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Tavis Smiley interviews William C. Rhoden, author of new book: Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Black Athlete. William C. Rhoden, New York Times sportswriter William Rhoden turned his love of sports and jazz into an award-winning career. He won a Peabody for Broadcasting as writer of HBO’s documentary, Journey of the African-American Athlete. Rhoden was raised on Chicago’s South Side and played football for Morgan State. He was previously a Baltimore Sun columnist and jazz critic and an associate editor of Ebony magazine. His book, $40 Million Slaves, examines the true power of Black athletes. From Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe, African American athletes have been at the center of modern culture, their on-the-field heroics admired and stratospheric earnings envied. But for all their money, fame, and achievement, says New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden, black athletes still find themselves on the periphery of true power in the multibillion-dollar industry their talent built. Provocative and controversial, Rhoden’s $40 Million Slaves weaves a compelling narrative of black athletes in the United States, from the plantation to their beginnings in nineteenth-century boxing rings and at the first Kentucky Derby to the history-making accomplishments of notable figures such as Jesse Owens, Althea Gibson, and Willie Mays. Rhoden makes the cogent argument that black athletes’ “evolution” has merely been a journey from literal plantations—where sports were introduced as diversions to quell revolutionary stirrings—to today’s figurative ones, in the form of collegiate and professional sports programs. Weaving in his own experiences growing up on Chicago’s South Side, playing college football for an all-black university, and his decades as a sportswriter, Rhoden contends that black athletes’ exercise of true power is as limited today as when masters forced their slaves to race and fight. The primary difference is, today’s shackles are often of their own making. Every advance made by black athletes, Rhoden explains, has been met with a knee-jerk backlash—one example being Major League Baseball’s integration of the sport, which stripped the black-controlled Negro League of its talent and left it to founder. He details the “conveyor belt” that brings kids from inner cities and small towns to big-time programs, where they’re cut off from their roots and exploited by team owners, sports agents, and the media. He also sets his sights on athletes like Michael Jordan, who he says have abdicated their responsibility to the community with an apathy that borders on treason. Sweeping and meticulously detailed, $40 Million Slaves is an eye-opening exploration of a metaphor we only thought we knew. Tavis Smiley: Good evening from Los Angeles. I'm Tavis Smiley. Tonight, a conversation about race, sports and American society with award-winning journalist, William C. Rhoden. The long-time sportswriter for ““The New York Times”” has penned a provocative new book about African American athletes that's adding a new chapter to the conversation on race in America. The book takes on a subject often ignored by sports fans and sportswriters alike. Tonight, William C. Rhoden on his acclaimed new book, "Forty Million Dollar Slaves.” We're glad you've joined us. That's all coming up right now. Tavis: William C. Rhoden is a widely read sportswriter for “The New York Times” who won a Peabody for his work on the HBO documentary, "Journey of the African American Athlete.” His critically acclaimed new book is called "Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Black Athlete.” Bill, could you have picked a more provocative title? A more controversial title? (Laughter) William C. Rhoden: (Laughter) Eighty million dollars. When I signed the contract, it was eighty million dollars (laughter). Tavis: (Laughter) Eighty million dollars, yeah. Rhoden: Don't sell me cheap (laughter). Tavis: First of all, it's an honor to meet you, man. Rhoden: The honor's mine. Tavis: You know, one of the great things about doing the work that I do is that you get a chance to meet the people you really want to meet. I was talking to one of my friends the other day, a mutual friend, and they could not believe that you and I had actually never met. Rhoden: I know. It's unbelievable. Over the ten years, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Our paths cross. If you live long enough, our paths will cross, so it's just wonderful. It's a pleasure. Tavis: The honor is all mine. So that said, how long did you wrestle with writing this book and, moreover, how long - while we joked about it a moment ago - did you wrestle with this title? Because you had to know the minute you put this thing out that it was going to be - Rhoden: - well, you know, the book itself - I tell people, look at the book. I signed my contract in April of 1997 not knowing, okay, a year or two years. Then you get into this history, man, and it's just so deep. The next thing I know it's like nine years and I'm done. The title is actually - my title when I sat down was always "Lost Tribe Wandering" because my theme was an exodus metaphor. You know, going out of Egypt, the metaphor of the wilderness and all that kind of stuff. The editor said, "Okay, Bill." He kind of let me play around. "All right, if that's what you need." Then the title itself comes from this thing that - Larry Johnson used