William Miles Collection

The complete Black Champions interviews encompass 18 hours of footage featuring such prominent sports figures as Curt Flood, Arthur Ashe, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilma Rudolph, and Floyd Patterson. They provide an in-depth oral history of African American life as it relates to sports and civil rights from the early 1900s to the 1980s. Unrestricted access to this collection of never-before-seen interviews can now provide a substantial research and teaching resource for scholars and students investigating civil rights history and the role of athletics in U.S. culture.  One of the most distinctive aspects of the Black Champions interviews is the strong presence of African American female athletes from the mid-20th Century. Women sports pioneers interviewed include track gold medalists Wilma Rudolph and Alice Coachman-Davis, and tennis champion Althea Gibson.  The contributions of Black female athletes often is overlooked in sports histories, and filmed interviews with such women are not nearly as common as those with their male counterparts. The Film & Media Archive is pleased to present all 32 interviews reassembled and able to be viewed in their entirety for the first time, thanks to a generous grant from the National Historic Publications & Records Commission (NHPRC).