African American Track Athletes at Southern Colleges in the 1960s-1970s

Art History

Haist, Kit

Frederick, Amy (Mentor)

English

This paper is part of a larger project: a multi-campus ACS grant to build a shared online digital archive relating to the history of desegregation at Centre College, Furman University, Rollins College, and Washington and Lee University. As southern colleges founded long before the Civil Rights movement in the United States, the experiences and stories of our African American students, staff, and faculty within the historical contexts of our local communities have not been fully understood, researched, or archived. For our Race, Photography, and America class last fall, we wrote visual analyses of photographs in the Centre archives relating to the project. This paper will first provide a brief formal analysis of a Centre College track team photo from 1969-1970. Using the formal analysis as a point of departure, the paper will then explore the sociocultural environment African American athletes experienced at southern colleges during the time.