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FORTY
MILLION
DOLLAR
VES
The Rise, Fall, and Redemption
of the Black Athlete

WILLIAM C. RHODEN
 $23.95
(CANADA: $31.95)

Muhammad
From Ali
Jackie Robinson to
and Arthur Ashe, African American
athletes have been at the center of mod-
ern culture, their on-the-field heroics
admired and stratospheric earnings envied. But for

all their money, fame, and achievement, says New

York Times columnist William C. Rhoden, black
athletes still find themselves on the periphery of
true power in the multibillion-dollar industry their

talent built.

Provocative and controversial, Rhoden's $40

Million Slaves weaves a compelling narrative of
black athletes in the United States, from the plan-
tation to their beginnings in nineteenth-century

boxing rings and at the first Kentucky Derby to the

history-making accomplishments of notable figures

such as Jesse Owens, Althea Gibson, and Willie
Mays. Rhoden makes the cogent argument that
black athletes' "evolution" has merely been a journey
from literal plantations —where sports were intro-

duced as diversions to quell revolutionary stirrings

to todays figurative ones, in the form of collegiate

and professional sports programs. Weaving in his

own experiences growing up on Chicago's South

Side, playing college football for an all-black univer-

sity, and his decades as a sportswriter, Rhoden

contends that black athletes' exercise of true power is

as limited today as when masters forced their slaves

to race and The primary difference is, today's
fight.

own making.
shackles are oft:en of their

Every advance made by black athletes, Rhoden

explains, has been met with a knee-jerk backlash —
one example being Major League Baseball's integra-

tion of the sport, which stripped the black-controlled

Negro League of its talent and left it to founder. He
details the "conveyor belt" that brings kids from
inner cities and small towns to big-time programs,

where they're cut off from their roots and exploited

by team owners, sports agents, and the media. He
also sets his sights on athletes like Michael Jordan,

(continued on back flap)

 ^ Mfn l^'^
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Of this
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"""'^U^;t^
$40 MILLION SLAVES
$40 MILLION
SLAVES
The Rise, Fall, and Redemption
of the Black Athlete

WILLIAM C. RHODEN

9
Crown Publishers \
New York
 The poem on page xv is by William C. Rhoden.

Copyright © 2006 by William C. Rhoden

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown

Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Crown is a trademark and the Crown colophon is a registered trademark

of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rhoden, William C.

$40 million slaves : the rise, fall, and redemption of the black athlete /

William Rhoden. — 1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibhographical references and index.

1 . African American athletes — History. 2. Sports — United States — History.

3. Discrimination in sports — United States — History. 4. African American

athletes — Social conditions. I. Title: Forty million dollar slaves. II. Title.

GV583R46 2006
796'.08996073-dc22 2005034952

ISBN-13: 978-0-609-60120-4

ISBN-10: 0-609-60120-2

Printed in the United States of America

Design by Leonard Henderson

10 98765 432 1

First Edition
 To Sharon and Raisa: the other half of my heartbeat

My guiding Ughts, Bill and Janet Rhoden

My pillars of support, George and Mary Lopez

k
 Contents

Prologue tx

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 The Race Begins:

The Dilemma of Illusion U

Chapter 2 The Plantation:

The Dilemma of Physical Bondage 35

Chapter 3 The Jockey Syndrome:

The Dilemma of Exclusion 63

Chapter 4 The Negro Leagues:

The Dilemma of Myopia 99

Chapter 5 Integration:

The Dilemma of Inclusion Without Power 121

Chapter 6 Style:

The Dilemma ofAppropriation 147

Chapter 7 The Conveyor Belt:

The Dilemma ofAlienation 171

Chapter 8 The River Jordan:

The Dilemma of Neutrality 197

Chapter 9 Ain't I a Woman?

The Dilemma of the Double Burden 219

Chapter 10 The $40 Million Slave:

The Dilemma of Wealth Without Control 231

Chapter 11 The One Who Got Away?

