David Steele

At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Tommie Smith and his teammate John Carlos came in first and third, respectively, in the 200-meter dash. As they received their medals, each man raised a black-gloved fist, creating an image that will always stand as an iconic representation of the complicated conflations of race, politics, and sports. In this, his autobiography, Smith fills out the story around that moment--how it came to be and where it led him.

Smith engagingly describes his life-long commitment to athletics, education, and human rights. He also dispels some of the myths surrounding his famous gesture of protest: contrary to legend, Smith was not a member of the Black Panthers, nor were his medals taken back by the Olympic Committee. Retelling the fear he felt in planning and carrying out his protest, the death threats against him, his difficulty in finding work, and his determination to live his values, he conveys the long, painful backlash that came with his fame, and his fate, all of which was wrapped up in his "silent gesture."

(Temple University Press)

Lawyer and education advocate Robert Clayton is the co-founder of a sports analytics club project now in place at high schools across the country, directed at underfunded minority-populated enrollments to introduce data analytics through sports. The program he initiated at Armstrong High School in Richmond, Va., partnered with historically-Black Virginia Union University to make an analytic case for Ben Wallace, an alumni of the college, to make the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame class of 2021.

It was the second time a Clayton-led sports analytics group opened the door for a former player's induction into a Hall of Fame: the club at Baltimore's Edmondson-Westside High School took up the case of alumnus Marvin Webster for the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame, and Webster was inducted in 2018.

The men's basketball team at Howard University adopts a season-long project of Black maternal health, as the players suggested it to head coach Kenneth Blakeney, inspired by the 2022 reversal of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in the U.S. The project becomes rooted in real life for their fellow students at Howard, as a young mother finds support through the team and then from it as she fights to stay enrolled while raising her newborn daughter.