Of black women athletes in the age of jim crow. Thanks for joining us on American History. Thanks for having me. Let me begin with your book expected to be published in about a year. What have you learned so far . Oh, so many things. I started the project asking is there a long history of black women in sports and i found more than i expected to find quite frankly. There wasnt any archive labelled this is a history of black women in sports. So i kind of had to piece it together. I got started by finding three women who played baseball in the negro leagues in the 1950s. And it was a remarkable story. They played with the men. And one of the things that stuck out to me about that story was that the owner who had brought in the black women to play against the men said he had something called a gal file. Where women across the country and young girls too were writing in to request tryouts and that struck in my head as a young graduate student and i thought, hm, if there is a lot of black g
Thanks for joining us on American History tv. Professor davis thanks for having me. Steve let me begin with your book, expected to be published in about a year. What have you learned so far . Professor davis oh, so many things. I started the project asking, is there a long history of black women in sports . I found more than i expected to find, quite frankly. There wasnt any archive labeled this is the history of black women in sports. So i kind of had to piece it together. I would say i got started by finding three women who actually played baseball in the negro leagues in the 1950s. It was a remarkable story. They played with the men. One of the things that stuck out to me about that story was that the owner who had brought in these black women to play against the men said he had something called the gal file, where women across the country and young girls too were writing in to request tryouts. That kind of stuck in my head as a young graduate student and i thought, if there were a
I thought, hmm, if theres a lot of black girls and women in the mid century trying to play baseball maybe theres a longer history here. Thats what set me out to find some of the stories in the book that take us from track, to tennis, from baltimore to rome, and looking at black women and sporting history in the 20th century. Two names, one quite familiar, hank arron and stony stone . Yeah. Again, like i said, those baseball women who i stumbled upon, they were brought in at the kind of fall of the negro leagues. The negro leagues had been a huge institution in the black community. It provided ownership and upward mobility for Business Owners and opportunity to play for black men at the time. Always pushing for integration of the majors. Jackie robinson broke formally the color line. What we see after that is an exodus of the top tier talent. Theyre going into the majors with no compentation back into their teams. The negro leagues are in steady decline. People are looking around trying
So the gold award is the highestearned award, as you said. What girls dos look at a problem in their community, a challenge, and they spend over 80 hours doing work to solve that problem. One of the things that we require is that it not only thelps that community bt it has a longlasting effect after they complete it. Ow n i know the gold award has been compared to the boy scouts eagle scout. Yes. Thats not a fairis comparon, though, is it . The gold award is project based. And unlike a rank, you dono haveve earned the other Precious Metals on your way to earn being the gold award. I call it the ph. D. In girl scouti, because it really is about having a girls, what she is curious and concerned about, taking that and making it something that she can improve. So there are 225,s this this region . This year. The girl scouts of the ncaions tal is the largest in the country. We have over 60,000 girls in maryland, virginia, western virginia and the districtf columbia. And it is the highest nu
Their flights. A lot of people was upset. Coworkers was upset trying to get here. Nobody could actually get to their, um, you know, to the airport because of all the construction and the traffic. Reporter heres your big choke point. 94th street the entrance to the airport. Because that entrance ramp is close, all the traffic has to cross at the intersection. Gridlock here means you have to walk in from east elmhurst. Thats what happened monday. People were double parking their cars and leaving their cars and walking into the airport. It was kind of look, you know, at the end of the civil war when the troops were straggling back home. Reporter he was trying to drop off his niece trying to get to the airport. We got a wheelchair for someone who was on the side of the road, look like she was going to have a heart attack. Reporter we saw this outbound passenger from outside the airport tuesday. And didnt want to risk getting stuck on the way home. I just took a taxi over and asked him to d