Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete

Name: Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete
SKU: 174578
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4.8 | 1,005 ratings

Price: 12.78

Last update: 02-14-2025

About this item

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 former 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 Forty Million Dollar Slaves weaves a compelling narrative of Black athletes in the United States, from the plantation to their beginnings in 19th-century boxing rings and at the first Kentucky Derby to the history-making accomplishments of notable figures such as Jesse Owens, Althea Gibson, and Willie Mays.

Rhoden makes the cogent argument that Black athletes' "evolution" has merely been a journey from literal plantations to today's figurative ones, in the form of collegiate and professional sports programs. Drawing from his decades as a sportswriter, Rhoden contends that Black athletes' exercise of true power is as limited today as when masters forced their slaves to race and fight.

Sweeping and meticulously detailed, Forty Million Dollar Slaves is an eye-opening exploration of a metaphor we only thought we knew.

phillip king

Well Paid Slaves Are Still Slaves

Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2016

I’d known of this book for some time and never got around to reading it until now and it was well worth the wait. William Rhoden’s writing style is very engaging which allows the reader to go through this book pretty fast. Rhoden is a man that clearly understands racism better than most and his critiquing of the plight of the Black male athlete has many dimensions to it. The love that although he is critical, his writing does not devolve into simply anti-Black ranting (like so many Black authors and so called race scholars). He devoted a chapter to Michael Jordan and gives a pretty good summation of what Michael Jordan has meant to sports, Black people and white people. Rhoden acknowledges that Jordan always avoided taking a stand for his people, but also acknowledges a personal experience he had speaking with Jordan, where Jordan seemed to be aware of how careful a Black male has to be with his image in the white media. Rhoden does not call Jordan names, but doesn’t let him off the hook either. Most of the book is devoted to Black athletes and entrepreneurs the general public knows very little about like Tom Molineaux, Rube Foster and many others. This book is incredibly informative and expertly details the mistakes Black people continuously make in the athletic arena under white control. I recommend this book to all Black people. You will not regret it. All sports fields that Black people dominate are nothing but plantations with powerless slaves making money for rich white men. The slaves might make more money that they did in the past, but their numbers are small and the masses of Black people still suffer in a society of vast economic inequality across racial lines. The athletes that prosper under white institutions are nothing but FORTY MILLION DOLLAR SLAVES.

M. JEFFREY MCMAHON

The Paradox of the "Slave Athletic Celebrity"

Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2006

Rhoden's aim in this finely written and very readable screed is to explore the African American star athlete's paradoxical dilemma: On one hand, he is worshipped for his athletic prowess and is lavished with millions of dollars. On the other hand, he is beholden to white team owners, white league administrators, and as such is limited to the role of a super-paid lackey.

Some reviewers object to the slavery analogy and the exodus from the plantation to the Promised Land that is heavily used in Rhoden's argument. But Rhoden is correct to point out that the slavery is both spiritual and power-based. Spiritual because too many African American athletes, Rhoden charges, are so busy micromanaging their careers that they have no sense of the broader context, of African American history (one star athlete was shocked with disbelief when he discovered that blacks were once banned from Major League Baseball). Power-based because too many blacks are relegated to "black" roles and forget the larger mission of making more opportunities for blacks in positions of privilege.

Whether or not you agree with Rhoden's analogy, I would argue that the book is nevertheless very readable and entertaining, giving us powerful narratives of how black men, starting with the emancipated slave fighter Tom Molineaux, left America to fight the English champion Tom Cribb and showed whites that blacks' athletic performance defied stereotypes about being dense, ignorant, maladroit, etc. By studying Molineaux, Ali, and other African American greats, Rhoden shows how black athletes who see themselves as symbols of black power help forge the way for other black athletes.

On a personal note, Rhoden, an African American, explains in his own life growing up in Chigaco in the 1950s and 1960s, that sports are a great avenue for learning about race and American history. I am no exception. As a child, I loved Hank Aaron and one day as I read about the way he was bullied and denied white restaurants and hotels, I got a bitter taste of what this country was like for people of color and contemplated the hideous color divide.

Sports is a powerful metaphorical arena for talking about race and Rhoden has done an exemplary job of developing that metaphor in a book that is always engaging and provocative.

GREGORY

WE HAVE COME SO FAR WITH A LONG WAY TO GO

Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2023

This book has been on my reading list for a few years, and it is one of the most profound books I have read in a long time, and it did not disappoint! The research for the book was exceptional coupled with his own lived experiences made it even better. Overall a must read for any black aspiring athlete and their loved ones, or even for a white person looking to get a perspective outside of their inherent privilege. A definite recommendation and hope to read more from this author!

Robert S. Bernstein

A book worth reading

Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2018

Bill Rhoden is an excellent writer and deeply invested in this topic. The book aroused my consciousness about the exploitation of athletes. However it was a polemic, not a thoughtful analysis. I don't think that the actions of owners are always based on racism. The profit motive is more important. This is most evident in his inability to accept the ways in which Bob Johnson approaches ownership. Similarly, he seems to feel that if an athlete does not militantly forward the cause, he is a tool of the owners. I support the need for athletes to advocate their interests, but their view of their interests are not necessarily the same as the author's.

For a white sports fan, the book is eye-opening, but it should not be taken as dogma.

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