 Hi, everybody. Good afternoon. Welcome to the William G. McGowan Theater at the National Archives, which is situated on the ancestral lands of the Anacachank peoples. And welcome as well to those watching on our YouTube channel. I'm Lee Glazer. I'm the director of the National Archives Museum Programs Division, and it's a pleasure to introduce today's lecture by Alice Camps, curator of All American, The Power of Sports, now on display two floors up in the Lawrence F. O'Brien Gallery. So I hope you'll go up and see it after today's talk if you haven't already. It's terrific. I'd like to thank our non-profit partner, the National Archives Foundation, AT&T, AARP, and Mars Incorporated, as well as the History Channel, and the Lawrence F. O'Brien family for their generous support of the exhibition and related programming. Before we get to the talk, I want to tell you about two upcoming virtual programs that you can watch on our YouTube channel. Tomorrow, October 27th, at 1 p.m., author Terry Alfred tells the story of Abraham Lincoln through the strange points of contact between his family and those of the man who killed him, John Wilkes Booth, when he discusses his book in the houses of their dead, the Lincolns, the Booths, and the Spirits. Then on Friday, October 28th, at 11 a.m. Eastern time, we continue our series of the National Archives Comes Alive Young Learners program, as actor Linda Kenyon portrays Babe Detrickson, a two-time gold medal Olympian and trailblazer who broke many barriers for women in sports. To find out more about the National Archives programs and exhibits, please visit our website at www.archives.gov. Now, as you'll hear today, sports are powerful. Sports unite people, teach values, and inspire hope and pride. In the United States, sports have powered efforts to bring citizens together, shape their identities, and project a vision of what it means to be American. But sports also convey power upon athletes as well, the power to break social barriers and protest injustice. In All American, curator Alice Camps explores the power of sports, both to embody our national ideals and challenge us to live up to them. A curator at the National Archives since 2009, Alice's past exhibitions here include What's Cooking Uncle Sam, the government's effects on the American diet, and Remembering Vietnam. She began her museum career at the Chicago Children's Museum, directing arts education programs, and she studied fine arts as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and art therapy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Fittingly, Alice was also a high school tennis and track star, and she held her record, or she held her high school's record for the triple jump for many years. So please join me in welcoming Alice Camps. Thank you, Lee. And hello, everybody. Thank you so much for being here in person. I have to confess that the only reason I held the record in the triple jump was because after one track meet, my high school discontinued the event. But it's the only record I have, and so I'm claiming it. Well, today I'm going to talk to you about some of the stories that are covered in the power of sports, in All American, the power of sports. These are just a few of the stories. There are many, many more that you can learn about upstairs. But I wanted to focus on these three. Sports is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think about the National Archives, which holds the records of the federal government. But as the title of the exhibition reflects, sports are powerful. And the federal government has attempted to harness the power of sports for various reasons. And because of that, there are many documents, posters, films, photographs, and other types of records found in the holdings of various federal agencies and presidential libraries. These records tell, as I mentioned, fascinating stories. So I'd like to share the stories of three athletes today whose lives intersected with federal agencies attempting to harness the power of sports for different purposes. These stories illustrate some of the problems the government has tried to solve through sports and the ways that sports have empowered athletes, shaped their opportunities, and determined their fortunes. Each story shows how sports, powered government initiatives, and the personal goals of the athletes themselves. Finally, the stories reveal some of the limits of that power. Our first story opens at Camp Logan, a World War I Army training camp in Houston, Texas. It's 1917, one of the lowest points since the Civil War for race relations in the United States. And an all-black regiment is on its way to a segregated Texas city that aims to keep it that way. Marching with the 24th Infantry Regiment was Roy Tyler, a 17-year-old born into a Kentucky sharecropping family with a fourth grade education who told the enlistment officers he was 21 when he volunteered to sign up for the Army. The black soldiers sent to guard the construction of Camp Logan were reportedly proud to wear the uniform of the U.S. Army and eager to be shift off to Europe to contribute to the fight. Houston, however, did not welcome them. Some of the members of the deeply segregated city were threatened by their presence and felt the need to put them in their place. The soldiers were harassed by locals and brutalized by the police. Tensions and the soldiers' rage and resentment built. Rumors that the police had murdered one of the officers tipped the soldiers into open violence and rebellion. During the ensuing riot, members of the 24th Infantry killed 11 civilians and five policemen. Five soldiers also died in the melee. 