The Dilemma of Ownership 247
 uiii CONTENTS

Epilogue 263

Notes 271

Bibliography 211

Acknowledgments 219

Index 281
 Prologue

The title of this book comes from a remark made by a white

spectator during a professional basketball game in Los Angeles. The
comment was aimed at Larry Johnson, then a player with the New
York Knicks.The previous season, Johnson had referred to some of his
Knicks teammates as "rebel slaves," unleashing a storm of controversy.

That night in Los Angeles, as his team headed toward the bench dur-
ing a time-out, a heckler yelled out: "Johnson, you're nothing but a

$40 million slave."

When I began writing this book in the spring of 1997, the title that

initially came to mind was Lost Tribe Wandering, an idea inspired by the
biblical book of Exodus, which tells the story of the Israelites' flight

from bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land. It seemed like an apt

comparison: Virtually from the moment enslaved Africans came face-

to-face with Christianity, Exodus became emblematic of our journey

from Africa to the New World, though with a paradoxical twist. For
generations of European immigrants, the United States was the
Promised Land, the land of milk and honey. For enslaved African
Americans, America became that Egypt from the book of Exodus.
The quest to find the Promised Land in this New Egypt has been for
many a never-ending journey through a succession of ostensible
Promised Lands, none of which has turned out to be the final desti-

nation.This has certainly been the case for black athletes, who've jour-

neyed from slavery to segregation to an exploitative integrated sports

world, never finding a true Promised Land.
The image of a tribe of athletes crossing a dusty, desolate wilder-

ness, sustained by the faith that there is an ultimate destination,

remained my inspiration as I wrote this book: Black athletes appeared

tx
 X PROLOGUE

to me to be a multifaceted tribe whose march across time and against

tremendous odds put an indeHble stamp on the culture and psyche of
this country.

Eight years later, Lost Tribe Wandering has become $40 Million Slaves.

How did the book s title make such a jarring leap from the impres-
sionistic Lost Tribe Wandering to a much more provocative one? This

new tide cuts to the chase in describing the white wealth-black labor*
condition that has merely changed forms from generation to genera-

tion. Even in 2005, with African American athletes making up a so-

called majority in professional football and basketball and a significant

minority in Major League Baseball, access to power and control has

been choked off. The power relationship that had been established on
the plantation has not changed, even if the circumstances around

it have.

The use of the language of slavery in any variation always strikes an

exposed nerve in the United States, the result of guilt, denial, and
deep-rooted anger and frustration over the inescapable reality that our
country's foundations are buried in the fields of slave plantations.

So the inevitable question will be asked: How can you use "slavery"
and "$40 miUion" in the same breath? Even Bob Johnson, the owner
of the Charlotte Bobcats and an African American, raised the question
during an interview for this book.
After I told Johnson the title of my book, he said, "I'm not quite
sure making $12 million a year playing 82 basketball games is called a

plantation. If it is, I know a whole lot of folks who want to be on that

plantation."

Johnson added: "I'm not sure the plantation-to-plantation metaphor

works . . . because you have to explain how a guy gets paid that much
money for doing basically what people do in the street every day."

Later, though, during the same interview, Johnson conceded that.

^See Claude Anderson's book White Wealth, Black Labor.

 PROLOGUE xi

from an athlete's perspective, professional sports might be a plantation

of sorts.
"Do the players see themselves on a plantation? I think they do, in

that all of the owners are white. That creates the dynamic: The own-
ers are white, the coaches work for the white owners, and the indus-
try is run by white commissioners. Anyone who exercises power over
them is white, and they feel or believe that the owners are taking more
value out of them than what the owners are putting in."

To the general public, athletes have achieved the Promised Land.

And their salaries are always a part of the discussion; the inference
never far from the surface is that they should be grateful — more grate-

ful than their white peers — for the money they make.

David Falk, the sports attorney who helped make Michael Jordan
into a global icon, recalled a negotiation session with the Knicks in

1991. After Falk and player Patrick Ewing made an offer, the general

manager looked at Ewing and asked, "How much money is enough?"

