The Trade-Off: Slavery and Sports (Part One)

IN THIS SEASON OF THE MARCH MADNESS AND THE NFL DRAFT

In this sporty season of March Madness, the NFL Draft, and the Golf Masters, it is the perfect time to discuss slavery. Modern slavery is defined as “a brutal form of organised crime in which people are treated as commodities and exploited for criminal gain” (Paz-Fuchs 764). Little by little we will see whether monoliths such as the NFL and the NBA are committing modern acts of slavery. I will interject my thoughts occasionally, but it is ultimately up to you whether modern slavery is endemic in sports today.

1A: What is the history and origin of slavery? Is the rise in popularity of slavery from centuries ago comparable to that of modern sports betting?

In the 1480s, Castilians invaded and conquered the Guanche people of the Canary Islands, forcing them to convert to Christianity. Chieftains were still allowed to govern their tribe, as long as it did not involve a dispute with a Spaniard or conflict with Christianity. The main reason was for sugar production, which became an early model for colonialism and military expansion in the Americas. Some claimed that the principle of just war justified their tyranny. A 1970 meeting of the National Labor Relations Board resulted in the printing of the infamous reserve clause into the collective bargaining agreement (Kahn 81). In 1975, one arbitrator resolved that teams could only hold players for one year beyond the expiration of the contract; the prospect of all teams giving out one-year contracts inspired protests for free agency (Kahn 81). Like with the Guanche people, the tyranny of the reserve clause had to be justified by its relationship to unionization, however slim it may have been.

One aspect of modern slavery is harsh terms and conditions of employment which imply the lack of free will and consent to enter or exit the contract once it has begun. The reserve clause was very much a case and point linkage between the NFL and modern slavery. Some Spaniards opposed this invasion. For example, the Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos in 1511 said that it was dangerous behavior for the salvation efforts. Also, he supported the 1512 Laws of Burgos which declared the Guanche people to be free, even though most of the Spanish invaders ignored the parts about labor regulation and severe coercion. In reality, the Law of Burgos was a distraction from the harshness of slavery in the area. Also, Francisco de Vitoria claimed that Indigenous Americans were civil and sovereign, a radical claim for the time. Those players who argued for free agency in 1975 were the few and the proud who proclaimed that they were themselves a sovereign people unlatched from the tyranny of the reserve clause; the team governors ignored the pleas by creating a venue for one-year contracts which created a loophole in the system.

Some parts of Spain infamously knew that the enslavement of Africans was immoral; some of the slaves even shouted their freedom aloud (Ireton 1298-1299) as with the players in 1975 shouting for free agency. As Vitoria argued for the Indigenous Guanche tribe, Dominican friar Bartolome de Las Casas argued that the enslavement of thousands of Indigenous Americans was immoral because they did not “result from just wars” (Ireton 1286). Is the enslavement— I mean, contractual obligation— of players the result of a just negotiation of business prospects and revenue? Laws about slavery in Castile and Seville were all over the place about who could own slaves (Ireton 1286). Finally, in 1542, the New Laws were passed which prohibited Indigenous slavery (Ireton 1286). In 1552, Bartolome de Las Casas argued for three causes concerning just war against infidels within Atlantic Africa: when they tried to destroy Christianity, disturbed Christianity by destroying holy objects or coercing people into a different religion, or when they tried to conquer Christian kingdoms (Ireton 1288). Outside of those three things, enslavement of Atlantic Africans was immoral: it was a sin to steal Black individuals from their homelands because of this disconnect from Christianity— exactly opposite of how British invaders thought (Ireton 1289).

Let me make my own comparison: since there is no religion in sports (or at least there should not be,) I will say that those players had the right to fight against their owners because the owners impeded upon the spirit of the game by keeping players under fixed salaries and stuck in undesirable situations, that the owners have tried to coerce others players or coaches onto their teams unjustly (as with Flores below,) and that the second point is inapplicable as there were no idols or kingdoms to destroy. Christianity did exist in Ethiopia, but it had dissipated; this is why Alonso de Sandoval concluded that under a Jesuit system, Ethiopians would be restored to their prior faiths (Ireton 1301-1302). The assumption that all Africans were Ethiopians separated from God was certainly a misnomer (Ireton 1301-1302). Future researchers in the 1920s attempted to disclose the origin of the American Negro as being from Dutch Guinea, but the explanations were overtly sensational and assumptive (Garcia 32). However, strangely enough, these assumptions would fall in line with the “discovery” by physicist Samuel Morton that “Ethiopians” had the smallest skulls and therefore they were intellectually inferior (Schultz 328).

The first slaves arrived in North America in 1619; by the start of the Revolutionary War in 1763, twelve of the thirteen states of the union owned slaves (Daly 2002 30). As Americans moved westward, they started appreciating slavery more; this sentiment was elevated by the Industrial Revolution (Daly 2002 33). In spite of Protestantism, southern Christians believed that human character, and not economic means, would restore the country after the war (Daly 2002 26). Protestants during the war were reluctant yet practical and individualistic slaveowners who tried to be humane by saying that slavery was a necessary evil for the betterment of society while racism was not (Daly 2002 32; 35). They obviously did not listen to Las Casas, did they? Slaveowner Thomas Jefferson thought that a national slavery industry from east to west would hinder more slave revolts while assuring that slaves got treated with better accommodations (Guajardo 53).South Carolina connected its trade route to New Orleans on its way to the west (Shugerman 276), the future site of the Louisiana Territory which would smuggle slaves from the Caribbean islands and increase this risk of revolt; this was why many South Carolina citizens wanted to keep the slave trade going when it shut down in 1808 (Shugerman 276; Daly 2002 34).

However, the real cause of revolt— well, at least one primary cause— was the Black African practice of obeah. Obeah had been associated with slave revolt, and not primitivism, since long after Tacky’s Rebellion in Haiti in 1760 (Browne 455-456). Obeah men figured out rallying points and meeting places for revolts “under the guise of religious gatherings” (Giraldo). The issue was that Obeah men administered oaths to his fellow men to never reveal the identity of revolters or face cruel death (Giraldo). Related to obeah, the Minje Mama dance “was a collective divination and healing ritual performed in moments of crisis” and was used to identify whether obeah was being used for evil purposes (Browne 463-464).

In 1670, one law prohibited “ownership of any white, Christian European-American by blacks or Native Americans” (Schwarz 321). Throughout the South, studies have shown that there were more exploitative Black slaveowners in the southern portion and more benevolent ones in the northern portion (Lightner & Ragan 553). “...Black masters in the lower South generally owned their slaves for economic reasons, while in the upper South the "great majority" possessed only a few slaves, who were ‘usually family members or loved ones’” (Lightner & Ragan 546). Slaveownership by free Blacks was more encouraged in the southern region (Schwarz 325), implying that forced chattel ownership made Black owners more likely to try to reluctantly imitate their white brethren for recognition as fellow human equals and exploit their own kind for the benefit of the plantation (Schwarz 325). Interestingly, modern slavery does not specify race as an exploitative factor because, while it is true that “the association of the slave with the foreigner and the non-citizen draws on a long tradition” (Paz-Fuchs 769), the othering is more important than the racial aspect since slavery originated from enslaving enemies of war no matter the ethnicity (Paz-Fuchs 769). I would pin Jerod Mayo, the first Black head coach of the New York Patriots, as a benevolent slaveowner from the northern southern United States, being that he was born in Virginia. This imitation of white people by Black slaves is a remnant of the magic that white people saw in Black people, one that could be exploited for profit. However, this was nothing like the magic of obeah.

By the late 1700s, British historians had become fascinated with the phenomenon of obeah and dramatized its practitioners as “African noble savage[s]” or martyrs (Browne 455-456). One future researcher even related drumming rituals to Obeah culture because the men in their frenzy were “seized by the spirit of the drums and the gods of the place” (Garcia 32). Obeah men were experts in “herbs and poisons” with which he could do his magic (Giraldo). “Considering the development and practices (bloodletting) of "modern" European medicine at the time, an ill person had a much greater chance of survival by seeking out an Obeah man rather than a white physician” (Giraldo). Men who performed obeah at the plantation were respected and feared because he could “render someone invincible, resuscitate the dead, cure all diseases,” and more (Giraldo). American colonials viewed it differently: to them, obeah was witchcraft.and satanic communication (Browne 455-456). Colonists banned it in 1760 in Jamaica and sentenced suspected practitioners (Browne 456). They thought that the Obeah slaves were rebellious savages (Giraldo). This is in spite of how in many West African tribes, enslavement was common and benevolent in nature (Schwarz 336). Obeah could be used for good or bad, to heal or to harm; and this ambiguity caused some slaveowners to call on other obeah practitioners, but that would lead to more dangerous situations (Browne 459). This relates to what one author called the Hollywoodization of sports culture in the United States, when a select few superstars maintain control of the ratings and therefore keep the game, and its revenue stream, afloat singlehandedly as a group (Will). More arenas and other luxurious expenditures of this fame make the game too expensive for the average viewer just as too many magic obeah men, while impressive in their own right, made the plantations dangerous.

Hamiltonians could have compared themselves to people in Great Britain in 1688 with their rise in gambling culture. With Jefferson not making his way to Louisiana and banning slave importation in 1808, and the threat of slave importation taxes, South Carolina was losing out on a revolutionary revenue opportunity as Great Britain was when they attempted to pass measures in 1664, 1710, 1739, 1744, and 1774 to combat the practice, even though these acts barely acted on enforcing the law well enough to stop the problem (Huggins 7). “In the formative years of South Carolina, 1671 to 1710, for every slave arriving in South Carolina from the British Caribbean, seven were taken to the Chesapeake” (Eltis et al 166). At this time, Great Britain had a new philosophy that chance was the result not of God but of random variables; this new view strengthened their embrace of capitalism and opened the gates to “public credit and financial risk taking” (Huggins 5).

In the 1700s, gambling became an outlet for a new culture of politeness as it let men assert and exchange opinions as well as “advance their own glory” (Huggins 5). With the qualities of “rationality, order, and organization” (Huggins 8), gamblers made sense of an evolving society (Huggins 5-6). Sports betting became a venue for expression of “manhood, honor, status, and reputation” (Huggins 6). After the Revolutionary War, even the most evangelical Christians in the South saw slavery as a byproduct of vainglorious capitalists trying to reestablish their authority over the union (Daly 2002 34). Given the timing, it is possible that these capitalists could have been gambling to exacerbate their capital and their authority over their fellow men and slaves. The rise of newspapers in the early 1700s precipitated the dramatization of sports narratives, including gambling language (Huggins 6). By the mid 1700s, people started seeing risk as mathematical probability and not as godly uncertainty (Huggins 8). Pugilism arose as another popular outing when James Figg “opened his London amphitheater in 1717, attracting the patronage of the upper classes and giving pugilism a degree of respectability…” (Huggins 7).