110 soldiers were convicted in three rushed military trials. 19 of the soldiers were sentenced to death by hanging. 41 were sentenced to life in prison. Could we have the next slide, please? This image was taken at the mass trial of 63 of the accused, which military officials now call one of the most unjust military trials in our nation's history. The soldiers had one defense counsel who was not a lawyer and no opportunity for appeal. Tyler, as you can see from his prison form on the right, was sentenced to life in prison for mutiny and murder. But public outcry about the lack of due process shortened his sentence to 20 years and that of the other convicts with the opportunity of parole after seven. The public continues to protest the treatment of the soldiers. In fact, last December, a petition was submitted to grant clemency for the convicts that men convicted after the Houston riot. As of June, the army is reviewing that petition. So you may all be wondering what any of this has to do with sports. Bear with me just a bit longer. I need to back up a few years to explain. In the 1800s, the penal system had a problem. Prisoners had too much time on their hands. Public opposition to convict labor had limited their activities. Prison officials turned to baseball as part of the answer. They, like many progressive era reformers, saw sports as a way to develop character and teach values. According to a 2004 National Archives article in prologue magazine, co-written by archivist Timothy Reeves and his father, Robert Reeves, forward thinking wardens introduced baseball in the late 1800s to encourage good prisoner behavior. Slide, please. It proved to hit and spread quickly as a form of control and stress release. The article quotes 11 worth warden who said baseball takes the mind of the prisoner off his troubles, stimulates him to better efforts and is one of the best diversions available. This is a good photograph of the baseball diamond built at Leavenworth in 1912, complete with bleachers for 1500 spectators. The program was immediately popular but led to problems of its own. Unsurprisingly, the teams at the segregated prison formed along racial lines. The black team called the Booker T's so dominated the prison league that even the local paper reported, quote, hard feelings and racial hatred, unquote, in the black versus white contests. On the right is an article that you can find in the exhibit from the June 1914 prison newspaper remarking on a rare win by the white team against the Booker T's. Tension between the black and white teams was finally alleviated when they started playing outside the prison. They took on institutional, semi-professional, military and town teams. In fact, both black and white prison teams started booking ballparks, charging admission, splitting the gate with opponents and becoming accepted members of local baseball. Roy Tyler picked up a bat at Leavenworth and quickly discovered he had a gift for delivering home runs and catching fly balls. He might have been content playing on the prison's intramural league if left to his own devices but he was about to fall into the orbit of the notorious heavyweight boxer, Jack Johnson. Slide. Johnson came to Leavenworth to serve time for an alleged violation of the Man Act which prohibited carrying women over state lines for immoral purposes. I'll have to save that story for another day but you can read more about it in the exhibition and be sure to check out a page from one of the two autobiographies that Johnson wrote during his time there. Jack Johnson quickly organized boxing exhibitions at Leavenworth and he made Roy Tyler his sparring partner. The two became close playing dominoes and working together as orderlies in the isolation ward. Johnson encouraged Tyler to take baseball seriously. Tyler must have taken the advice to heart because he soon left the intramural league and began playing with the book or tease where he quickly proved to be its most valuable hitter and outfielder. After Johnson completed his year in a day sentence, he kept in touch with Tyler through letters. It's possible that Johnson made a connection between Tyler and an old friend of Johnson's that led to what has to be the most unusual parole agreement in history. Johnson's friend was Andrew Rube Foster, one of the founders of the Negro National Leagues and manager of the Chicago American Giants. Tyler left Leavenworth on parole in 1924 and went to work in the stockyards but in 1925 he got a new job and a new parole advisor. Next slide, please. His new parole advisor, Andrew Rube Foster. Tyler, who had never played professional baseball before, had developed enough skills in his years playing prison ball to be paroled to play with the Chicago American Giants. On the left is a copy of what was known as the first friend agreement. First friend was the parole advisor. Paroles are usually required to remain in one place but Tyler got special dispensation to travel with the team. In addition to Tyler, three other book or tease traveled this extraordinary prison to professional baseball pipeline. According to Reeves, the book or tease sent more players to the Negro Leagues in the 1920s than any other semi pro team in the greater Kansas City area. Unfortunately, Roy Tyler didn't last long with Foster's Chicago team. He left the Giants to play with the Cleveland elites in 1926 and that team was something of a disaster. With a record of five wins and 32 losses, the elites disbanded in 1927. Tyler, unfortunately, was back at Leavenworth in 1929 