Black resistance to white supremacy. Drawing from a rich trove of primary sources, Chiles recounts the development of Black football and basketball culture at the high school and college levels in Virginia from the 1890s to the early 1970s. Looking beyond their role as leisure pastimes, Chiles demonstrates how amateur sports strengthened education, neutralized class divisions, shaped Black masculinity, mentored Black male leadership, cultivated race pride, and reflected Black desires for urban modernity.

Illuminating the ways Black athletes created a world that pushed for racial progress through objective, meritocratic achievement anchored by masculine leadership and institutional success, Playing for Power traces how amateur sports coalesced into a key cultural institution that fostered Black Virginians’ collective sense of community, achievement, and purpose during segregation, cornerstones of later advances in the Civil Rights Movement. Playing for Power also contributes to a larger understanding of sports history and how amateur sports became favorite American spectacles and markers of Southern identity. Chiles’s groundbreaking work will interest historians, scholars, and individuals interested in the intersection of sports and civil rights and the history of Black sports during the Jim Crow era.

Reviews
Contents

[Playing for Power] is a beneficial contribution to the historiographies of both HBCUs and amateur athletics more broadly. . . . Its argument is clear, as is its grasp on the historiography. The book is readable and interesting.' —Thomas Aiello, author of Hoops: A Cultural History of Basketball in America and The Kings of Casino Park: Black Baseball in the Lost Season of 1932

Chiles examines the history of football and basketball in Virginia from the late nineteenth century to the 1970s—specifically, the role African Americans played in cultivating and developing athletes, teams, and leaders at HBCUs that facilitated opportunity, confidence, and pride in numerous communities throughout this state during segregation.' —Charles K. Ross, author of Outside the Lines: African Americans and the Integration of the National Football League

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Institutions, 1865–1927

Chapter 2. The Leadership, 1910–1929

Chapter 3. The Game, 1930–1944

Chapter 4. The Controversies, 1932–1951

Chapter 5. The Integration, 1951–1970

Coda: The Bygone Days are Gone, 1970–Present

Notes

Bibliography

Index