It was definitely a minor risk to keep importing slaves despite the enactment of those five failed laws. Slave ship surgeons functioned, according to Kemedjio, as “the determining factor in the process of the slave trade” (Kemedjio 55) in order to throw scientific prowess into the mix of the slave trade, therefore legitimizing its practice (Kemedjio 55-56). Surgeons examined slave bodies from Africa and determined whether captures were physiologically hardy and mentally passive (Kemedjio 56). This compares to a time not too long ago in the 1980s when Black athletes were still turned away the most from being drafted or traded; this may have been a contractual matter (Kahn 86). Nowadays, the draft, and a sweeping change in racial advocation, has mostly eradicated this subtle racism, at least one can hope. In the NFL, trading occurs year-round, but much trading occurs before a given trade deadline set that season (Pioli). Rosters are “constructed prior to Week 1,” but according to Pioli, “the primary job of an NFL personnel department is to find and evaluate players, so this process continues even while coaches prepare for weekly games.” This surgical examination determines— determined, sorry— and skewed the monetary value of slaves. The ship owner made the final decision on whether the slave was worthy of continuing the journey (Kemedjio 57). Slaves were also examined before they disembarked onto their new land to make sure that they were not too damaged from their voyages (Kemedjio 57). Colonial merchant Sir George Ellison wanted to be another surgeon stand-in by making sure that his own slaves were not injured nearly as often; his goal was to make his slaves work harder and earn him more profit, thus he encouraged them to choose their own masters, preferably him, so that they would be more obedient (Pallua 207-208). Spiritual enlightenment threatened other planters, however (Pallua 207). It was most logical, believe it or not, to keep slaves’ bodies mostly intact and uninjured; however, the illogical part for modern society is that this was a cover for their true situation (Kemedjio 59). Humanitarianism, or its facade in this case, facilitated profitability for slave deliverers and drivers, so it was best to look clean (Kemedjio 59).

The Land Ordinance of 1784 banned slavery in the new northwestern territories north of the Ohio River as of 1800, but continued to allow it in the southeastern states (Guajardo 10-11). In order to mitigate fears that electoral influence would further corrupt presidential elections with Missouri being ratified as a slave state, Maine was ratified as a free state (Guajardo 52). Southern states cried that the north was trying to tyrannize the institution of slavery and control the electoral representation of northern states (Guajardo 53). By 1920, baseball leagues became more widespread (Kahn 76). In 1922, the Federal League lost their Supreme Court case against the big leagues for their argument that they had merged and formed a monopoly, but only proper businesses could monopolize (Kahn 78). The political influence over slavery was by no means the means of crafting a monopoly, yet the ability for the northern states to tell the southern states what to do about their slaves, even in an abolitionist manner, marked a shift toward an early form of gerrymandering (Guajardo 53). Adams, among other antislavery politicians, reluctantly kept slavery alive in the southern states in order to fight the Revolutionary War, one of its central areas of contention being state rights for maintaining slavery, just as Theodore Roosevelt, a brazen gridiron football fan, opted to install more officials and therefore reduce injuries (Watterson III 558). Like Ellison, Roosevelt wanted to profit (not necessarily in money but in star power, and as a fan himself) from preserving the stock of the players and maintaining the spirit of football.Some states, such as Virginia, argued that in order to fully secede from England, the United States had to remain a slave nation (Guajardo 16). Slaveowners Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Tyler, all future presidents, proposed that slavery needed to be nationwide so that slaves could enjoy better accommodations and not revolt nearly as easily (Guajaro 53)

Soon after the Revolutionary War, England gave financial credit to Charleston, South Carolina, the newly named version of Charles Town, which funded slave labor for rice and indigo export (Rosenbaum 223). Cotton production began to move westward, and other port towns competed with Charleston (Rosenbaum 225). This would have been a reason to get this proposal going sooner than later. Roosevelt stated that he appreciated the brutality of gridiron football because it was effective and strong (Watterson III 558). Does this mean that he would have wanted to retain the diligence of slaves if he had been an 1800s president? That is debatable, but let it be said that the struggle for positive representation is universal, and slavery, with its productivity, and football, with its effectiveness, both presented themselves as symbols of fortitude for the United States. In 1854, the vote over eliminating the Missouri line fell against popular sovereignty, which still opened all states to slavery and ripped away from slaves and freed slaves all rights guaranteed to white citizens (Guajardo 69). Despite this, individual states could decide whether Black individuals could become citizens there (Guajardo 71). The newly formed Republican party thought that the Supreme Court was slowly attempting to nationalize the institution of slavery and that Democrats kept widening its reach with acts such as the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott decision (Guajardo 71-72). News media seconded this conspiracy that slavery was becoming an endemic even in free states (Guajardo 73). Fellow president Woodrow Wilson wanted football abolished if it got too violent, even though American football built morality, precision, mental acuity, and endurance in its players (Watterson III 557; 562). While it was not quite endemic to Wilson, football did exhibit the potential for an uptick in violence (Watterson III 562).

In 1787, debates over the constitutionality of slavery had let the issue slide from being written into it; only in 1808 was the slave trade abolished. As a result, historian Joseph Ellis described the Constitution as a “prudent exercise in ambiguity” (Lowance & Pilditch 69). Southern Christians continued the age-old tale that slaves were descendants of the biblical Ham. Since slaves were created by God, surely they must be educated as Christians; men were created as unequals in order to be adapted into society. (Pallua) Frederick Douglass fought this view by expressing that since descendents of Ham were meant to be enslaved, perhaps the Black and white parents of assault babies were meant to be enslaved as well.- because “it is certain that slavery at the South must soon become unscriptural; for thousands . . . like myself, owe their existence to white fathers, and those most often their masters” (Lowance & Pilditch 72).

Edward Augustus Johnson concluded that it was wrong to say that slaves were descendants of Ham because in the Bible, Noah, in a wine drunken stupor, declared that Canaan, not Ham, should be a servant for his brethren (Johnson 14) Shem and Japheth covered Noah’s nudity because Ham told them to, but Noah took it out on Canaan instead; really Canaan’s descendants should have been slaves (Johnson 14). However, the direct descendants of Canaan were allegedly “the most powerful people of olden times” (Johnson 15). They helped build up Egypt, Phoenicia, Nineveh, and Babylon and enslaved the Tews, God’s “chosen people” (Johnson 15).

With these differing views, Harriet Beecher Stowe argued that slavery law, which varied by state, was bureaucratic balderdash and that slaves barely got reprimanded for stepping outside of its bounds (Lowance & Pilditch 76). This broken system meant that as issues arose, and arise they did, the government had to deal with them individually. Certain state constitutions continued to propagate the institution of slavery within the bounds of their laws, but the federal Constitution allowed this same treatment for all states (Guajardo 41). However, the Constitution notably does not once mention the word “slave” or “slavery,” which meant that northern states could think that slavery was not protected while southern states read the fine print which still allowed them to own slaves despite a mounting abolitionist movement (Guajardo 47). Subtle federal complacency with slavery only strengthened its hold; it lingered as explorers charged westward, and future historians would attest to the Constitution being a proslavery document throughout (Guajardo 47-48).

Americans were divided over who ran the new nation better. Jeffersonian Republicans seemed to be against slavery as a result of a French revolution in 1794 and the Haitian Revolution in 1791; ironically, Jefferson himself, the man who wanted nationwide slavery, banned the importation of slaves to Charleston in 1808 while their slave trade industry was bustling (Rosenbaum 225). Hamiltonians in Charleston supported the institution wholeheartedly (Rosenbaum 225) because as revealed by one investigation, the state only kept a fraction of the slaves they trafficked (Shugerman 287). Either way, more South Carolina citizens wanted slaves to compete with the Louisiana Territory, into which Jefferson had not stepped (Shugerman 272). South Carolina as a whole protested importation taxes and any other restrictions on importation of slaves (Crowder 184). This mimics the current state of the NFL Draft, which, to fill a void created when they had lost their own free agent players to another team the prior season, has taken account of past controversies over free agency in its compensatory picks which allow teams to pick one of 32 free agents, carefully placed into the running via a proprietary algorithm fed with salary, play time, and postseason honors (NFL Football Operations). These free agents can still be traded (NFL Football Operations), leaving them subject to the same issues of contracts as the main players. The NFL had had its fair (or unfair I suppose) share of struggle against free agency before eventually coming to the conclusion that “importing” more free agents made the draft process smoother and more secure. Back in 1987, a similar kind of protest occurred with the NBA when their Players Association (NBAPA) sued them over the apparent lack of antitrust and movement between teams due to the contemporary state of the draft, salary caps, and the right-of-first-refusal rule (Atlanta Constitution). On the other side, Hamiltonians were more than likely to be the main proponents behind attacking abolitionists and the average white southern slaveholder was selfish and immoral (Daly 2002 32).

By 1801, sports betting rocketed in notoriety within polite society and the wealthy circles and developed a culture of literacy and distinction (Huggins 9). It is titillating to want to compare free trade to the trade of athletes. However, there is no deep connection, as free trade refers to international or interstitial trade which is free from any kind of government restriction, with the occasional tariff “as needed for revenue” (Dictionary.com). Trading of athletes requires more communication and investigation than that; as the argument went, if it were not for the reserve clause, then the strongest players would all be on the same team. Historians have linked free trade with states’ rights, a key component for the upcoming Civil War; this was based on the Constitution (Rosenbaum 227). Historians add that this nationalism defeated the purpose of centering the slave trade in Charleston (Rosenbaum 227). Now, free trade in conjunction with states’ rights— is still not connected, since the NFL and NBA are national entities and trading of athletes is not determined by individual states. John Caldwell Calhoun, a secessionist, fought for tariffs, as they would help fund military expansion and therefore protect their slave economy (Rosenbaum 230). The abolishment of the slave trade opened the way for slave rebellions against emancipation, supposedly (Pallua 202). Also, it hurt Great Britain because the colonies, and their slaves, had a thriving sugar industry (Pallua 202). Not only would there be rebellions, but other countries would take over the slave trade (Pallua 202). Returning Africans home would expose them to “peculiar disadvantages” like hurricanes, famine, and cruelty (Pallua 203)— all of which, I would argue, were equally present in the southern United States for the slaves. Since colonization mirrored Abraham’s foundation of Israel, a biblical slave state, and Protestant providentialists desired to revive the profitability of their prior cotton economy within their own increasingly deistic nation, divine intervention promoted a moral free economy; evil people would meet their proper fates according to the Protestants (Daly 2002 33-35). In 1828, Calhoun faced opposition for his tariff and claimed that he supported internal improvements, despite the opposition being on the side of the Constitution (Rosenbaum 236). Calhoun desired to continue developing the “infrastructure” in the west (Rosenbaum 236). I believe that this inferred a desire for national slavery as with Jefferson, though I may be misinterpreting this information.

