Forty Million Dollar Slaves Quotes

“Given time to attend to their own affairs in exchange for subsisting themselves, slaves gardened, tended to barnyard animals, and hunted and fished on their own. Occasionally, they manufactured small items and sold them to their owners, neighbors, or other slaves.” Money was not the issue. The correlation to examine was between work and power.”
― William C. Rhoden, Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete

“The Jockey Syndrome has been the primary mechanism in American sports for tilting the ostensibly level playing field of sport away from equal opportunity and toward white supremacy.”
― William C. Rhoden, Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete

“Though integration was a major pivot in the history of the black athlete, it was not for the positive reasons we so often hear about. Integration fixed in place myriad problems: a destructive power dynamic between black talent and white ownership; a chronic psychological burden for black athletes, who constantly had to prove their worth; disconnection of the athlete from his or her community; and the emergence of the apolitical black athlete, who had to be careful what he or she said or stood for, so as not to offend white paymasters. (142)”
― William C. Rhoden, Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete

“The peculiar fascination with Davis reflected the way sports-crazed Southerners were struggling with race: On the one hand, they were steeped in the white South's revulsion at the presence of blacks, but on the other, they couldn't suppress their admiration of—and need for—the black physical presence. It was writ large in the South in 1966, but it's a paradigm that continues to define the dilemma of race and racism in sports in the United States: Behind the cheering often lurks angry resentment.”
― William C. Rhoden, Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete