Dixieball

When Jimmy Carter ran for governor in 1970, his campaign circulated a flyer of his opponent, Carl Sanders, getting doused with champagne by tall, seminaked black men. As part owner of the Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association (Nba), Sanders was indulging in an old winning ritual. But that flyer was posted in churches and gas stations all around Georgia—as well as at Ku Klux Klan rallies. For the rural white conservative voters that Carter was chasing, the photo suggested that Sanders was cozy with African Americans. By then, basketball and blackness had intertwined identities. The Nba's great stars of the 1960s included Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and Elgin Baylor, while a high-flying, dynamic style emerged from black urban spaces. By the 1970s, thanks to the Nba's expansion and the new American Basketball Association (Aba), the number of professional franchises multiplied. As Thomas Aiello demonstrates in Dixieball, the arrival of pro basketball in the southern cities of Atlanta and New Orleans was fraught with complexity. Civic leaders promoted the teams as engines for sun belt economic development, but racial prejudices kept complicating this narrative

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