In the 1830s, New York became increasingly competitive with Charleston, which began to worry about transportation infrastructure for exporting cash crops; ironically, “cotton shipped directly from Charleston to Liverpool made money for the New Yorkers through commissions, insurance, shipping, loan interest, and British imports” similar to the national bank (Rosenbaum 243-244). Sending the crops to New York made the process smoother; Charleston lamented this development. The cotton economy was booming enough for more Georgians to support slavery as defined under the “laws of nature and of God” (Simard 584-585). Southern judges tried to slow down industrialization, despite the reign of chattel slavery which kept up the plantation and cotton economies because it would hinder their plantation profit (Simard 585). They were also busy trying to make financial interactions more predictable (Simard 587). Cases involving debt and commercial relations, conversions of property, and fundamental laws of property as applied to nonhuman entities in the North applied to slavery in the South (Simard 588-589). Some lawyers argued that every time someone in the North sold a slave under a contract, that action continually ratified slavery; they argued that “slavery required the ratification of positive law” (Simard 591). By 1844, politicians argued whether free trade was hurting American industry and making slavery a stronger institution; free trade succeeded in the end, with the added benefit of quieting British abolitionists (Rosenbaum 247).

Mulattoes, or slaves with white heritage, were deemed “free Blacks” and were allowed to be white to a degree, except for owning slaves (Lightner & Ragan 538). Free Blacks were generally impoverished despite their wealth of privilege (Schwarz 324); while they generally worked as farm hands, they still faced crippling racism and discrimination (Lightner & Ragan 550; Schwarz 324). According to one author, “...the price of a prime field hand in 1830 could exceed the entire annual income of even a skilled white worker in the United States at the time” (Lightner & Ragan 550). This led to an influx of Black people becoming wealthy and distinguished enough to become emancipated slaveowners on their own accord despite how most Black people worked in unskilled positions (Schwarz 324). This supernatural ability to “excel and prosper” made their lack of morality secondary (Koger 4). Regardless, “a southern white was just three times more likely to own slaves than was a southern free Black” person (Lightner & Ragan 549). Obeah was not the only kind of magic available to Black men and women; in the right light, this supernatural ability to lead their own kind was powerful and benevolent, yet sometimes they went the other way with it.

In the 1970s, once Black ballers Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell engaged in their basketball rivalry, audiences clamored for more and established a precedent for the popularity of Black sport (Aiello 161). Southerners watched the events and gathered that the NBA was merely a Black league with Black teams, and thus they were less interested than their fellow Americans northward (Aiello 161). However, one cannot deny that there was a sprinkle of magic when previously the South only peered at white players on white teams; something caused them to gaze at Black players and make any kind of valuable opinion about their presence, albeit negative. The supernatural leadership to turn Southern eyes toward them made Chamberlain and Russell magicians outside of obeah. In sports, racism can still occur even as more Black players enter the league per year (Kahn 83) and despite how those teams with more Black players perform better than teams with less Black players (Kahn 84). White players have generally been more popular even though audiences did not prefer one skin color over another according to a study (Kahn 85). Despite this popularity, in the 1970s and 1980s, Black players were turned over the quickest (Kahn 86). There is still a hint of negativity to this magic that made Black people white. Sociologist Orlando Patterson has claimed that mulattoes and free Blacks were on the verge of “social death” only resolved with slaveownership as allowed by whites (Schwarz 319).

“...The majority of Black slaveholders were motivated by benevolence, but… the majority of all of the slaves that were owned by Blacks were possessed for purposes or exploitation” whether for forced family or forced labor purposes for profit, the great equalizer (Lightner & Ragan 546). In 1782, according to Virginia law, Black slaveownership was merely temporary as a means of manumission (Schwarz 321). In 1820, one South Carolina statute put an end to that separation and required Black slaveowners to use their newly acquired family members as chattel slaves for exploitation, yet most of them were still kind and reported them as “freed persons” (Koger 5). In 1832 in Virginia, Black people could not own chattel that was not already part of their biological family; this worsened in 1858 when no Black person could own family at all (Schwarz 322). Some scholars noted that after 1850, slavery became more commercialized and Black slaveowners bought and sold slaves as capital investments, typically for the purposes of barbering, carpentry, and farm labor, and not as much for benevolence (Koger 1). However, back in 1820 South Carolina, Blacks began othering themselves based on their privileges of being trusted by white men as the representatives of chattel slavery, especially if they were of mixed race (Koger 7). Dark-skinned Black slaveowners were able to hold less slaves as a result (Koer 7).

Christian slaveowners believed that slavery kept their African migrants from being barbarians; education would bring them closer to achieving human status (Pallua 200). This is similar to an argument made by Jane Addams, Jacob Riis, and other members of the Playground Association of America who proclaimed in the 1890s that “some of the problems of inner city America could be alleviated through constructive recreation programs” (Jebsen Jr 13). Of course, “inner city” refers to Black kids causing problems due to their segregation and lack of white supervision. Is basketball slavery since it is a mostly Black sport and it kept students away from rebellion long enough for them to learn the value of dedication and teamwork? As long as they were drafted, one can make that argument in earnest. English landlords supposedly treated their subjects worse than the slaves were treated by Christian Americans (Pallua 201). Clothing and feeding slaves was economically motivated; even if Blackness was not “naturally ordained” by God, according to Ellison, their “lack of cultural development, their superstition and moral degeneracy make them inferior” (Pallua 206). His philosophy was to treat slaves well enough to keep them from falling apart to pull out a sense of obedience and loyalty. Athletes are promised money, sponsorships, and fans if they stay on their teams long enough to reach that threshold of loyalty. As soon as they want higher pay, they enter the world of their owners— governors, I should say— and face their discretion as to whether it would be profitable for the team and for them to trade.

Descendants of perhaps benevolent Black slaveowners were one to two generations separated from chattel ownership, which built their wealth in elite circles (Koger 3). It was rare for poor people, Black or white, to own slaves (Schwarz 324). These descendants were mostly artisans who bought slaves to work in their businesses (Koger 4). They did not face the struggle of paying wages as a poor Black man or “financial guarantees of support in accordance with the law of manumission” (Schwarz 325). Black slaveownership steadily declined in South Carolina after 1840 due to increased discrimination and racism from poor white contenders (Koger 7). By 1860, in Virginia, there were 58,000 free Blacks, and this number is probably reflected in most other Southern states as they share the trend of a decline in Black slaveownership after 1830 (Schwarz 319).

The Compromise of 1850 banned slave purchasing, but not slavery, from Washington DC, and created stronger rules on the federal government (Guajardo 47) for catching runaway slaves (Lowance & Pilditch 67). The government was also focused on its shift shift from agrarianism into industrialization into the 20th century, which prompted politicians to consider a more socially active problem-solving approach to maintaining order rather than a laissez-faire orientation (Jebsen Jr 5-6). This makes sense considering the stranglehold on runaway slaves and the start of baseball started only two decades apart. The earliest baseball leagues formed in 1876 (Kahn 76). Between the 1880s and 1900s, American football, getting its start from British rugby, exploded in popularity as it differentiated itself with less officials and less official rules (Watterson III 556). While these sports were in their humble beginnings, there were not as many player restrictions; in fact, violence was the zeitgeist of the day. However, in the mighty world of sports, trade restraints include the draft and the infamous reserve clause which restrict free agency; “an option system will typically be coupled with a right-of-first-refusal clause, a compensation scheme, or both, making it more difficult and more costly for other teams to sign free agents” (Corcoran 1054-1055) To fill a void created when they had lost their own free agent players to another team the prior season, the draft has taken account of past controversies over free agency in its compensatory picks, which allow teams to pick one of 32 free agents carefully placed into the running via a proprietary algorithm fed with salary, play time, and postseason honors (NFL Football Operations). These free agents can still be traded (NFL Football Operations), leaving them subject to the same issues of contracts as the main players. The Compromise of 1850 did not completely abolish slavery, only the trading of slaves, while the draft has not abolished either. It took the NFL this long to realize that free agents are players too, who deserve a chance to migrate from team to team without restriction— except the restriction of the draft that “gives only one team the right to bargain for each eligible player's services, reducing the player's potential ability to extract a higher salary from another team” (Corcoran 1055). This coincides with the 1944 ruling that workers can end employment with a company or retire before the end of their contract; it took the country a very long time to conclude that people are not pawns and they have lives of their own (Paz-Fuchs 778). The NFL says that “NFL teams can only acquire new players via free agency or through the waiver wire after the trade deadline,” usually in March (NFL). While free agents are not runaway slaves, they are not bound to a singular contract until they are caught under contract. There are more freedoms for free agents than there ever have been, but like with Black slaveowners who had a sort of magical ability to be white, free agents only have as much power as they are given, lest they decide to run from their team.

What is the history and origin of American football and sports betting? Does the phenomenon of fantasy sports fuel America’s gambling addiction with its invocation of a superstitious illusion of control over the fate of athletes? Does this connect to “mystical exotic power” or “Black magic?” What is the process of buying or selling an athlete? Is it ethical?

