Publishers Weekly
09/02/2024
Moore (We Will Win the Day), a history professor at Michigan’s Grand Valley State University, provides a studious snapshot of the NFL’s prickly racial politics in the 1970s and ’80s. He focuses his account on Vince Evans of the Chicago Bears and Doug Williams of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who in 1979 became first Black quarterbacks to start an NFL game against each other. The son of educators, Evans enjoyed a comfortable middle-class childhood in Greensboro, N.C., before attending USC. Williams came from more humble means in Chaneyville, La., and played for Grambling State University. Moore emphasizes the stinging racism Evans and Williams faced in the pros, including having to contend with vitriol from white fans and doubts from coaches over whether Black quarterbacks were “smart enough to read a defense.” The Buccaneers won the matchup against the Bears and Williams would go on to lead the Washington Redskins to victory in Super Bowl XXII, while Evans was benched in favor of white quarterback Jim McMahon in 1983. The academic tone somewhat saps the excitement of the play-by-plays, but Moore makes a persuasive case that Williams and Evans expanded the notion of what was possible for Black athletes. It’s a winning examination of an overlooked milestone in football history. Agent: Jill Marr, Sandra Dijkstra Literary. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
Like a sharp pass zipped into the hands of a speedy receiver, Lou Moore hits his target in stride with The Great Black Hope. This is one of those delicious books with the ideal match of author and subject. Moore, a preeminent scholar of race and sports, tells the story not only of the historic NFL matchup between Doug Williams and Vince Evans, but of the nearly impenetrable fortress the league had built around the quarterback position that few Black men had been permitted to enter. This is a story that transcends sports, ultimately demonstrating that even the most aggressive attempts to sack Black achievement can’t withstand the opposing forces of persistence, talent, and courage forever. Eventually someone breaks through, and a position or a sport – or a country – is changed forever.”—David Maraniss, New York Times bestselling author of Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South
“Dr. Lou Moore is changing the way we understand the intersection of sports and the fight for Black liberation because he is perhaps the best researcher in the field. He understands the historic value of Black media in allowing the subjects of his research to speak for themselves. His book We Will Win the Day was a masterwork of this, weaving the story of desegregation into the world of sports in a manner we had not seen. Now, with The Great Black Hope, Moore is writing about the history of the Black quarterback with a depth of research and analysis that is unmatched.”—Dave Zirin, The Nation
“In this book, Lou Moore doesn't just tell the story of the Black quarterback through football history in ways it's never been told before — he also seamlessly weaves in football schematics and civil rights to perfectly illustrate everything Black quarterbacks have gone through to get here, from pioneers to the superstars of today.”—Doug Farrar, USA Today Sports
“As with most things in life, sport evolves through time. What is typically missing from the discourse though, is cultural and historical context. In The Great Black Hope, Moore accounts the racial battles, history, and impact of African-American quarterbacks on American professional football."—Shakeia Taylor, Chicago Tribune
"The Great Black Hope is a revelatory work—insightful, richly reported, and packed with fascinating detail. Like the best of all sports books, it’s about much more than sports. It’s about race, about America, about the past, present, and future. It’s an eye-opening, entertaining read from beginning to end." —Jonathan Eig, author of King: A Life
"Lou Moore writes with a sports journalist's eye for the action on the field, and a historian's sense for societal forces affecting the games we play — politics, business, tradition, and, above all, race. He spells out how the NFL's reflexive prejudice against Black quarterbacks stunted several professional careers, and derailed others before they could begin. Doug Williams and Vince Evans weren't the first Black quarterbacks in NFL history, nor were they the most statistically successful. But Moore sifts through the numbers and contemporary press accounts to build a persuasive case that Williams' and Evans' careers changed the game for Black quarterbacks — and the entire NFL. The league we see today owes a lot to those two players, and their staying power. If we want to understand how and why, we need fewer sports debate shows and more Lou Moore." —Morgan Campbell, author of My Fighting Family
“A piercing look at racial politics on the gridiron.”
—Kirkus
“Moore makes a persuasive case that Williams and Evans expanded the notion of what was possible for Black athletes. It’s a winning examination of an overlooked milestone in football history.”
—Publishers Weekly
Kirkus Reviews
2024-08-02
A history of Black athletes who crossed the color line that kept them from playing quarterback.
“Being a black quarterback,” wrote aLos Angeles Times sports columnist, “is like being a member of the bomb squad.” Make a mistake, in other words, andBoom! you’re done. In 1979, an era in which, writes Moore, “it was still a foreign concept that Black men could be the field generals,” two Black players set the field on fire: the Chicago Bears’ Vince Evans, the fastest quarterback in the league, and T Doug Williams, a man with the best arm in the game but “the wrong paint job” who played for several teams before becoming a coach. They were the only two starters; before them, coaches rerouted Black players with quarterback skills to play as running backs, with the assumption that, regardless of speed and strength, Blacks lacked the intelligence to helm a team. Indeed, for decades “all the so-called thinking positions” in football were the province of white players only. When Williams and Evans faced off at Soldier Field on September 30, 1979, it was rightly seen as a historic moment. Moore looks back in time at the lineage of Black players who by rights should have preceded them (who knew that Jesse Jackson played quarterback for his HBCU?) and notes a few good-faith efforts in the mid-1970s, as when, for instance, Joe Gilliam started for the Steelers ahead of Terry Bradshaw. Discerning social critics pointed out that the question wasn’t whether Black players were ready for the slot but whether football was ready for them. The answer came with Evans and Williams and then with their many successors, including Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts who, astonishingly, as late as 2023 were the first Black QBs to face off in a Super Bowl.
A piercing look at racial politics on the gridiron.
