Playing for Power
Black Resistance in Amateur Basketball and Football in Jim Crow Virginia

Marvin T. Chiles (Author)

9780817322380

Hardback, published 15 June 2025

232 pages, 21 b&w figures
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.454 kg

Black Resistance in Amateur Basketball and Football in Jim Crow Virginia by Marvin T. Chiles analyzes Black football and basketball culture at the high school and college levels in Virginia before the days of integration. Rather than studying amateur sports as merely leisure pastimes, Chiles argues that they coalesced into a key cultural institution that sustained Black Virginians’ collective sense of community, achievement, and purpose during segregation.