Harvard was shocked by how brutal American football, a then burgeoning sport, was in the 1880s as future president and fellow football enthusiast Theodore Roosevelt was graduating (Watterson III 556). Players threatened broken bones and death to one another (Watterson III 556). I mean, it should not have been surprising since violence had been quite effective for maintaining order on slave plantations since the 1700s (Browne 470). Walter Camp “maneuvered through the football conventions and committees crucial changes such as the rule allowing a team to retain possession after a player was tackled and its counterpart, the yards and downs rule, that distanced American football from the old rugby game. In 1888, under Camp's tutelage, the rules' convention legalized blocking in front of the ball carrier and tackling below the knees” (Watterson III 556). This goes against the gung-ho philosophy of Frank Norris, “an early popularizer of the social philosophy of American college sport” who believed that it was Anglo-Saxon to be brutal and courageous as gridiron football players were on the field (Messenger 288). He, Stephen Crane, and Richard Harding Davis all shared this artistic view of violent sport in its patriotic light (Messenger 288). Despite this violence, president Woodrow Wilson proclaimed that American football built morality, precision, mental acuity, and endurance in its players (Watterson III 557). Norris saw the western frat boy football player as an American heroic figure (Messenger 289). Norris's view of sports heroism in "Travis Hallett" became the conventional wisdom about the college hero: that he was a man at home in country clubs and drawing rooms but also capable of becoming a beast in combat” (Messenger 289). They should have seen the omen from day one: violence and discipline were the centerpieces of both American football and slavery. Roosevelt, an unabashed football fan, voted on toning down the brutality and increasing officiation, similar to his stance on political reforms (Watterson III 558). Former football players who had played under these reforms became successful politicians (Watterson III 558) just as the descendants of slaves were mostly wealthy, and hired slaves themselves to work in their artisanal shops (Koger 3; 4). Once again, discipline bred privilege in both slavery and football. Wilson wanted the game to be safer or he would want it abolished (Watterson III 562). I wonder why he did not behave this way toward slavery; it was just as violent if not worse. He did not support students stereotyping themselves, yet he preferred that more students associated themselves with clubs than worry about football (Watterson III 562). At least he did not support stereotypes. Even Norris thought that football players “squabbling in the lines… infallibly betrays the want of discipline and organization” (Messenger 289).

Norris envisioned women being part of the phenomenon as well, as she “rough shoulders her way among men” and “finds a healthy pleasure in the jostlings of the mob…” (Messenger 291). Women, believe it or not, were also slaves, and also associated with obeah and healing culture. I wonder if Norris would have considered writing a football novel about a female player who, under some curse of magic, beats out the men, but in the end she still finds her place; the male gaze was already well engaged in its unfamiliar feat of gawking and fangirling over men on the field, so why not place it on women doing the same thing as with the upcoming phenomenon of the Bal nègre? Anyway, at least Wilson was glad to see the game become more refined over time in a “rebirth of American ideals” (Watterson III 562). Remember when Jefferson wanted nationwide slavery and south Carolina wanted to maintain the slave trade when it got abolished back in 1808? Slavery was a profit powerhouse: feigned humanitarianism from slave deliverers, the booming cotton and sugar industries, and the forced family labor from Black slaveowners were all components to an American ideal of othering Black people in order to promulgate the white race’s influence over the nation. Frank Norris both admired the strong and lively spirit of the Anglo-Saxons and disliked the overly refined and artistic styles of the late 19th century (Messenger 291). In 1891, the National League absorbed four American Association teams (Kahn 77). This was the birth of antitrust laws to prevent monopolization, and of a new attitude toward sport as a means of preventing discontent in urban society, with local government bodies providing sporting materials such as fields, equipment, and leadership (Jebsen Jr 5-6). These would prosper until 1998 (Kahn 78). Discontent in contemporary urban society equates to the need for pugilism and slave fights in the 1700s to keep slaveowners entertained while, in a different exhibition, men beat one another as white men watched. Slaves and Black people gentrified into urban settings needed to be kept in line.

For baseball, the American League and the National League merged in 1903; this was the time of the first World Series game (Kahn 78). By 1920, baseball leagues became more widespread (Kahn 76). This is around the same time as the rise of the Bal nègre, which was a night when white men captured “renewal, escape, and the discovery of one’s vital force” while watching Black women dance potentially topless with embarrassingly skimpy skirts on (Merzenich). Why Black women were not introduced to baseball earlier I do not understand, yet the similarity is glaring: a singular moment when men got to watch a supernatural person potentially embarrass themselves amidst cheering and violence and feel a sense of rebirth, until the event was over. Meet Paul Robeson, the only Black player on the Rutgers football team in the 1920s. He was dubbed a member of the “mythical all-American football team” by one author (Wiggins 7). The word “mythical” tells me that Robeson’s career was meant to be a fantasy, a spectacle for the white eye.

Nationally, sports touched every metropolis (Jebsen Jr 5-6). Religious zealots fought to mitigate the rise of cockfighting, horse racing, and prizefighting despite their profit potential for the state (Jebsen Jr 7; Huggins 7). In Dallas, for example, baseball and football proved to be the most popular sports (Jebsen Jr 10-11), yet many leaders in 1894 still associated baseball with tomfoolery and prostitution (Jebsen Jr 11-12). However, at the same time, playgrounds were being constructed around the nation to alleviate the stresses and violence of the inner city— that is, the Black city (Jebsen Jr 13). The Dallas superintendent of schools even believed in 1915 that sports could “benefit girls since many ‘grow to womanhood with flabby muscles and undeveloped bodies that have never had an hour of vigorous, hearty, red-blooded, wholebodied exercise in their lives’” (Jebsen Jr 15-16).

By the 1930s, legalized wagering on “harness horse races, greyhound races, and jai alai” carried the taboo of sports betting out of the darkness and into the limelight of the growing world of American sport (Lewis 137). In 1940, Illinois judge and baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis saw that “Detroit and affiliated clubs used ‘fake agreements,’ ‘false certificates of club relationships,’ ‘cover-up’ deals, and similar practices in operation of a farm system” (Silver 11), which gives younger players experience and training in the big leagues down the line. The Detroit trade would have sent pitcher George Coffman and second baseman Benny McCoy to the Philadelphia A's in exchange for outfielder Wally Moses; sources claimed that McCoy was worth $500,000 ($11 million) (Silver 12). As a result of these scandals, Landis awarded $500,000 of free agency to 92 young players, which today amounts to $11 million (Silver 11), about $5,400 each ($120,000 today). The Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Browns were each fined $1,000 and $500 (today: $22,000 and $11,000) respectively for contacting a supervisor of free agency “before the inquiry was completed.” (Silver 11) Sports fans may be familiar with the case of former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores, a Black man, who sued the NFL for racial profiling, fixing games, and after hearing from Bill Belichick was going to hire someone before their interview (Neumeister). This was not the NFL’s only scandal. In 1996, Brown v Pro Football Incorporated, the court had ruled in favor of the players who complained of fixed salaries due to their owners following an expired union agreement; this had fallen outside of antitrust due to an exception in the law applying to labor negotiations, yet since the agreement’s grace period expired, then the exception was no longer applicable (Corcoran 1069). The players found that they could not negotiate individually for higher, or different, salaries. Extension of the exemption would have made true negotiation negligible since there was nothing to negotiate about according to the team owners (Corcoran 1069).

The facade of humanitarianism on slave ships should have been seen as a scandal since there was an incongruous share of power and trust between slaves and their deliverers— yet that applies to most if not all of the industry of slavery. William Henry Lewis is another (forgotten) example of Black confidence. On the fence of the 20th century, Lewis was the captain of the Harvard Crimson football team and led them to a solid victory against the University of Pennsylvania team before entering coaching full time (Albright 130). Some have called Lewis “arguably the best center in college football” (Albright 132). Lewis mentored players in 1898 and got invited to write a chapter about defense in a book detailing the rules of the game (Albright 135). Lewis came decades before another Black captain, Levi Jackson, captain of the Yale Bulldogs, who was described as being as good of a coach as Lewis was a player (Albright 129). Lewis also got denied a haircut because of his Black race and joined an effort to pass a bill that would prohibit public businesses from discriminating against people of color; this inspired him to go into law (Albright 136).

Kahn defines the sports industry as a customer service industry in which customer discrimination occurs when “an employer that pays more money to the types of workers whom customers prefer is likely to be rewarded by the market” (Kahn 83). Even in heterogeneous conditions, segregation and bias may still occur, barely justifying the lower wages of the oppressed and unmarketable (Kahn 83). This argument showed that in sports, racism can still occur even as more Black players enter the league per year (Kahn 83) and despite how those teams with more Black players performed better than teams with less Black players (Kahn 84). White players have generally been more popular even though audiences did not prefer one skin color over another (Kahn 85). Despite this popularity, in the 1970s and 1980s, Black players were turned over the quickest, but this may have been a contractual matter (Kahn 86). I cannot rightfully compare this practice to modern slavery since, as aforementioned, race is surprisingly not a primary element in modern slavery since the mere exploitation of others trumps racial dynamics (Paz-Fuchs 769). However, this is still appalling. I should not have to outline a comparison, but free Blacks worked as impoverished farmhands even though they were granted a magical elixir of whiteness by their former owners; tell me that this does not invoke a similar argument, that even though more Black men and women were entering the league of society, they were still treated like slaves. Nowadays, the draft and a sweeping change in racial culture and advocacy has mostly eradicated this subtle racism, at least one can hope.

By the 1960s, betting outside of the track gained traction and revenue, and states felt pressured to apply this new trend to additional sports (Lewis 138). According to the Nevada State Gaming Control Board, before 1974, when their gambling tax was reduced from 10% to 2%, sports gambling handles amounted to less than $4 million ($25 million today,) but afterward, they exploded to $258.7 million ($1.6 billion today) within five years (Ignatin 169). As the enjoyment of having more than one bet diminishes, gambling becomes less enjoyable, and the enjoyment which one gets from winning is less weighted than the disappointment which one gets from losing their bet; this is when they notice that they have spent more money than they have earned and the excitement dissipates, especially noting that, as the saying goes, the house always wins (Ignatin 169-170). “Most straight bets involve points or odds,” as in football wherein points are minused (Ignatin 171). If one was betting on the underdog team to win, for example, in a straight bet, the team must have either won or lost by the amount of points set by the linemakers; this kind of bet also involves a bookmaker introducing an edge, their cut that they bank if bettors get it right more than half of the time (Ignatin 171). The point spread is far more common: these involve parlays, which are single bets that combine multiple bets from multiple games into a singular gamble; the payout increases as the team membership increases, and naturally so does the losing risk (Ignatin 172-173). This is also where point shaving becomes a reality and fixes games. Sometimes, people would rather hedge their bets because this strategy “minimizes gains if the desired outcome occurs but also minimizes losses if the desired outcome does not occur” (Morewedge 997). However, when it comes to sports teams, people would rather avoid betting against their home teams because of their relationship to the identities of the bettors (Morewedge 998).