after being convicted of a robbery, a charge he denied. His file reflects that his parole officer always felt there was some doubt as to his guilt. Roy left Leavenworth in 1936. He died at the age of 84 in 1984 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. We don't know if baseball was part of his post prison life. Roy Tyler's story has elements of tragedy. It seems clear from the commendations in his prison form and his prison record that his sentence and conviction were unjust. Sports didn't free him but the talent he discovered during his time at Leavenworth opened doors for him, even if they didn't remain open very long. Slide, please. Our next story begins during World War II at a dusty tree list Japanese incarceration camp in California near the Oregon border. Tule Lake was the largest of ten camps built to hold Japanese Americans forcibly removed from the west coast. With a peak population of almost 19,000, the inmates there lived in barracks, shared latrines, dined in mess halls, farmed and attended school under the watch of armed guards in towers. And they played baseball. Slide, please. The photo on the left was taken by Dorothea Lange who also wrote the caption which reads baseball is the most popular recreation at this war relocation center with 80 teams having formed throughout the center. Baseball was more than a distraction from the tedium of camp life. It was a way for inmates to proclaim their identity as Americans and assert their loyalty to the United States. One Japanese American described playing baseball as being akin to wrapping yourself in the American flag. For a group of people who had been physically separated from the rest of society forced to abandon their homes and livelihoods treated with suspicion and racially stereotyped. This was a powerful statement to make. Visit the exhibit to see records related to the importance of baseball at the camp. But this story is not about baseball. Slide, Tommy Kono arrived at Tule Lake with his family in 1942 as an underweight asthmatic 12-year-old. This is his original or individual record from the camp. It shows his height and weight. At four foot nine he was 75 pounds. That's a BMI of 16.2. If anybody has had any conversations with their doctor lately about their BMI they'll know that that's really low. I heard Tommy describe in an interview how he was afraid to take showers with the other boys at camp because he was so thin that water would pool in his clavicle and he'd have to bend over and let it pour out. So he always felt that he was the weak one in the family. He had three athletic older brothers and his father was athletic as well. He missed a third of his elementary school before coming to the camp. But ironically the camp environment was actually good for his health. The dry air improved his asthma and he began to grow stronger. And then as fate would have it a neighbor moved in next door bringing equipment with him that would become Tommy Kono's obsession for life. Slide, weightlifting. This image is not actually of Tommy Kono or Tule Lake. It's another camp where there were some inmates who were also enjoying weightlifting. But as for Tommy in the beginning he actually had to sneak around to lift weights because his family could not understand how an underweight 12 year old could become healthier by lifting heavy weights. But he did get stronger and when they realized that he was now able to play baseball and basketball they acquiesced and realized this was good for him. So when he left Tule Lake he continued training in his hometown of Sacramento. One year he was going to a company, a friend, to a weightlifting contest and the friend said will you train? Why don't you enter the contest too? So he thought why not? And he did and he took second place and he was hooked. And after that he began to really train in earnest. Weightlifting wasn't a mainstream sport at the time so he didn't have a coach or training materials. He read those Charles Atlas magazines and he learned from those and he also learned from talking to other lifters. Could we have the next slide? In two years he added 200 pounds to his record. Quite a journey from the 75 pound 12 year old. He entered the national weightlifting contest in 1950, came in second and prepared to enter the world championship. But the day before he was to leave he got a call that his mother had died. So the world championship would have to wait until the next year. Unfortunately the Korean war intervened and he was drafted so he was unable to go that year either. As the 1952 Olympics approached Kono was still in the army. He got orders to ship out to North Korea and expected that he would have to put off his dream of competing in the Olympics. However this time fate intervened in his favor. Just before he was about to leave a telegram came from officials in Washington D.C. who said they thought that Kono could better serve the American people by competing in the Olympics in Helsinki. So off he went. Sending Tommy Kono to the 1952 Olympics was a strategic move on the part of the army. Sports was an important weapon in the Cold War arsenal and the battles with the highest stakes were waged at the Olympics. Both the Americans and the Soviets who sent their first delegation to the Olympics that same year that Tommy Kono competed pitched these battles as democracy versus communism and argued that superior athletes equal the superior system. Slide please. The Soviets invested a lot of resources into training athletes and as you can see from this 1948 propaganda poster felt strongly that it should pay off in