Integrating The Gridiron Analysis

“Integrating the Gridiron” presses for an understanding of different perspectives where race and sport intersect. It resembles some portions of historical context as well as social development during these times. Another example taking it back a few years; in 1898, Harvard’s football team held a banquet to celebrate the end of a dramatic year. They had completed an unbeaten season. The featured speaker, Teddy Roosevelt, was as we’ve seen, was an energetic orator and a huge football fan as mentioned in previous lectures. A Harvard alum, he received a warm ovation from an audience of influential administrators, students, and boosters. The evening’s largest cheer came however, with the introduction of Assistant Coach William Henry Lewis. Lewis was one of the first blacks to integrate the college game when he joined the freshman team at Amherst in …show more content…
(Demas, 2011) He was also the first Black All-American College Football player. After graduating from Harvard Law School (where he also played successfully) Lewis was named assistant coach, also a first for a black man. Lewis’s popularity, helped him join Roosevelt’s inner circle—a group of Harvard graduates and future “Rough Riders” in the Spanish-American War. According to historian Harold Ward, when Lewis was chosen to deliver the graduation address in 1892 the event “was publicized as an indication of the black man’s ‘fitness.’(Demas, 2011) Black Americans from throughout New England came to hear him speak. His relationship with Roosevelt persisted until 1907, when the president promoted him to assistant U.S. attorney in Boston. Under the subsequent administration of William Howard Taft, Lewis became assistant attorney general of the United States—at that point the highest federal office ever held by an African American. (Albright,