The MLB antagonized the Continental League in the 1960s because they did not want to participate in the lucrative trend of pay television (Buhite 436-437). Plus, it was easier to get to the big leagues under a Continental League contract, so jealousy was in the air (Buhite 436-437). Lawyer Branch Rickey wanted players “from the world” on his team, meaning Black Cubans, so he was one of the big forces that integrated baseball due to this veiled racism (Buhite 437). MLB league experts were worried that Rickey’s desire for integration would lead him into independently signing big players to the dreaded Continental League. and they were worried about integrating too many colored people into baseball in general, of course (Buhite 437). Even Rickey still possessed a language of prejudice despite his progressive nature because he believed in the integrity of the reserve clause, and he did not protest against sports’ racist practices enough to credit himself as a bigger hero than he already was (Buhite 458). If legislation was passed from Senator Estes Kefauver, then the Continental League would have had a leg up over the MLB for recruiting more powerful players due to a limitation of the beloved reserve clause which let team owners keep players for a long time under contract (Buhite 437). If television and baseball had existed before slavery was allegedly abolished in 1865, just a century earlier, I presume that the western United States would have taken their chance at nationwide slavery and made more sensational pugilism tournaments to keep free Black people and slaves off the fields. To be clear, it would only have been Black fighters since whites were too intimidated by them (Schultz 329).

Were whites always intimidated by Black people? By their obeah, by their strength, or by their mystique and otherness, white people may have always been afraid of the true power of the Black person. They perform amazingly on the field and in the fields; they have a reason to antagonize white people that white people did not realize for centuries; and Black people deserve a win anyway. Is this why there have been situations like Daunte Wright, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor? Like Brian Flores and William Henry Lewis? Like the cases of countless other Black people in history who have been discriminated against? Are whites afraid of letting them show their true humanity? This seems to have been the case for a while now— and still today with meaningless, senseless shootings of innocent Black individuals. The common denominator has been the bystanding nature of society to this blatant racism. The Hawks were a Black basketball team; Atlanta bought them at the peak of the Civil Rights movement (Aiello 156-157). In the 1967 season, new Black talent spurred the team to win the Western Conference game, but in spite of their amazing winning streak that year, their audience was half of that of other teams because they did not have their own stadium (Aiello 164). The owner soon decided to sell the team (Aiello 164). The new owner listened to pleas to build an arena for the Hawks to draw larger audiences and the 1972 Democratic National Convention after talks about transferring the Hawks to the NBA. This was necessary: white players attracted larger Southern white audiences, and Black basketball would have to compete with the South’s love of football (Aiello 178). The Hawks did make their appearance in the 1970 gubernatorial race to the surprise of white Southerners who did not expect a Black team to attain that level of prosperity (Aiello 187-188).

Certainly, into the 1990s, sports became dependent on arenas to stay competitive; unfortunately, the industry has been “pricing itself out of the market for ordinary fans” (Will) We live in a time now when professional athletes are idolized even though they get arrested for petty or stupid crimes which influence their younger viewers negatively (St. Joseph News Press). It has gotten to the point where we need to police the players to keep them in line. No comparison is necessary here: Black people, police, keeping in line— you see the imagery. Players get traded for getting out of line, but is that as punishment or as rehabilitation? It can be viewed as a fresh start and a new environment for the player, but the reality is that team owners (governors) have the final say in where players go, and therefore, players have little to no job security; there is also little use for a union since players have an early retirement” (Corcoran 1057). So the answer is punishment, even for doing things correctly.

The transfer of a Black person from one party to another is a central tenet of slavery, and it is still in use today for Black players. During the regular football season, not during the time of the trade deadline or Week 1, most trades are discussed over the “waiver wire,” but these trades occur less often because of salary issues, holdouts, and trade negotiation stalemates (Pioli). “Sometimes a team will decide to capitalize on a closing window for other suitors to acquire a player headed for the open market in the offseason” (Pioli). Players must pass the new owner’s physical examination and their original team must have been asked for express permission to trade them before being shipped off to a new team (Pioli). There is a smoking gun for the slavery argument in this interview. Upon being asked whether the NFL has checks and balances in place for trades, Pioli states the ideals of a respectfully led operation without actually answering the question about whether that narrative applies to the NFL. Teams with the lowest records are the first to be able to accept players in trade, but sometimes teams who cannot “claim a player via waivers,” they will try to get first dibs before the player is made publicly tradable (Pioli). It is hard for players to leave their teams because of their precise skills, such as dashing or pitching, which can seldom be used in the professional world (Corcoran 1057). This makes it easier for governors to instill trade restraints into player contracts (Corcoran 1057) and therefore punish them for existing. This is the first facet of modern slavery: the acquisition of a group’s dignity through humiliation and “the complete exclusion of the slave from the social order” (Paz-Fuchs 762-763). Brian Flores was mortified by his exclusion from the normal interview procedure when he figured that he was already hired because he is Black. LeBron James was embarrassed in Boston when he called Celtics fans “racist as fuck” (Varela). Think about the racial and political divide in this country and the traveling that athletes do on a regular basis to various cities around the nation; how many times must they encounter toxic fan bases?

The other half of the loss of dignity in modern slavery is the slave’s resultant dependency on their owners or direct supervisors (Paz-Fuchs 763). Flores was dependent on the NFL for so long and he finally escaped; LeBron James is dependent on staying a reputable athlete and he cannot mar his image by batting an eye at his maltreatment. In this case, the fact that players are so dependent on the actions and decisions of their governors is undignifying because even though they have a greater ability than ever to become free agents, athletes are still subject to feeling caged because of their own talents. I have the right to compare the NFL draft to modern slavery because people who are kept under certain conditions of modern slavery do not have to be necessarily owned by any particular party (Paz-Fuchs 764-765). The fact that players are traded like slaves and owned like slaves does not make them slaves by definition, but they may still be playing under the conditions of slavery, which puts the question of whether athletes are slaves up to interpretation. Well— the state decides who slaves are, whether they can be freed from this abruptly added status, and what rights they lose (Paz-Fuchs 772). In the NFL draft, the NFL (the state in this comparison) decides the qualifications of players and their contractual obligations.

Strict contracts with “harsh terms and conditions of employment” are also artifacts of modern slavery’s lack of free will (Paz-Fuchs 775). I may not be able to say that players voluntarily enter the sport because their parents and media may influence their decision unbeknownst to their tiny brains (Chadwick 349). So, it may not be up to interpretation that players are indeed modern slaves since their consent to enter has been nullified or forced onto them by adults, and their ability to leave the professional realm depends on their influence and paycheck, and whether they get traded out. The NFL is a corporation, and the former director of the Anti-Slavery Society (ASS) specified that when corporations force work onto individuals it is forced labor, not slavery; slavery occurs when individuals with a right to own people as property also have the right to force their property into labor (Paz-Fuchs 773). The NFL is a corporation of individuals who have property rights over the players, so the argument can lean in either direction I guess.

In 1996, Brown v Pro Football Incorporated, the court ruled in favor of the players who complained of fixed salaries due to their owners following an expired union agreement; this fell outside of antitrust due to an exception in the law applying to labor negotiations, yet since the agreement’s grace period expired, then the exception was no longer applicable (Corcoran 1069). The players found that they could not negotiate individually for higher, or different, salaries. Extension of the exemption would have made true negotiation negligible since there was nothing to negotiate about according to the team owners (Corcoran 1069).

1B: Why are slaves historically Black?

Arabs, not Europeans, were the first demographic to introduce racism into Africa (Isaboke 36), so it is not like the white people were the first to discover Black people. Francois Bernier probably came decades after that. Prior to that, though, visitors marveling at African archaeological and societal progress got jealous and began “to fashion an exploitative system that rendered the African race a global model of mockery,” thus depreciating African dignity; Europeans even controlled African chiefs (Isaboke 37; 42). Africans who called themselves white began to regard their former fellows as savages (Isaboke 43). Johann Friedrich Blumenbach argued in the late 1700s that monogenity explained why “all humans were equal in respect of most human qualities,” especially mental ones (Epple 305). This included Africans (Epple 305). The Europeans developed a superiority complex over the Africans because, while there was interaction between Africans, the Middle East, and Spain quite before the slave trade began, the European slave trade held a greater significance because of its coincidence with industrialization and the need to import raw materials (Isaboke 37). When Europeans came to Africa, the same philosophies that identified and differentiated races defined which humans could be converted into property (Isaboke 38).

However, even Blumenbach, the most staunch opponent of racism and slavery at the time, grappled with the idea that there were enough differences among humans to create a sort of hierarchy (Epple 305). While not specifying his hierarchy, Blumenbach added that there was a gradient between the Black and white race that included all other races (Epple 309). This was in opposition to philosophers who wrote that humans came from different origins and refuted any opposing idea (Epple 309). In 1441, the “first seaborne contact between Europe and Africa” was recorded into history (Allen 16-17). This Iberian-West African exchange took West African slaves to what would now be Spain and Portugal along with peppers and rice; about 100 slaves per year were transported, a small amount in comparison to the more familiar transatlantic slave trade (Allen 17). Iberia yearned for African sugar and obtained it with slaves of mixed races; some of them were almost equivalent to free Blacks but not quite (Allen 18). By the 1500s, Iberia specifically wanted São Tomé’s sugar; the island’s sugar industry boomed between 1550 and 1600 (Allen 18). This was when Iberia used all African slaves; this may have inspired the New World model according to some scholars (Allen 18). Africa became vulnerable as countries started stealing its “land, manpower, farm produce, minerals,” and anything else beneficial for white Europeans to take (Isaboke 40). On slave ships, Africans were organized by their region of origin and Blackness for buyers; this resulted in a “polyglot assortment of African peoples” (Eltis et al 167). This makes it hard to believe that enough of those Africans who went to certain colonies had much profitable rice growing expertise or experience (Eltis et al 167). Unlike Spain and Portugal, South Carolina did not need African slaves to export rice in the late 1600s (Eltis et al 164). Many of the Africans that they used did not have rice growing experience (Eltis et al 166). However, Europe had already planted indigo, tobacco, cacao, and other cash crops in other American spots without any prior experience in growing them, so that set a precedent (Eltis et al 164).

In Cuba, Africans were the only legal slaves because they were captured in just wars against Muslim countries (Epple 302). Since they were enemies, it was okay to do this (Paz-Fuchs 769). However, due to rape, it was hard to distinguish Africans from other races in Cuba such as mullatoes, Zumbas (Indian and African heritage,) Quinterons (Cuban, Mullato, and African heritage), Cuarterons (Mullato and white heritage), and countless others (Epple 302). It became difficult to distinguish who would receive their “respective privileges and prohibitions” (Epple 302). However, skin color was most important, beating out religion for the top comparison for the distribution of privileges and punishments (Epple 302). In 1788 New York, transatlantic slaves became the only people who could be signed into and enforced under an employment contract; white people, however, “could not be subject to long term contracts from which they could not unilaterally withdraw” (Paz-Fuchs 770). By the 1840s, some cultural mixing occurred between America and Liberia; slaves wore “American frock coats and top hats in the simmering African heat,” practiced Protestantism, and ate American food imports like bacon (Allen 20). This came one century prior to the “Negro problem” but bears a striking similarity in that Black slaves, who were supposed to be segregated, were allowed to participate in American culture overseas. This was clearly an intentional, capitalistic act of assimilation because they wanted to treat their slaves well and get more profit as per George Ellison.

