sports 
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How We Told the Ongoing Story of Title IX
by Laura Mogulescu
A curator and her team chose to center the work of activists who pushed to determine the scope and meaning of Title IX's prohibition on sex discrimination in education throughout the law's 50-year history. Their exhibit is now open at the New-York Historical Society.
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SOURCE: New York Historical Society
4/7/2022
"Title IX: Activism On and Off the Field" Coming to NYHS in May
The exhibition features images, objects, and documents drawn from New-York Historical’s Women’s Sports Foundation and Billie Jean King’s archives.
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4/3/2022
The Integration of College Hoops Came through Many Small Shining Moments
by Chad Carlson
Cutting the nets in New Orleans, the Kansas Jayhawks follow the legacy of many players and coaches who gradually chipped away at racial exclusion in college basketball.
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SOURCE: Dissent
3/28/2022
Baseball's Labor War
by Peter Dreier
Organizing the Brotherhood of Professional Base-ball Players in 1885, John Montgomery Ward asked whether team owners could treat their players as chattel through the "reserve clause." Today's players seem to be learning some similarly radical lessons from the recent owner's lockout.
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SOURCE: The Nation
2/7/2022
Baseball Players Can't Live on a "Cup of Coffee"
by Kelly Candaele and Peter Dreier
Framing the baseball lockout as a battle of billionaire owners vs. millionaire players misses the fact that most players who ever reach the big leagues won't make great salaries, garner endorsements, or get a league pension.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
2/14/2022
The Public Will be the Ultimate Judge of Whether the Olympics Soften China's Image
by Michael J. Socolow
China is doing all it can to use the winter games as a statement of its belonging in the world community. It will be up to the viewers to ask critical questions about the media coverage and spectacle.
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2/13/2022
A Tale of Two Olympics: Changed China in a Changed World
by Joe Renouard
Since the 2008 Beijing games, the People's Republic of China's vastly increased global economic power and the COVID pandemic have changed the core narrative around the current winter games. It remains to be seen whether the Olympics will signal a turn back to openness or the intransigence of a confident world power.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
2/4/2022
Will the Diplomatic Boycott of the Olympics Have any Effect on China?
by Meghan Herwig
After Tiananmen Square, it became clear that American foreign policy was limited by other Asian nation's growing dependence on China. Today, as regional relations shift, will a more effective human rights advocacy be possible?
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SOURCE: Chicago Sun-Times
2/6/2022
Baseball and the Unspeakable
As history teachers struggle with how to handle racist slurs in primary sources, an unexpected remark from a ballplayer in 1938 illustrates that this struggle isn't new. Columnist Neil Steinberg asks if making words unspeakable blows up in the faces of teachers more often than bigots.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
2/2/2022
As the Washington Football Team Rebrands, Remember an All-Native Pro Team from 100 Years Ago
Walter Lingo started the "Oorang Indians" in Ohio to promote his dog kennels, hired Jim Thorpe to play and coach, and launched an episode of sports history that highlights the tradeoffs Native athletes had to make between opportunity and participation in caricatured performances of "Indianness."
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
1/27/2022
Is Ali the Last American Hero? Who Else is There?
by Robert Lipsyte
"I’ve been wondering lately just how Ali actually reached such heights. There are plenty of people alive today who once hated him and yet, in American popular culture, he’s now a secular saint."
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SOURCE: Texas Monthly
1/22/2022
New Documentary on 1996 De La Hoya vs. Chavez Fight Digs Into Complexity of Mexican Ethnicity Across the Border
Director Eva Longoria Bastón's documentary on the 1996 match between Mexican champion Julio César Chávez and LA-born Oscar De La Hoya examines how the fight revealed tensions between Mexican and Mexican-American communities expressed in citizenship, language and sports allegiance.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
1/19/2022
The Existential Crisis of the Winter Games is a Long Time Coming
by Bruce Berglund
Avery Brundage of the International Olympic Committee had many faults, but he understood that the Winter Olympics were increasingly out of step with a sporting world less focused on Europe and North America and less tolerant of the massive expenditure needed to host the games.
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1/23/2022
The Art of Swimming (Excerpt)
by Bill Hayes
Unline many recognizable modern sports, for most of human history swimming was treated as a utilitarian activity (and occasionally as a pleasure), unsuited for competition or spectatorship.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
12/14/2021
Baseball's Lockout Shows the Growing Power of Labor
by Gwendolyn Lockman
"In many ways, the twists and turns of baseball’s labor battle over salaries, pensions and more have reflected the ebbs and flows of labor power in the United States."
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
12/7/2021
Has the Age of Trump Ruined Sports Fandom?
by Robert Lipsyte
Sports offer no refuge from the politicized cultural battles over cheating, racism, vaccination, and mental health. It may be time to bury forever the idea that sports represent a moral high ground.
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SOURCE: Forward
12/3/2021
The US Must Not Repeat the Error of Allowing at Totalitarian Regime to Use the Olympics for PR
by Rafael Medoff
Despite the famed victories of sprinter Jesse Owens, the 1936 Olympics were a victory for Hitler, polishing his regime's image as concerns rose about the persecution of Jews. Amid Chinese persecution of Uyghurs, the US should reconsider participation.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
12/4/2021
Lesley Lloyd: Honor to Have Won First Womens' FA Cup 50 Years Ago
"On 5 December 1921 the English Football Association had declared the game to be 'quite unsuitable for females' before barring women from playing on grounds belonging to affiliated men’s clubs."
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SOURCE: NPR
11/15/2021
"Hail Mary" Sets the Record Straight on the Women's Football League of the 1960s
A new book discusses a women's pro football league in the 1960s, and the role of homophobia and sexism in undermining it.
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SOURCE: Sports Illustrated
11/5/2021
The History of Women in the New York City Marathon
Amateur Athletic Union rules in the 1970s didn't sanction any competitive race for women longer than 1.5 miles. Kathrine Switzer and other pioneering women marathoners discuss a half-century of change.
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