A Hard Road to Glory, 1970 - Present

"The definitive documentation of African American sporting history."
-Kenny Moore, Sports Illustrated

Arthur Ashe's A Hard Road to Glory expertly captures the epic struggles and hard-won achievements of African American athletes throughout history. This revised and expanded Third Edition features new introductions, new photographs, new data, and a fourth volume that brings Ashe's classic up to the present day.

Volume 1 follows the emergence of sports in African American daily life and covers the period that gave rise to Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion; Marshall Taylor, "the world's fastest cyclist"; and Isaac Murphy, the first three-time winner of the Kentucky Derby. Volume 2 encompasses America's golden age of sports, when segregation led to the formation of independent black athletic organizations and Jesse Owens and Joe Louis became international sports figures. Volume 3 opens as Jackie Robinson breaks baseball's color line and shows how, as the sports industry becomes big business, athletes from Muhammad Ali to Curt Flood and Spencer Haywood begin to claim their places in the spotlight. Volume 4 takes updated material from the previous edition of Volume 3 (1970-1986) and brings the series up to date with all-new material on the last two decades, in which African American athletes become the most dominant and characteristic players in the NBA, the NFL, and Major League Baseball.

"For any reader trying to understand the relationship between sports and society and why there are so many blacks on the playing field but so few coaching and in the front offices and in the news media, I cannot commend A Hard Road to Glory too highly."
-David Halberstam, The New York Times

"No library should be without A Hard Road to Glory."
-Stan Isaacs, New York Newsday

Arthur R. Ashe, Jr. (1943-1993), was a social activist, author, and scholar as well as the winner of tennis championships at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, and the World Cup Team Finals.