Black people living in America, even those living in bondage, took part in early sports. These sports predate modern sports with formalized rules, scorekeeping, records, and media coverage of results. Early, or pre-modern, sports included activities such as hunting, fishing, swimming, boxing, wrestling, dancing, boat racing, running, and horse racing. And there were more obscure competitions organized by plantation owners, like corn shuckings and cotton pickings. For those who excelled in these various competitions, life was somewhat better than for their compatriots. Enslaved people who proved themselves talented and skilled in sporting endeavors could even find themselves receiving more favorable treatment and closer ties with their masters. This sometimes led to their ability to travel regionally and possibly even farther afield. It also resulted in some instances in which those who were enslaved could be paid, or receive a portion of the prize money, when they won athletic contests. After emancipation, and with the growing popularity of modern sport, Black Americans found similar opportunities for economic independence and social mobility through sporting endeavors. Sports granted Black Americans a highly visible platform for demonstrating their equality and staking a claim of citizenship. Sport was an arena in which Black athletes quickly disproved racial stereotypes that they were lazy, unintelligent, lacking in stamina, or physically and mentally inferior in any way.

At first, Black athletes were able to compete in integrated contests in sports that were rapidly growing in popularity from the 1860s through the first decade of the twentieth century, like baseball, horse racing, cycling, and boxing. There, they could test themselves directly against their White counterparts. It was in this era that individual Black athletes like the jockey Isaac Murphy, the cyclist Marshall “Major” Taylor, and the boxer Jack Johnson would rise to national prominence, becoming household names. Taylor became the first Black American to become World Champion of any sport when he won the title for the one-mile bicycle race in 1899. Murphy was the first jockey to win the Kentucky Derby back-to-back and the first to win the race three times total with wins in 1884, 1890, and 1891. Jack Johnson became the first Black American to win the World Heavyweight Championship in 1908. All of these men, and many others, would win huge sums of money and access to greater freedoms to travel than their non-sporting peers. They were some of the highest-paid athletes in the United States. Sadly, most would also die in poverty.

Black athletes often developed a unique style while incorporating their own tactics for prevailing in various competitions. These styles and methods of play could often be a direct response to the continual changing of the rules in order to try to maintain White dominance in sport. Both Isaac Murphy and “Major” Taylor often found themselves trapped between the rail and their competitors. White athletes formed alliances and worked together to beat, in the example of Taylor, the one Black competitor in the race. Taylor worked on and improved his powerful jump and sprint from slow speeds. Often, he would hang back and then jump to a full sprint in the final seconds of the race, leading to an exhilarating spectacle of a finish. Isaac Murphy employed similar tactics in horse racing. Other Black athletes, like Jack Johnson, developed a style that made their athleticism seem effortless. Johnson could toy with other boxers, joking with the crowd and asking them when he should knock his opponent out. This was a pattern that continued well into the twentieth century. For example, Lew Alcindor, who would become known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, perfected the skyhook when a change in the rules of college basketball made the slam dunk illegal in 1967.

Many sports began excluding Black athletes by the 1890s. In some instances, the color line was made explicit and public. At other times, racist rules remained unwritten. Despite the racism they faced, Black athletes in the nineteenth century continued to demand equal treatment. In many cases they made their way around racist barriers by creating their own associations and leagues, such as baseball’s Negro Leagues and the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes. Black men and women proved that their athletic abilities were undeniable. These athletes made space for those of the twentieth century, such as Jesse Owens, Alice Coachman, Althea Gibson, Jackie Robinson, Joe Louis, and countless others to continue to use sport as a platform to further demands for equal treatment.