About half of the slaves came from the coast and may have known about risiculture, yet the other half from inland may have only heard of rice but not grown it (Eltis et al 168). The most popular slave destinations were Sierra Leone and the Windward Coast, as it were (Eltis et al 167). Many voyages, however, went to Upper Guinea, where people ate millet and maize, not rice (Eltis et al 167). Even those slaves hailing from Sierra Leone and the Windward Coast ate very little rice (Eltis et al 167). Some scholars believe that Upper Guinea was the place to go for rice slaves, though, because of their contributions to rice technology; these slaves were “less feared there than in the demographically imbalanced Caribbean sugar islands” (Eltis et al 171). “Before 1700, rice was ‘black,’ in that Africans were the Atlantic's ‘master rice producers;’ only later did the crop go ‘brown’ as whites learned how to cultivate it” (Eltis et al 169). Why were white Europeans going to Africa for rice cultivators when they could have been doing it themselves the whole time? Well, there is one region specifically that had a background in rice, and maybe the Europeans were too busy generalizing African culture to recognize it: in Rio Nuñez, there was a centuries-old rice tradition (Eltis et al 170). Going to only one spot would not have been lucrative for Europeans taking advantage of African slaves; they had to diversify and sprawl all around the coast to scrounge up all the free labor that they could get, right?

Why is there a Black majority in American football and a Cuban majority in baseball?

In the 1700s, voyagers worked to further discover biological racial classifications to follow in the footsteps of French physician Francois Bernier, who in 1684 devised the first four categories of Europeans, Africans, Orientals (Asians), and Lapps (Arctic and Northern European folk) (Schulz 327). Samuel Morton showed in the 1800s through the pseudoscience of craniometry that Ethiopians (Africans) had the smallest skulls in comparison to Caucasians, Mongolians (Asians), Malay (Austronesians), and Americans (American Indians) and conclusively had the smallest intellects as well, with whites being at the top and Blacks on the bottom of course (Schulz 328). I am surprised that they did not include Moors (Muslims) there because at some point in history, Muslims did visit Africa. Maybe the Moors were the contemporary Negros, so they were not counted in the data. This resembles how Africans on slave ships were divided by Blackness and region of origin (Eltis et al 167). Africans were also seen as educated apes who could regain their dignity by assimilating with white culture (Isaboke 43). However, the African skulls were twice as thick as those of white skulls, perfect for ramming and concussing in the pugilism ring, although despite the odds, Black fighters won more often (Schulz 329). Centuries prior to that, other large countries such as China and Portugal visited Africa, and the only difference that they had seen was the stuff that was better than their own that they wanted to steal for themselves (Isaboke 37).

In 1931, Westbrook Pegler argued that baseball should not be the American pastime because it was the only sport that still segregated Black players; America was, and is, a diverse nation, so a fully white sport did not properly represent that reality (Wiggins 6). In 1933, Heywood Broun contested that since a Black player was representing the country in the Olympics for track, it was nonsense that Black people were incapable of playing baseball (Wiggins 7). Research in the 1930s failed to conclude that there was one universal difference between Black and white bodies when it came to athletic power because, as it turned out, all Black bodies were different (Schulz 330). The white treatment of Black people has even been directly compared to Nazi treatment of minorities in Germany. Wendell Smith, thought that this comparison was fitting for the time since there was both racial and political unrest and the American “democratic process and belief in fair play” very much conflicted with their image of baseball to the world audience (Wiggins 11). White people began to protest for Black representation in baseball; for example, in 1939, New York senator Charles Perry introduced a bill that disapproved of racial policies in baseball, and Jimmy Powers devised a similar campaign that let the country focus on Black players in the United States rather than minorities across the world (Wiggins 14). In 1940, the New York Trade Union Athletic Association planned an “ending of Jim Crowism in baseball day that summer (Wiggins 14).

Black historians have credited the New Deal with a refreshed white stance on Black culture and interactivity (Wiggins 14). Despite this new stance, in the 1960s, orthopedists tried to pass the claim that Black people did not suffer from osteoporosis and failed (Schulz 331). Black people also had heavier, stronger bones according to a couple of other studies in the 1960s (Schulz 331). The fact that Americans began to protest for Black integration of baseball players after World War I may have been partially because there was still pseudoscience surrounding the mystique of the Black body. Why else would white people want to put Blacks in the ring when there was still rampant racism? I find it hard to believe that in the worst period of American history for Black culture (well, one of them anyway,) white people would suddenly find Black people to be worthy contenders; they wanted them destroyed. They wanted to test the theory for themselves that Black skulls were thicker and could withstand a hit with a ball or a bat, or even a hand or an elbow. In one particular year, scientists believed that Black people felt less pain than white people did, so they could play football so well and be on the sidelines for less time; that fairly recent year was 2017, only 7 years ago (Schulz 338). This is modern slavery: the revoking of Black dignity who cannot own their bones without being scrutinized for their differences. They resort to listening to the experts because they are the ones who now own their bodies and can dictate what differentiates them from white bodies. The beliefs that have existed since the days of slavery concerning the success of the Black body have only mutated and not disappeared, which is a crying shame. The rise in Black football players in the 1960s coincided with the civil rights movement and these studies which tried to demonstrate exactly why Black players were superior. The only shift was that Black people became the hero rather than the enemy, but the skepticism was still the same: there must be a reason why Black people are different from white people. There must be a singular scientific thing separating us besides skin color. Oh, maybe they are still magical and still carry obeah traits in their thick bones.

Shortly after Lewis’ Crimson, there were the Acme Colored Giants from 1898 from the Iron and Oil League, the last Black team to openly compete against white teams (Hanssen 604-605). After that, through the 1940s, Black teams were segregated from the big leagues despite no formal ban because of their “inferior ability and natural preference” (Hanssen 605). Did they measure their skulls? Did they watch pugilism tournaments to witness that Black contestants were actually far superior to their white opponents? Were they repeating history and being jealous of the other for being superior and wanting to steal their dignity away like what happened with the Persians and Chinese folk? These critics must not have researched Lewis and Jackson prior to making those remarks. To me, this is a mark of modern slavery because this loss of dignity made the teams dependent on their owners, or themselves, for finding another chance to show their talents in a dignified environment.

In 1944, the “Negro problem” entered the public consciousness after the American public tried to mull over how thousands of Black soldiers died for their country even though they were segregated against (Hanssen 605). This bears similarity to when Africa lost all of its glory and Africans had to assimilate themselves to white culture in order to feel equal; as a result, they saw their fellow Black men as inferior. The Africans who whited themselves like that became loyal to the cause of an institution that would ultimately hurt them, as these Black soldiers did for the army, and for their game. Baseball took advantage of this to finally begin its integration process (Hansse 605-606). It wanted to make money from the wealthier class of Black people (Hanssen 605-606) who I assume were the rich descendants of slaves aforementioned. It took exploitation to see the use of Black people in both slavery and baseball. The Negro Leagues had become a smashing success and the big white leagues wanted to steal some of that thunder for themselves (Hanssen 606). Branch Rickey, president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, entered the scene consulting with “race experts” about how best to integrate (Hanssen 606). In an earlier time, Rickey would have been a polygenist who believed that different races had different biological origins; this is why he had to talk to pseudoscientists about how to pair the races into a homogeneous team. While I appreciate his dedication to his craft, I fail to see how he missed the thick skulled power of Black athletes beforehand. If he had truly understood their prowess, then he would have jumped straight into integration sooner.

The integration process was slow and arduous, as by the end of the 1940s, there were only 26 Black professional football players, albeit tokenized; most of them were put into the same positions of halfback, defensive back, and end, some of the first to be tackled I assume (Lomax 165). The teams added and dropped players each season to make it appear on paper as if they were recruiting more Black players, yet recruitment actually decreased into the 1950s (Lomax 165). The only way in which Africans could taste redemption from being seen as educated apes upon their first European encounter was to imitate white people (Isaboke 43). This seems like a similar tactic executed by the tokenized players. They needed to prove to the world audience that Black people could indeed play baseball; Africans wanted to show that they could be independent and even disregard their Blackness as evil (at the time, that would have been the safest thing to do anyway.) Was this done to satisfy the world audience shocked by Nazism? It was certainly done to satisfy civil rights groups. The Washington Redskins were the primary culprits of this cheat, and the primary target for the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) who led boycotting and picketing efforts against the NFL for their maltreatment of Black talent (Lomax 165). This worked, as the Redskins’ captain desegregated the team shortly after the protests began (Lomax 165). By the 1960s, with the rise of the Civil Rights movement, Black football players began to speak out against their injustices more often, although they were still “not yet completely free to respond as men” (Lomax 166). Football experts and sociologists both began to see the rise of Black confidence as correlated with their participation in American football, and as a sign of American “opportunity and open competition” being intact (Lomax 167). When world cultures went to visit and marvel at African culture, they began to physically steal goods and mentally steal dignity and independence, and here, white culture has also manipulated the independence of Black players for their own gain. Yes, Black people finally have their place to shine, but now it has become about the entire country and not the players. It became about football as an American sport, not as an outlet for Black culture. In this way, football was stolen from Black people just as the world cultures took the culture from the Africans way back when.

Sports historians have universally described desegregation of sports as integration, mixing the terms up (White 2010 474-475). They needed to heed the wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr, who differentiated desegregation as the removal of the “legal and social prohibitions of segregation” and integration as the “positive acceptance of desegregation” and the welcomed participation of Negroes into the total range of human activities” (White 2010 473). Regardless, in 1962, Daryl Hill became the first Black player in the Atlantic Coast Conference (White 2010 484-485). Shortly afterward, Wake Forest University announced its integration efforts, yet other schools stuck to their segregated guns (White 2010 484-485). Florida began to slowly dismantle its racist ways in 1968 when two universities integrated Black players (White 2010 484-485). “Ray Bellamy, who became the the first black football player at a white college in Florida when he accepted a scholarship from the University of Miami in 1967, recalls that Graves stated that he would not recruit black players” after using the Confederate Flag as their emblem (White 2010 486). By the late 1960s, pressure mounted on more universities to desegregate, and soon enough, recruiters only looked for the best players, not for race (White 2010 486). Early examples of integrated Black players came from a middle class background, however, and standardized tests fixed their tests so that white students had a better chance at entering universities and thus becoming college athletes who could go professional (White 2010 488).

