Throughout this summer three students focused on individual research projects that contribute to a larger effort to engage the history of Race, Racism, and the History of Duke Sports. The students focused on the intersections of the early years of integration in Duke Basketball, Football, and its overlaps with Title IX. In addition to doing digital archival work to document the gaps in the archives, students began conducting interviews with willing, able and alive members of Duke’s sporting history. Thematically, the students began to realize that there were gaps in the archives, and we used these gaps to explore broader historical and theoretical concerns about how archives are constructed and what they leave out. They found that when it came to sports coverage, there was a lot more information about white athletes available. Furthermore, when it came to Black women athletes in Duke’s history, there is a great deal of work to be done. The students hoped to lay a foundation for the future of research on the topic so that the next iteration of researches can start from where they left off.

Project Sponsor(s): H. Timothy Lovelace, Jr., Professor of Law, John Hope Franklin Research Scholar

Graduate Mentor(s): Hannah Borenstein, Ph.D. Candidate, Cultural Anthropology

Undergraduates: Erin Blanding, Amira Axelle Miel, Daniel Bereket