Scope and arrangement
The Sports collection depicts some aspects of African-American participation in sporting events and athletic competition, mainly from the 1940s to the mid-1980s. Sports represented in the collection consist of: baseball, basketball, body building, bowling, boxing, car racing, fencing, football, golf, gymnastics, hockey, horse racing, martial arts, miscellaneous sports, the Olympic Games, roller skating, soccer, swimming, tennis, and track and field. The collection consists of individual and group portraits and candid shots of professional, amateur and youth group athletes, mostly male, as well as some coaches, owners and sports fans; views and candid shots of sporting events and competitions; some views of sports classes and athletic training sessions; views of sports award ceremonies and charity events; and some publicty shots. The sports most heavily depicted in the collection are baseball, basketball, boxing, football and track and field. The collection is limited in depicting sports figures and events from the nineteenth century to the 1930s, and from the 1990s to the present.
Individuals depicted include some members of collegiate and professional baseball teams, including the Negro League baseball teams; some professional, collegiate and youth league basketball players; some professional and amateur boxers; some professional and collegiate football players; professional golfers; and some amateur and Olympic track stars, among others. Also depicted are some U.S. Army athletes from World War II competing in various sports. Images of nineteenth and early twentieth century pioneering athletic figures in such fields as boxing and horse jockeys are limited. Also included is a group portrait of the Hilldale baseball club, representing the Eastern Colored League in the first Negro World Series (1924); some views of the New York Renaissance basketball team (ca. mid to late 1930s); Olympic runners John Carlos and Tommie Smith giving the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City; and a group portrait of the Women's National Basketball League's 1999 Eastern Division champions, the New York Liberty. Images of well-known athletes may also be found in other parts of the collection, including the Portrait Collection; other images of the New York Renaissance basketball team may be found in the Morgan & Marvin Smith Photograph Collection.