Thursday Night Lights

The Story of Black High School Football in Texas

Michael Hurd (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

256 Seiten

2019
University of Texas Press (Verlag)
978-1-4773-1830-0 (ISBN)

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At a time when “Friday night lights” shone only on white high school football games, African American teams across Texas burned up the gridiron on Wednesday and Thursday nights. The segregated high schools in the Prairie View Interscholastic League (the African American counterpart of the University Interscholastic League, which excluded black schools from membership until 1967) created an exciting brand of football that produced hundreds of outstanding players, many of whom became college All-Americans, All-Pros, and Pro Football Hall of Famers, including NFL greats such as “Mean” Joe Green (Temple Dunbar), Otis Taylor (Houston Worthing), Dick “Night Train” Lane (Austin Anderson), Ken Houston (Lufkin Dunbar), and Bubba Smith (Beaumont Charlton-Pollard).

Thursday Night Lights tells the inspiring, largely unknown story of African American high school football in Texas. Drawing on interviews, newspaper stories, and memorabilia, Michael Hurd introduces the players, coaches, schools, and towns where African Americans built powerhouse football programs under the PVIL leadership. He covers fifty years (1920–1970) of high school football history, including championship seasons and legendary rivalries such as the annual Turkey Day Classic game between Houston schools Jack Yates and Phillis Wheatley, which drew standing-room-only crowds of up to 40,000, making it the largest prep sports event in postwar America. In telling this story, Hurd explains why the PVIL was necessary, traces its development, and shows how football offered a potent source of pride and ambition in the black community, helping black kids succeed both athletically and educationally in a racist society.

Michael Hurd is the director of Prairie View A&M University's Texas Institute for the Preservation of History and Culture, which documents the history of African American Texans. He has worked as a sports writer for the Houston Post, the Austin American-Statesman, USA Today, and Yahoo Sports. Hurd's previous books include Black College Football, 1892–1992: One Hundred Years of History, Education, and Pride. For more than a decade, he served as a member of the National Football Foundation's Honors Court for Divisional Players, the group that chooses small college players for the College Football Hall of Fame, and he currently serves on the selection committee for the Black College Football Hall of Fame.

Introduction
1. The PVIL: Emerging from the Shadows
2. Night Train, Choo-Choo, and Ridin' the Yella Dawg!
3. Learning and Teaching the Game
4. Gold in the Triangle
5. Yates versus Wheatley
6. Integration: The Good, the Bad, the End
Acknowledgments

Appendixes
PVIL Football State Champions
PVIL Milestones

Select Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	10.09.2018
Verlagsort	Austin, TX
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	367 g
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Allgemeines / Lexika
	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Sport ► Ballsport
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	1-4773-1830-5 / 1477318305
ISBN-13	978-1-4773-1830-0 / 9781477318300
Zustand	Neuware