The crack of a bat. Uproar from the crowd. Fans cheering as their favorite player makes the shot that irrefutably leads the team to victory. These are the sounds you will likely hear in any stadium or field as you watch the players coalesce and exhibit the athleticism that they have spent their entire lives honing. In today’s society, sports have become an indispensable element in aspects that make our nation unparalleled - uniting and defining us by transcending nationalities, backgrounds, and ethnicities, and instead bringing forth the immense talent of the legends and heroes that have shaped our understanding of the significance of sports - from Jim Thorpe, Michael Jordan, and Muhammad Ali, to Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, and LeBron James.
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The integration of sports, however, was not always as ubiquitous as it is today. Just as races, backgrounds, and ethnicities have struggled to coincide in our American melting pot, the assimilation of African Americans in sports was a monumental task that was actualized as a consummation of the Civil Rights Movement, and the changes that it enacted in our American …show more content…
The Civil Rights Movement, in particular, was an era of influential protests and activism for securing the equality and commensurateness of African Americans in society, and some its most eminent figures have been athletes who paved the way for the integration they not only hoped to enact in sports, but in society. Hence, sports have been greatly afflicted by the Civil Rights Movement, leading to the emergence of new figures who precipitated change in a once segregated nation, and one of the many influential sports legends that laid the first stone in the changes enacted during this movement, whom I deeply admire, was Jackie Robinson, whose actions later fueled the reform that has reverberated in even our present day. His athleticism and immense talent deserves not only mine, but a nation’s worth of respect, admiration, and veneration; carrying his legacy through the field, across the color barrier, and into the hearts and minds of the population that he led into a more integrated, accepting
The integration of sports, however, was not always as ubiquitous as it is today. Just as races, backgrounds, and ethnicities have struggled to coincide in our American melting pot, the assimilation of African Americans in sports was a monumental task that was actualized as a consummation of the Civil Rights Movement, and the changes that it enacted in our American …show more content…
The Civil Rights Movement, in particular, was an era of influential protests and activism for securing the equality and commensurateness of African Americans in society, and some its most eminent figures have been athletes who paved the way for the integration they not only hoped to enact in sports, but in society. Hence, sports have been greatly afflicted by the Civil Rights Movement, leading to the emergence of new figures who precipitated change in a once segregated nation, and one of the many influential sports legends that laid the first stone in the changes enacted during this movement, whom I deeply admire, was Jackie Robinson, whose actions later fueled the reform that has reverberated in even our present day. His athleticism and immense talent deserves not only mine, but a nation’s worth of respect, admiration, and veneration; carrying his legacy through the field, across the color barrier, and into the hearts and minds of the population that he led into a more integrated, accepting