Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete by William C. Rhoden

304 pages

From Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe, African American athletes have been at the center of modern culture, their on-the-field heroics admired and stratospheric earnings envied. But for all their money, fame, and achievement, says New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden, black athletes still find themselves on the periphery of true power in the multibillion-dollar industry their talent built.

Provocative and controversial, Rhoden’s $40 Million Slaves weaves a compelling narrative of black athletes in the United States, from the plantation to their beginnings in nineteenth-century boxing rings to the history-making accomplishments of notable figures such as Jesse Owens, Althea Gibson, and Willie Mays. Rhoden reveals that black athletes’ “evolution” has merely been a journey from literal plantations—where sports were introduced as diversions to quell revolutionary stirrings—to today’s figurative ones, in the form of collegiate and professional sports programs. He details the “conveyor belt” that brings kids from inner cities and small towns to big-time programs, where they’re cut off from their roots and exploited by team owners, sports agents, and the media. He also sets his sights on athletes like Michael Jordan, who he says have abdicated their responsibility to the community with an apathy that borders on treason.

The power black athletes have today is as limited as when masters forced their slaves to race and fight. The primary difference is, today’s shackles are often the athletes’ own making.

REVIEWS

“Rhoden scores heavily with this Muhammad Ali of a book, one that blends autobiography with history, clarity of insight with passion. . . . A series of invaluable and irrefutable history lessons and contemporary cameos to illustrate Rhoden’s thesis that even the best paid of black American athletes live a double life—highly compensated, but in a state not unlike bondage.” —Arnold Rampersad, author of Jackie Robinson: A Biography and Days of Grace: A Memoir (with Arthur Ashe)

“Powerful and prophetic . . . Rhoden courageously lays bare painful truths about a fundamental reality in American life: the centrality of the excellence and exploitation of black athletes.” —Cornel West, author of Race Matters

“A book that touches the soul . . . Cuts to the heart of the matter, delivering a penetrating slice of the long and often painful journey to success taken by black athletes.” —Neil Amdur, former sports editor, New York Times