Busboys Books Presents: Blood, Sweat, and Tears Jake Gaither, Florida A&M, and the History of Black College Football
Date and Time
Sep 30, 2019 6:30 pm
Location
14th & V
2021 14th St NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20009
Sep 30, 2019 6:30 pm
14th & V
This event is free to the public. Seating is first come, first served. Copies of Blood, Sweat, and Tears will be for sale in our bookstore. Full menu and bar will be available for purchase throughout the event.
Derrick will be in conversation with Damion Thomas, curator of the sports division in the National Museum of African American History & Culture.
Black college football began during the nadir of African American life after the Civil War. The first game occurred in 1892, a little less than four years before the Supreme Court ruled segregation legal in Plessy v. Ferguson. In spite of Jim Crow segregation, Black colleges produced some of the best football programs in the country. They mentored young men who became teachers, preachers, lawyers, and doctors--not to mention many other professions--and transformed Black communities. But when higher education was integrated, the programs faced existential challenges as predominately white institutions steadily set about recruiting their student athletes and hiring their coaches. Blood, Sweat, and Tears explores the legacy of Black college football, with Florida A&M’s Jake Gaither as its central character, one of the most successful coaches in its history. A paradoxical figure, Gaither led one of the most respected Black college football programs, yet many questioned his loyalties during the height of the civil rights movement.
Among the first broad-based histories of Black college athletics, Derrick E. White’s sweeping story complicates the heroic narrative of integration and grapples with the complexities and contradictions of one of the most important sources of Black pride in the twentieth century.
Derrick E. White is visiting associate professor of history at Dartmouth College.
Damion L. Thomas is Curator of Sports at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, is the author of “Globetrotting: African American Athletes and Cold War Politics.”
Sep 14, 2026 7:00 pm - Sep 15, 2026 4:00 am