1C: How has a whole generation of childhood sports coaching and abusive parenting contributed to this betting revolution? How did children get introduced to sports?

Inspired by Ancient Greek culture, Renaissance humanist educators philosophized that youth should be engaged in sport and education for character development (Bowen & Hitt 9). Exercise, character development, and assimilation were embraced as good sporting qualities in the latter half of the 1800s, ensuring that baseball became America’s pastime (Lewis 131). Adults who played sports wanted to emulate the energy of youth players who had all the opportunities in the world (Lewis 132). Some of these professional youth players were under five years of age (Lewis 134). Before playgrounds, and baseball fields, spread around in the 1890s in Chicago, elementary aged players were forced into public parks where “marauders” could be found (Pruter 13). In the 1870s, though, baseball clubs were organized by rank: the first nine were the nine best players, followed by the second and third nine; under this senior club was the junior club consisting of younger players who would advertise match games in the newspaper and sometimes travel out of town to play games (Pruter 3). Young players got violent with one another verbally and physically, and with the umpires and spectators occasionally (Pruter 8). By the 1880s, betting became a factor as they also began posting stakes and differentiating between sandlot and professional games (Pruter 16). Adults in the 1870s also sought physical perfection as authors threw around the claim that men needed to suppress their excess eroticism with proper diet and exercise (Lewis 141) and thus played sports. In Chicago, seniors were above the age of 21, juniors were between 16 and 21 years of age, and boys were under 16 (Pruter 3). Chicago also had the pony system in place (Pruter 5). The teams, like their senior peers, had constitutions, formal meetings, and elected officers to handle travel and competition (Pruter 5). On the eastern side of the country, seniors were 17 and older, juniors were 14 to 17 years of age, and ponies were 14 and under (Pruter 4). In New York, there were age groups, but the only one specified by this author was from 15 to 16 years of age (Pruter 6).

By the turn of the 20th century, during the Progressive Era, youth athletics were mostly run by youth themselves, except at boarding schools (Bowen & Hitt 8). This began to change in 1903, when New York City founded the Public Schools Athletic League in contribution to an increase in school-sponsored sports (Bowen & Hitt 8). This cemented sports as fundamental in public education (Bowen & Hitt 8). It was also a good measure for keeping poor and working class adolescents out of trouble after school (Bowen & Hitt 9). This succeeded the rise in playgrounds in the 1890s (Jebsen Jr 13) and coincided with the American belief that adolescents had an “inherent, organic passion for athletics” (Bowen & Hitt 9). Youth leagues from the 1920s, including the Golden Gloves and Pop Warner, began a trend that would prolong for decades (Lewis 134). After World War II, high school sports became an American symbol, with “urban migration trends, rural colleges dropping many of their sports programs, and the decline of local, amateur sports teams” (Bowen & Hitt 9).

Student athletes have been found to want to go to college more than the standard high school body, and score higher on standardized tests, if they were not fixed that is (Bowen & Hitt 10). Since these data had been in development for three decades (Bowen & Hitt 10), parents may have taken this as a sign to sign their kids up for youth sports programs early. Parents are more likely to consistently get their children trained in one specific sport over one year rather than jump from season to season from sport to sport (Chadwick 348) although the latter considers recovery as part of the training (Chadwick 351). They believe that training in one specific sport before the end of their children’s young “recreational age” will make them professionals earlier (Chadwick 348), but this overtraining is often a sign of a poor training plan by parents as well as the student coaches (Chadwick 351). The plan must incorporate testing and recovery as well (Chadwick 351). The NCAA, for example, limits how many hours athletes can spend on extracurricular sports and activities such as strength training and yoga (Arabaci 18). This control of athletes’ free time is a bit sickening to me, because this possession relates directly to another facet of modern slavery. “Control tantamount to possession” does not necessitate ownership but rather total power over victims or employees (Paz-Fuchs 765), which means that in this case, the NCAA having complete control over the free time of their players is equivalent to them owning slaves as property and managing every aspect of their lives.

More and more child sports injuries have led more modern parents to take a slower approach to indoctrinating their children into sports, such as developing skills rather than winning games (Chadwick 350). In the United States, the military and sports go hand-in-hand. In the 1920s, after the dread of World War I, an emotionally drained population of people was looking for a change; the American culture began to seek self-gratification rather than “commitments to the advancement of society” (Lewis 130). Sports satisfied these new needs because they were fun and self-gratifying while embracing traditional values (Lewis 130-131). The discipline, leadership, and teamwork taught by sports play in a well-funded national physical education system has contributed to the country’s “strong capitalist orientation” (Arabaci 13). However, only a small fraction of those graduates who played sports in college have gone on to become professional athletes, as expected (Arabaci 17). At least these amateur athletes could not be harassed into signing professional and commercial contracts (Arabaci 17).

In high school, no matter the background of the student, being close friends with or the friend of a friend of a football player raises their popularity level marginally (Kreager 705). The hypermasculinity associated with football may send a bad message to the peer group because it demonstrates that violence maintains “valued male identities” (Kreager 706). These students feel a certain sense of honor and duty to retain their social status (Kreager 708). I would add that if there are females in the peer group, that would make them feel inferior because they would feel the need or urge to possess this violent popularity. Associating success with violence can make football players unreachably popular and turn them into selfish bullies as well, with positive football qualities such as “striving for distinction, sacrificing for the team, playing through pain, and refusing to accept limits” turning into deviant qualities (Kreager 706; 708). Outside of school, former athletes generally made more money (Bowen & Hitt 10). Violent ones have the potential to become coaches, but tactile ones at that (Kreager 706).

The actions of coaches reflect their personal lives and their communities; many desire to coach as they were once coached, which makes them feel good about themselves and like they are satisfying a specific life narrative that they are expected to follow (Duggan & Piper 448). They want to exhibit good qualities to their peer groups, such as strength and grace, and teach them to their student athletes in order to line them up for excellence (Duggan & Piper 448). Coaches have to be virtuous in order to realize these qualities (Duggan & Piper 449). Whatever a coach does is determined by their wise contributions to the sport itself, with their judgments about when to properly use physical contact on student athletes being a major pinnacle of success in achieving a higher realm of satisfaction (Duggan & Piper 448). Coaches that are confident in themselves are most likely to prosper (Duggan & Piper 453). That being said, most coaching regulations disallow coaches to touch their student athletes (Duggan & Piper 444). Physical contact falls on the line between parental and loco parentis; in other words, coaches have to be like parents, but not be parents, so they cannot touch their students while acting as authority figures (Duggan & Piper 446). In modern slavery, de jure possession is not always apparent, yet complete control adjacent to ownership is key (Paz-Fuchs 765); coaches cannot act like they own the children they advise. Wisdom and judgment are better deterrents against abuse than regulations which make tactile coaches fear trying mandated untraversed strategies (Duggan & Piper 449; 444). Coaches, and parents, should not identify the best players as the ones who used the most violent tactics, because then the students feel entitled to receive that same recognition outside of the football field whether through associating with violent peers or continuing the cycle of bullying inferior peers (Kreager 709-710; 711).

Parents want their children to watch sports events to get them more inclined to enter sports themselves and practice sports and struggle until their “reach exceeds [their] grasp” (Chadwick 349), expecting sports scholarships that will ultimately pay for only a portion of tuition as expected for even the professionals (Chadwick 352). Paramount+, for example, has shows from CBS, MTV, BET, and Nickelodeon, with Yellowstone viewers intersecting with CBS NFL viewers (Faughnder 24). Since the NFL games are essentially on the same channel as Nickelodeon, then I do not see why children would not have open access to football games. Alternative broadcasts of NFL games have begun to take over the football mediascape. In October 2023, the NFL collaborated with Walt Disney Company to have the characters of Toy Story virtually commentate on one game; this came after another Disney show, Big City Greens, narrated a game (Havard & Ryan 2). This became the most watched live program on Disney+ and ESPN+ (Havard & Ryan 3). The production was “an important step to not just the NHL and Disney, but to consumer entertainment as a whole” (Havard & Ryan 3). Kids seeing their favorite characters on the screen may inspire them to become athletic themselves. Children watching these broadcasts leads to parents inappropriately training their children (i.e. screaming at them or abusing them) by making them play year-round (Chadwick 350) and becoming argumentative with coaches (Chadwick 349). This is clearly not a good influence on malleable high school brains either. The Disney Channel, Disney XD, and ESPN audiences consisted of 765,000 viewers with a chunk being young boys and girls (Havard & Ryan 3). Outside of the NFL and NHL, more leagues were said to have been interested in working with Disney on alternative broadcasts of their games to rake in a younger marketing demographic and develop early brand loyalty (Havard & Ryan 4). Netflix and Amazon Prime have also had talks of venturing into this burgeoning field of entertainment, while still broadcasting live NFL and NHL games as with other streaming platforms such as Apple TV+ and Peacock; Nickelodeon already has jumped in with slime graphics in hand (Havard & Ryan 4).

Is it fair, though, to say that all children need to stay away from watching sports via alternative broadcasts? Goodwin believes that girls need to be involved in sports at a young age to compete with their male counterparts and learn to be empowered by the power of their bodies (Goodwin 9). Besides, almost half of NFL viewers are women (Goodwin 9). In 2015, the Women’s World Cup beat out the NBA and the Stanley Cup in ratings, as well as any other soccer game for the first time (Goodwin 9). At the same time, I believe that this excessive exposure to sports media at such a vulnerable age teeters on possession, a part of modern slavery. Do not forget that children are also victims, and easy ones at that. Parents trust the media companies to broadcast good content to their children on a daily basis, whether it is CBS or YouTube. Do they always do that? Of course not. Media giants controlling what parents feed to their children’s eyes and brains is scary enough; how about feeding them a mega corporation of racism and violence: the NFL? I am aware of the benefits of sports media for children, because it can instill the soft skills of teamwork, responsibility, and confidence in them and help them succeed, but the consequences outweigh the benefits when the media companies essentially possess the minds of children and make them milk their cash cow more and more. What if all children in the future watch football and aspire to become football players and nothing else? Can the NFL continue to exploit Black players and staff and turn their attention away from violence and concussions at a greater scale? Remember how many millions of people watch this stuff every day. The influence of the NFL is massive, and we do not want to perpetuate racism and violence anymore, especially in the young brains of our youth.