to play for the Nicks - Tavis: - what was the move? Was that it? For the playoffs? L? Yeah, yeah. Rhoden: Yeah, and Larry was a deep brother, man. You know, he had boycotted the meetings. So finally in 1999, he said NBA is fine, fine, you got to talk. So he says, "Okay, you all want me to talk. I'm going to talk." So he just kind of lit into how he hates the meeting and all that and he points to one of his teammates and says, "Those are my guys. You know, on this team, we're rebellious slaves." Well, of course, as soon as he said that, the next day, he was murdered. You can imagine; he was killed. Tavis: I remember it, yeah. Rhoden: Killed. Well, the next season they were playing in Los Angeles. They were playing the Clippers in Los Angeles. So during the time out as they came out, this white guy stood up as they came to the bench and said, "Johnson, you're nothing but a forty million dollar slave!" I thought there was two things that was interesting. (A) The fact that this guy would remember that, but (B), the fact that Johnson would use that metaphor. With all the money he's got, he would use that metaphor - Tavis: - rebellious slaves. Rhoden: Rebellious slaves. As you study the plantation of slaves, you find out - Dr. Franklin wrote this wonderful book about runaway slaves. What you hear about is all the rebellion that you never hear about on the plantation. I mean, slaves who would poison their owners. You know, the quest for many slaves was always freedom. How the heck do we get free? So that title was the beginning of a dialogue and of a metaphor that kind of takes us where we've been, where we are and where we're going maybe. Tavis: But L.J.'s, Larry's formulation of rebellious slaves really flies in the face of what the book is. Pardon my English, but you ain't arguing that these Negroes are rebellious. They're going willingly. Rhoden: Oh, yeah. Also what I'm not saying is these guys are exploited. I'm not saying they're not. In fact, I'm saying the opposite. If you trace the history as I done from the plantation, we've got so much power, this group of athletes. This generation has got so much power that it's not even about exploitation anymore. It's about having a lot of potential power and how are we going to use it? Are you going to use it? That's the point. You guys have so much potential power. You're making more money than ever before, you've got more global acclaim than ever before, but you're probably more individual than ever before. This idea of what's got us from generation to generation has been doing things together. I think, with integration, what kind of happened is that, with the integration thing, kind of with Jackie Robinson, "Okay, we're going to take you, we're going to take you, we're going to take you, and you guys have made it and you're going to continue to make it as long as you don't see yourself as part of this group." So it's kind of a one-on-one thing. I think that, as I was writing, I realized we're at a point now that you got individual guys doing great things. I mean, you look at a guy's foundation. Individual guys are doing some great things. LeBron is doing some great things. But the magnitude of the problems that are facing our community are much greater than any one person's, you know, foundations, you know, the ability to do it. Tavis: Which begs the obvious question, particularly if you are one of these forty million dollar slaves watching right about now who may be in his or her own way trying to make their own contribution. One could still legitimately ask, "Well, Bill, why me?" I mean, why do you act as if the athletes - you could have written a book about entertainers - but why are you acting like the athletes have some special responsibility to do something that the rest of Black America ain't doing? Rhoden: Well, Luke said, you know, "For whom much is given, much is expected." Unfortunately, whether you like it or not, that's the way it is. You know, Tavis, if you go back in history and you look at Joe Lewis. You just look at his legacy of what people have accomplished for you to be able to make a lot of money, whether you like it or not, you're in a privileged position. A lot of our young kids are getting so much information from athletes. It's a responsibility. It's a responsibility to do more. It's not enough to say, "I got mine" and to walk into, you know, advertising agencies that have no Black people or go through a television production that has no Black people. You know, if people felt that way, you wouldn't be where you are, meaning athletes. So you say, well, why athletes? I was a jazz critic for a number of years. I would raise the same question there about how are you going to seize the means of production? It's not enough just to create that kind of stuff. How are you going to control your image? How are you going to control the product? Jazz musicians, well, they're not enough. These groups of people, unlike journalists or anyone, we don't have numbers, you know. These guys have numbers, they've got money and wealth and they've got power. I think it's not going to be a long amount of time, but this isn't going to go on forever. I mean, that's one of the things I get into in the chapter called The Jockey Syndrome. The history of Blacks in sports is that, whenever you become dominant, whether it's Major Taylor in cycling, whether it's Isaac Murphy in horseracing, whether it's Fleetwood Walker in baseball in 1880. The history is that there's this knee-jerk instinct