Falk said he knew that Ewing was offended, and so was he.

"I knew that in [E wing's] mind that wasn't an economic statement,

it wasn't a negotiation statement. It was a racist statement saying,
"
'You're a young black man, how much is enough?'
The celebrity of African American athletes is still used to make the
case that discrimination has disappeared and that integration in the

West has created equal opportunity. For many, African American ath-
letes embody the freedom and expanded opportunities that are there

for everybody, provided they work hard.

The elevated compensation of some players obscures the reality

of exploitation and contemporary colonization. Black players have

become a significant presence in major team sports, but the sports
establishment has tenaciously resisted that presence percolating in equal

numbers throughout the industry in positions of authority and control.

In 1988, the late Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder created a firestorm

when he said African American athletes were physically superior

 —

jcii PROLOGUE

because they had been bred for the role. Black athletes, he said, "can
jump higher and run faster because of their bigger thighs. I'm telling

you that the black is the better athlete and he practices to be the bet-

ter athlete and he's bred to be the better athlete, because this goes all

the way to the Civil War when, during the slave trading, the owner,

the slave owner, would breed his big woman so that he would have a

big black kid, you see."

Snyder's comments created a knee-jerk reaction and dredged up

silly arguments about the merits (and lack thereof) of black athletes'

so-called physical superiority.

Those debates me are

for like play-action passes designed to suck

you into the Hne, pump fakes designed to entice you to leave your feet.

The more interesting part of Snyder's comment reflects a more sub-

stantial concern. He said that the only place white people dominate
sports is in coaching, and if blacks "take coaching, as I think everyone

wants them to, there is not going to be anything left for the white

people."

This book is a map, a look back at roads crossed, a glimpse forward at

roads not yet traveled.

It's difficult for professional athletes to focus on anything historical

beyond yesterday's game. They are so focused on the here and now
the next game, the next season, the next contract — that many have no
sense of what came before, and none at all of what is coming around
the bend. History suggests that African American athletes should be
ever on the lookout. Their predecessors were excluded, blocked, per-

secuted, and eased out when white owners and management decided
they weren't needed or wanted. Today's generation of pro athletes may
be wealthy, but they are simultaneously cheered and resented — a ten-

sion that cannot last forever.

The community of black athletes, like the black community at large.

 PROLOGUE xiii

is wealthier and in some ways more powerful than ever before, but in

many other ways it resembles that wandering lost tribe, a fragmented

remnant unable to organize itself to project the collective power it

embodies but is afraid to use.

Isolated in summer camps and prestigious universities and pampered

as the budding millionaires that many of them will become, today s
big-time college and professional players are far less prepared to deal
with the racial reaUties that exist in America than any previous gener-
ation of athletes.

Yet todays racial realities are more complex — less black and white,

if you will — than they've ever been before. Tragically, in this their

wandering mirrors that of the larger black community, illustrating

once again, as if it needed to be, how closely black sporting life reflects

the main currents of black life in America. At this unprecedented

crossroads, the question is. Which way forward? Have we strayed too

far frorn the road our ancestors paved for us, the road we tread as young
men and women?
Or does the future demand that we strike out on a new path? In

either case, we need to have a clearer understanding of how we got

here before we can even begin to set a new course.

Like the bounty hunter who tracked escaped slaves during

America s period of slavery, another bounty hunter of sorts is still

on the trail. A century later, pursuing from one Promised Land to an-
other, this hunter is trying to catch, to replace, and to eliminate those

costly $40 million slaves. This is the story of the chase so far.
 "

Glistening black bodies

on

fields of dreams

on battlefields, scoring,

between

defense's seams.

Tight muscles

bulging,

ferocious bucks

who scratch and claw,

say,

'Aw shucks, wasn't much.

Cream-colored spectators

cheer and roar

for conquering heroes

who conquer
no more.
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