It is silly, to say the least, that team governors have exclusive power over the entire lives of their players, another element of modern slavery (Paz-Fuchs 782), but when considering how athletes are plastered all over media and shoved in front of millions of eyeballs young and old every day, it is difficult for me to conclude otherwise. Owners play for the long run. They have a reputation to hold up; they represent the best players in the league, and they trade for more upon the opportunity to do so. They have an image to upkeep of them running the best teams; their progress and talents are broadcast internationally across cable and countless streaming platforms. If an owner does not care about their reputation, then they are controversial and ripe to be terminated. Sports are entertainment at the end of the day, and if owners are not performing and making the right decisions, then where is the intrigue? This may apply to coaches as well. They cannot touch children physically, but they can touch their brains in conjunction with the influence of their parents. While these coaches cycle through hundreds of children in their careers and very rarely if ever see one of their student athletes go professional, they do have a shared part of adults coaxing children into sports. Think about what I wrote about how coaches also have a reputation and virtues to uphold to their peers; if they falter at their professions, then they do not keep the cycle of entertainment going.

How did people or children get educated about the benefits of slavery?

In 1572, the king of Spain, Philip II, made the enslavement of Morisco children (Muslims who accepted Christianity) under the age of 11 illegal, but they could not be returned to their families (Cavanaugh 1289). The fact that Muslims, automatically enrolled in slavery, could convert to Christianity meant that their children could not be captured (Cavanaugh 1307); however; they were to serve and be taught by good Catholics until they turned 20 since they were training to be adults (Cavanaugh 1289; 1307). Some young children taken as prisoners in wartime were being branded as slaves before the age of minority though; this affected more females than males (Cavanaugh 1290-1291). One can say, or maybe only I am saying, that these children were tossed around to different “leagues,” past the age of 11 mind you, until they became presumably Christian adults at 20, who were now converted and still playing the game as Chicago seniors. Or, if they had the mindset of modern parents, the adults kept the slave children employed in one particular location for a long time to really indoctrinate the Chrisian way; perhaps jumping around would have watered down too many details. Political debates concerning the slavery status of Morisco children lasted throughout the sixteenth century in Spain (Cavanaugh 1307). However, Philip II realized that controlling Morisco children made it “worthwhile to legislate their liberation” and provide them with lawyers (Cavanaugh 1307-1308). In their American colonies, childhood education maintained the colonial empire; this made it viable to create Morisco schools in Granada and Valencia (Cavanaugh 1307-1308). The only thing that they had to watch out for was Islamic parents teaching their Morisco youth Islamic values rather than Christian ones (Cavanaugh 1308). By the 1600s, taking Morisco children from their parents became more controversial “during the final expulsion” (Cavanaugh 1309). Exiled parents lost their children outside of the orders of expulsion and royal law (Cavanaugh 1309). These children were to serve and be educated “under the encomienda system by Old Christian families” or live in religious institutions (Cavanaugh 1309). If this was anything like the public school system that took children under their wing in the early 1900s, then the point was to keep the young dark-skinned ones off the streets, for reasons of idleness and existing while dark-skinned. The authority of a public institution such as a school system or a church would surely protect those children from racism and violence— sure.

In the early 1700s, White supremacists in South Carolina had a hard time exercising their power when colonies were majority Black from their slaves (Doyle 2023 64-65). This led to an increase in violence such as whippings, brandings, and starvation to keep slaves in line (Doyle 2023 64-65). Enslaved women were given the worst fieldwork (Doyle 2023 100). The risiculture of South Carolina exhibited the worst of the worst when it came to slave punishment, mimicking islands in the Caribbean (Doyle 2023 65).In the first half of the 1700s, slave children were taught by white artisans who got paid by the taxes of slaveholders (Doyle 2023 98). These children were placed into skills by the age of six at the earliest and by teenhood at the latest (Doyle 202 98). By 1740, it was illegal for slaves to learn how to read and write thanks to the Negro Act of 1740; this prevented slaves from forging freedom papers, yet some slaveholders taught their slaves how to read and write for their selfish purposes such as shopping at the market (Doyle 2023 73). Slaves would learn of their disadvantages by learning to read and write by the Union line in the army during the Revolutionary War; this eventually would promote the idea of better schooling in the South (Boonshoft 247). Soon, it did not matter how free Black people were when it came to fulfilling positions in skilled artisanal labor as the need for artisans was rising in the latter half of the century (Doyle 2023 99). This placed poor white people out of business and jobs, but white owners made slaves more dependent on them to displace the cultural shift a bit (Doyle 2023 100).

In Connecticut, slave children could not serve beyond the age of 25 thanks to the Gradual Abolition Act of 1784 (Menschel 187). This law emancipated the future children of these child slaves after 25 years of servitude (Menschel 188). This meant that those future children were less valuable as slaves and therefore manumission was more likely to occur for them, disregarding strict manumission laws enacted by the state (Menschel 208). Children who were born before March 2nd, 1784 would not be affected by the new law and would be enslaved for life (Menschel 188). This resembles the age structure proposed by Chicago and New York leagues; by the age of 21, kids do not want to play kid games anymore, and adults saw that 25 was the age when slave children should have stopped being slave children. Slaveowners lost money to gradual abolition, so their ability to hold future slave children for laborious purposes to the age of 25 secured their income for longer although it still cost money to rear the child (Menschel 216). As of 1792 (Menschel 206), those slaves who were between 25 and 45 years of age were examined for their desire for liberation, and the master was given a certification of liberation upon a passing grade (Menschel 205-206). Three laws limited the creation of new slaves in Connecticut: the 1774 Nonimportation Act, the 1784 Gradual Abolition Act, and the existing ban on capturing runaway slaves (Menschel 193). One loophole was that slave children and adolescents were neither free nor enslaved under the Gradual Abolition Act because the act specified servitude, not slavery (Menschel 193). In 1797, the age for emancipation of the children of contemporary slaves was reduced from 25 to 21 (Menschel 220). This new amendment created four different law situations for slave children, thus complicating matters further (Menschel 220).

In the 1850s, southern states wanted to create slave schools to keep slavery alive for the “slaveholding elite” (Boonshoft 242). While slaveholders did not trust northern public universities which educated the southern population as a whole, they subsidized southern ones that “made Southern men” over an undisclosed amount of time (Boonshoft 242). Their mere existence promulgated proslavery ideals, and those who did not own slaves themselves hired college slaves (Boonshoft 242). Legal education, which in the South promoted slavery, got sectionalized before other disciplines did, which helped the south divulge their proslavery philosophies to a wider audience (Boonshoft 242). The institution of slavery prolonged the lack of education of poor white southerners to upkeep white supremacy, which did not require education for everyone in order to maintain its influence over the South; they did not realize, though, that the institution prolonged their poverty (Boonshoft 243).

Slave children were blissfully ignorant to the fact that their slavery was unjust, to acts of sexual abuse which came with the trade, and to the concept of who an American was (Parent Jr & Wallace 369; 376). Slave children faced public beatings, naked parades, and deep animalistic inspections in order to deplete them of their independent minds and associate themselves with the depreciation of slavery (Parent Jr & Wallace 381). They were told that their worth was measured by their size, breeding ability, and monetary value on the slave market (Parent Jr & Wallace 386). They experienced information repression so that they did not retain human traits such as a birth date or knowledge of their parents (Parent Jr & Wallace 381). Funny how the worth of college athletes is measured by standardized testing rigged by and for the white man too. It almost seems like they are also being compared and sold to schools like products, based on how white they could score on their SATs.

Their owners made sure that their slave chattel had a negative perspective of sexuality as well (Parent Jr & Wallace 381). The children endured “soul murder” through reprehensible sexual acts (Parent Jr & Wallace 382). They learned that resisting sexual abuse could result in beatings or sale (Parent Jr & Wallace 391). However, it may have depended on what kind of person their owner was. Younger coaches have normalized the aspect of themselves being a source of danger to children, while anxious older coaches have dismissed this radical philosophy as a major restriction to their coaching dynamic; only more courageous older coaches have shown their valor by rolling with the punches (Duggan & Piper 444). Former athletes who were popular and violent in school begin to strip away their popularity as the media gets their hands on them with sensationalized stories about brawls, assault, and bullying (Kreager 706). Slave children resisting the wrong adult could have gotten them in deep trouble, because there was no such thing as normalizing the possibility of being a little off-putting for children back then; adults raped children, and hell, adult coaches still want to rape and assault children. Who am I to say that all coaches have become less touchy when racism was supposed to stop in 1865? Who says that there are not coaches that still have racist attitudes toward young players? They may not be physical, but they may be microaggressive and provide less opportunities for the dark-skinned child even though they make the big bucks in the big leagues. Who knows; maybe they want to see the kid go on a self-sufficient journey to the top, a rags-to-riches story.

Because they repressed information about their real parents, slave children had to see their owners as parental figures and “maintain the image of a loving, rescuing parent or caretaker” (Parent Jr & Wallace 382). To this extent, slaveholders pampered the slave children and adjusted them into a new family dynamic wherein the slaveowner stood between the biological parents and their offspring (Parent Jr & Wallace 382). Children even got brainwashed into relating to their aggressors (Parent Jr & Wallace 383). Slave children had to entertain themselves with regulated playful songs such as Sugar Tea and Goosey the Middle (Parent Jr & Wallace 376; 377). The children also sang rebel songs but not spirituals (Parent Jr & Wallace 376). In plays and productions, the portrayal of Black people was “carefully scrutinized by the masters, but also by their parents, who were trying to protect them from chastisement and harm” (Parent Jr & Wallace 377). Those slave children who chose religion over folly faced harsh criticism but found their way toward autonomous identities faster (Parent Jr & Wallace 377). Modern slave children— I mean, children— are inundated with entertainment. All media is owned and scrutinized by companies; do you think that it is an accident that alternative broadcast deals have become so popular among streaming platforms? They want children brainwashed into a gamified, slimy version of football and baseball so that they can be exploited when they strive to become professional players down the line. They want to indoctrinate children with the American way; that person was correct who compared America to Nazism, because there does not seem to be a way out of children becoming part of the one patriotic sport of football. Slave children associated freedom with state-recognized marriages (Parent Jr & Wallace 380). Former slaves referred to their owners as their “white families” and exhibited deadened emotions, but managed to psychologically recover in time through their ego strength through the recognition of the evils they endured (Parent Jr & Wallace 383; 386).