when Black people become dominant to change the rules and to legislate work to eliminate it. A lot of the guys interviewed in this book said, "Oh, man, they're not going to eliminate us. They need us." I said, "You know, that's what Isaac Murphy thought." You know, the clock is ticking and there's only going to be, to me, that we're not going to be in this position for a long period of time and I'd just like to see the group come together and do some great things as a group. Tavis: You realize, though, with all due respect, how silly that sounds to folk watching right now that Black athletes are not going to dominate forever, particularly given that the numbers in hockey - Bill, you write this stuff. There are brothers playing hockey now in the NHL, Jarome Iginla and other hockey players. So you realize how silly that sounds when you suggest that this ain't going to last for a while? Rhoden: Yeah, it's silly if you don't study the history. Tavis: Right. Rhoden: If you go back and you look at this globalization in the NBA and you look at the gradual increase of the European and foreign on NBA teams. You know, once upon a time, there was fifteen or sixteen guys on a bench. They were brothers, you know? Now it's not. I'm just saying, you know, if you're not careful - and I'm not even sure if you are careful - this idea of being seventy percent of the NBA, you know, twenty years from now, we could be looking back on that and say, "Yeah, once upon a time." Listen, Tavis, Black people dominated horseracing for most of the 1700s and the 1800s. Basically overnight, the racetrack owners decided, you know what, they're making too much money, they're in the locker room or clubhouse carousing and they don't like it. Isaac Murphy was making five times as much money as the average working class guy. Overnight, they formed The Jockey Club. They said The Jockey Club was going to re-license all jockeys throughout the nation and guess who wasn't re-licensed? Black jockeys weren't re-licensed. Tavis: Did those thoughts run through your head while you were working on this book, when you saw the brawl? You know the brawl I'm talking about. Rhoden: Yeah, the brawl. Tavis: The brawl, Detroit and Indiana, the NBA. Rhoden: Yeah, yeah. Tavis: Did you think that thought around that time? Rhoden: I've been thinking this thought for years. I guess when I saw that, I just thought it was kind of an irony. In fact, I talked to Dr. Franklin about it. I talked with him on his ninetieth birthday. I said, "Think about the arc of your career. I mean, you were born when Jack Johnson lost the title to Jess Willard. When you were thirty, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. Now on the eve of your ninetieth birthday, a bunch of brothers jump up in the stands and beat the, you know, out of white guys." Tavis: (Laughter) Only in America. Rhoden: Only in America. But you're right in that, again, everything like that that happens - Dave Stern all of a sudden says, "Well, you leave this image problem. We got to do something. You know, we got to do something." You're right. I didn't think that specifically, but all that kind of stuff feeds into this idea among sort of the mainstream of America that, you know, we have to do something with this. Tavis: Let me ask you - again, you spent the whole book talking about this - but let me ask you why you think - I'm trying to find the right word here and be somewhat generous here, Bill - why you think that this disconnect - that's the word I wanted - why you think this disconnect exists? I could argue that it's ignorance, that these guys are born of a different generation, different time, and they just don't know. Ain't nobody told them about the road that was paved for them. I'm not sure I can make that strong an argument, but for the sake of argument, let's just say maybe it's ignorance Rhoden: Right. Tavis: Maybe it's apathy. Maybe it's outright disdain. Maybe, to your point, "I got mine, you get yours." Maybe it's just I don't freakin' care. Tell me, though, why you think this disconnect does exist on the part of Black athletes today? Rhoden: I just think that the history is not preached. I mean, they're not being taught history. I mean, John Thompson, when he was coach at Georgetown, made it a point when his team would go to Memphis; he made a point even before they got off the plane to take them right to the hotel where Dr. King got shot. Tavis: The Loraine. Rhoden: The Loraine Hotel, and show them. You know, they played in Birmingham. He took them right to the church, Sixteenth Street Church where the young girls got - he took them right there because he wanted them to know. Well, there was a coach who coached at St. Johns at the same time and he took his kids to Graceland, you know, because he wanted to show them Elvis Presley. You know, you have too many coaches who don't see that sense of history. These kids have got to understand where they came from. The funny thing I found out about the kids' lack of history is that most of these same coaches are like kids that are left in the past. Why do you think your coaches spend so much time with you guys watching film? Most athletes spend all their careers watching film. I said, "Man, why do you watch film? The film isn't anything of the present or the future. Why are watching that stuff that happened last week or last year?" They'd say, "Well, because we want to see the mistakes we made. We want to look at our opponent's strengths and weaknesses." I