USF St. Petersburg campus Honors Program Theses (Undergraduate)

First Advisor

Raymond 0. Arsenault, Ph. D.

Second Advisor

Jack Davis, Ph. D.

Third Advisor

James Fellows, Ph. D.

Publisher

University of South Florida St. Petersburg

Document Type

Thesis

Date Available

2012-04-10

Publication Date

1996

Date Issued

1996-04-30

Abstract

The desegregation of intercollegiate athletics in the state of Florida during the late 1960s was characteristic of a regional trend in Southern colleges and sports toward an increasing level of racial interaction. While the rather belated recruitment of African-American athletes by Florida colleges appeared anachronistic in the national setting, this delay typified the Southern white resistance to dismantling the institution of segregation. However, the desire to create a nationally ranked or competitive team created an atmosphere advantageous to desegregating Florida's intercollegiate athletic programs. Quite simply, if Florida colleges wanted to create competitive teams then they needed talented athletes, even if those athletes happened to be black. Combined with the rising voice of the African-American struggle for equality and the birth of the black power movement in 1966, the recruiting of black athletes by Florida's colleges illustrated the diminishing reality of racial segregation.

Comments

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the University Honors Program, University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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