said, "To do what?” "Well, to prepare us for the future." You know, that's all this is. This is a film. Tavis: Good point. I like that. High five. That was good. Strong point. Strong point, Mr. Rhoden. Rhoden: Was that a challenge? Tavis: (Laughter) No, no, no. I liked that point. I never thought about it. It's a good metaphor. It's a good example. Rhoden: Yeah, okay. Tavis: But here's what's suspect for me, though. The answer can't be - and you know why - the answer can't be relying on coaches to give them that history and you know why, because there ain't enough brother coaches or sister coaches. Rhoden: See, and that goes back. How can you be - see, it all feeds back into the same thing. You've got leverage. If you look at, for example, the Southeastern Conference, you know, Alabama, Mississippi and all that. If you just turn on the television, right, and just look at television and not know what you're looking at because sixty or seventy percent of the starting units are black. Now they've only got one Black head coach down there. So all of a sudden, if these people want your kid to come play - and this kind of gets back in that shackle mentality - why are you going to send your child who's been highly recruited, why are you going to send him to the University of Alabama? Mississippi has never had a Black coach. You know, we want your kid to play. We've never had a Black athletic director before. He wants to be an engineering major. We've never had a Black history - a dean - but we want him to play. You've got leverage. You don't have to do that. Tavis: But when you raise that issue, even if you're an NFL Hall of Famer named Kellen Winslow, and you raise that issue, you get slapped around. Rhoden: Well, that's our history. A lot of people get slapped around. Some people get killed here, Tavis. When you ask me a question, as a lawyer, you know, you're going to know who Thurgood Marshall - I mean, you're just going to know who Thurgood Marshall is. There's just certain things you are going to know because it gives you power, it gives you strength. I just think that the problem with this group of athletes that have kind of risen like that, we haven't given them the same type of - we kind of see athletes sort of as dumb blondes. We kind of treat them as dumb blondes. Whether it's Joe Lewis where you just knock somebody out and you just stand symbolically and that's all we need you to do. Jackie, we just need you to make the team and all that. Well, we have to demand more now, whether it's in high school having a curriculum, you got to know the history. You got to know about contract law. You got to know everything about this billion dollar industry that you're going into. It can't just be catch as catch can anymore. Tavis: You're not afraid to name names and there are some big names that you name in this book, sports icons that you take to task for not being vocal enough on a social agenda. I had the pleasure when I first moved to this city - I have a book coming out later this year where I talk about this - but I had the pleasure when I first moved here of staying with a guy named Jim Brown. Jim Brown was a family friend. I lived with Jim Brown, the greatest football ever, if you ask me. I lived with Jim for about a year before I found my own place when I first moved to Los Angeles over twenty years ago. So you know I got this stuff every day (laughter). I got this every day from Jim Brown. Rhoden: Before you ate (laughter). Tavis: Exactly, and before I went to bed. Every night, Jim was giving me some of this. I raised that only because there were athletes of his generation. Jim Brown, Arthur Ashe, even Kareem, Bill Russell. There are a number of cats that come to mind, Ali, certainly, who were not afraid to speak out on the issues of the day. How do you ever convince or is that a bygone era where athletes involve themselves, engage themselves, over the noise of agents and managers? Rhoden: You raise a great point in agents and managers. When Jim organized, he organized the Legal Athletic Development in 1967. He organized some of the great athletes in 1967 to come together. It was called the Negro Development League. And he organized them to stand when Ali was deciding whether he was not going to - Jim brought all these guys together. Tavis: There's a great photograph of them all together. Rhoden: That's a great photograph. Tavis: I love it. They're all at the table together at the press conference. I love that photograph. Rhoden: There was Russell; there was Willie Davis, Kareem. They met with Ali for an hour before because they wanted to find out. When they were convinced that this guy was serious, they held a press conference. All the reporters were like, wow, Bill Russell and, you know. It was a very forceful, powerful moment in sports. Well, there were no agents really. Now if Michael Jordan tried to do that or LeBron or somebody - although LeBron is surrounded by some brothers who are really on top of it - there'd be agents, probably white agents, saying, "I don't know. You sure you want to do this? You got the Pepsi thing coming up and all that." Jim was one of the greatest athletes of all time. He had a vision and a force. I think now, Tavis, the problem is not just athletes. I think it's our community in general. The issues facing us are much more complex than before. It's not that, wow, Emmett Till was murdered down in Mississippi or, you know, whites and blacks only, that kind of stuff. They're more subtle and our kids aren't really being, because of what I said before about the dumb blonde syndrome, they're not being taught about the history. You guys can't just play. You have to be fluent because you're going to be in the public eye. You have to be fluent. Voting rights, you know? How powerful would it be if LeBron James and Dwyane Wade held a joint press conference saying, listen, our grandfathers marched in 1966 and 1967 and they marched for voting rights and we thought it was over. Well, guess what? Here it is 2006 and it's still on the table. If they made that kind of statement, number one, that sends a powerful message to politicians who think, wait a minute, we thought these guys were, you know. We got to contend with this group of physical people? That's the kind of stuff that we need. What are they going to do to LeBron and Dwyane Wade? Bench 'em? You can't play? (Laughter) Tavis: Not when you're a forty million dollar player (laughter). Let me ask you a question that I think may turn on its head the nine years you spent working on this text. Why does this matter? What I mean by that, Bill, is why does it matter what any forty million dollar athlete or eighty million dollar athlete thinks, says, suggests? Why do I freakin' care what LeBron or Michael or Kobe or Tiger or any of them think about anything beyond what they do? Why in the American discourse and dialogue about race does what they think matter to begin with? Rhoden: You know, it matters that Joe Lewis knocked out Max Schmeling. The same reason it mattered to my father who called me up when he got the copy of the book. He was thumbing through it and the first thing he said was, "Where's Joe Lewis?" My father's eighty-six years old. "Where's Joe Lewis. You got something about Joe Lewis? Let me tell you about when Joe Lewis knocked out Max Schmeling." Eddie Robinson, you know. The first time Eddie Robinson heard a Black man referred to as American is when he fought Max Schmeling and they said, "And here's Joe Lewis, the American." Eddie Robinson said that, for some reason, that just cut in. That was in the thirties, you know. I think it matters because we need all - you know, I live in Harlem, USA, you know. I travel around like you do and, man, although a lot of us are doing well, I mean, we have some Black people occupying some positions we never even would have thought of. But a lot of our people, more than ever, are not doing well at all and they need to be inspired, okay? They need to be inspired. The reason I had a problem with Michael, you know, he's a great guy. It's not about that. It's about what our children need now, Tavis, is to be inspired. I think if Dr. King would have given his "I have a dream" speech in somebody's backyard or something like that, he sent a spark to people like thirty years later. I think now our kids need people like LeBron to show them possibilities. This is what you can do. We can get together. We could buy a bank. So that's why. Does it matter just because of them? No. I'm just asking them to do anything. I'm not singling them out, but just come and join the struggle. Tavis: Let me offer this as an exit question. The former governor of this state and the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren, once said - and I paraphrase this - that "I read the sports pages first in the morning because they tell of man's accomplishments rather than his depravities." That doesn't work no more, does it (laughter)? Rhoden: That's right. Tavis: When I read “The New York Times” in the morning, I'm not always reading about accomplishments in sports. I'm reading about all the other negativity in sports and that just ain't about Black athletes. Rhoden: But you know what? It's real. You know, it's real. I mean, that's just the way it is. You didn't hear a lot about Babe Ruth. I mean, it's not that Babe Ruth wasn't doing a lot of the same things guys are doing now. The press is just different. Again, I think that's why, getting back to the inspiration thing, you have to understand that you're on this huge stage and that the margin of error is infinitesimal. You have to understand that. Whether you're LeBron or whether you're Dwyane, you inspire people and you can inspire people to do the right thing. So, yeah, when you read the paper, it's real, but you just have to be smart because a lot of people - whether you see yourself as a role model or not, Tavis, a lot of people are looking at you for direction because there's so many kids who don't have direction. We mentioned Jim Brown and all. You know, in any movement, the Montgomery bus boycott, there were only a couple of people who really started that. It's not large groups of people. It's a couple of people and that's all we're looking for. Just a couple of people to lead the way, that's all. Tavis: I have not done justice even after a half hour conversation with William C. Rhoden, not done justice to his new book. It is provocative, it is controversial. You will enjoy the read. It's called "Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Black Athlete" from the award-winning New York Times columnist, William C. Rhoden. William, what an honor to have you on the program. Rhoden: Well, the honor is mine, Tavis. Tavis: That's our show for tonight. You can catch me on the weekends
on PRI, Public Radio International. Check your local listings. I'll
see you back here next time, though, on PBS. Until then, good night
from Los Angeles. Thanks for watching and, as always, keep the faith. |