gold medals. The caption reads, all world records must be ours. I spared you my terrible Russian, fake Russian accent. But they clearly expected to win especially in weight lifting one of their strongest events. Next slide please. This is another piece of Soviet propaganda this time against the United States. It was the focus of the bulk of their anti-American propaganda which focused on racial segregation and race relations. Officials took notice of the effectiveness of their propaganda in negatively impacting global perceptions and attempted to counter this narrative with its own propaganda featuring racially diverse athletes. We'll see some examples of this in our last story. Next. The United States produced propaganda for its domestic audience during World War II and here is an example that you can see in the exhibition that appeals to cherished American ideals. It's an excellent example of how sports perfectly embodies those ideals. In this case the belief that the United States is a meritocracy. A place where anyone can succeed through grit, determination, hard work and talent. Or to put it another way where you can start out on the home team and wind up in the big leagues. Slide. The self taught Kono not only wound up in the big leagues, he won a gold medal at the 1952 Olympics. The army was quick to celebrate his victory. And here I'm going to show you some clips from an army, an episode from an army television series that features weight lifters Tommy Kono and his teammate Jim Bradford. It also tells the story of Korean American Lee, Korean American high diver Sammy Lee. Note how the narrator explicitly invokes the American dream in reporting Lee's victory. Would you play the video please? An official television report to the nation from the United States Army. Now to show you part of the big picture, here is Sergeant Stewart Queen. Every four years an event of breathtaking excitement, color and pageantry takes place in the world of sports. The greatest of all athletic competitions. The Olympic Games. In 1952 American athletes performed magnificently in competition achieving the final victory in the unofficial team standings. Contributing greatly to that victory were 80 men of our armed forces. Here released for the first time on the big picture is the story of our armed forces athletes in one of the most closely contested Olympiads of all time. Private Tommy Kono from Sacramento California shows the way for the muscle men as the United States edges out the Russians in weight lifting. Kono wins the lightweight crown with a record three event total of 797.5 pounds. Jim Bradford, OCS candidate from Fort Benning was granted special leave to compete in the heavyweight class. He placed second enabling the US to outscore the Russians by a single point in the weights. Coming down to the wire now it's a toss up between Lee and Kapia until Sammy lets loose with his most brilliant effort, a running forward three and a half somersault. The judges score cards go up registering the highest total awarded to any single dive in the competition. And Sammy Lee whose parents were born in Korea becomes the first two time winner in the Olympic diving history. Sammy gets a kiss from fellow American Pat McCormick. Then joins his wife who had confidently set sail for Helsinki even before Sammy had technically qualified in the American Olympic trials. Sammy Lee of Los Angeles, Occidental College and the US Army Medical Corps is more than a medal winner for the United States. He is a living testament before the peoples of the world to equality of opportunity in America. It's not very subtle is it? The next story is about another athlete who has held up as a living testament before the peoples of the world to the equality of opportunity in America. As for Tommy Kono, he went on to another gold medal at the 1956 Olympics and a silver medal at the 1960 Olympics. He set world records in four different weight classes which is an astonishing achievement and won six weight lifting contests and multiple international bodybuilding contests. In fact, it was Tommy Kono who inspired a young Arnold Schwarzenegger to become a bodybuilder. Tommy Kono used the power of sports to transform himself from a sickly child to a world champion. His achievements challenged stereotypes about Asian Americans and inspired people around the world. Next slide, please. Here we go. Our final story takes place takes us to the Olympic stadium in Rome where an international crowd is chanting Vilma, Vilma, Vilma. Vilma is of course Wilma Rudolph who anchors the last leg of the four by 100 meter relay. After almost fumbling the baton she catches up to the West German runner in the lead and wins the gold for her team, the third gold medal she won in that game, in those Olympic games. She also became an international star and media darling. And the perfect vehicle for State Department efforts to promote a positive image of the United States. Part of what makes Rudolph such an irresistible symbol for the U.S. is her back story. She grew up in Clarksville, Tennessee, the 20th of 22 children. You heard that right. Yes, 22 children. Her father had two different families but still that's a lot of kids. She suffered from childhood diseases and polio which caused her to lose strength in her left leg. She recalled her doctor telling her she would never walk again but her mother told her she would and she chose to believe her mother. Through her family's dedicated care and her determination she defied the doctor's prognosis obviously and went on to play basketball in high school. And there she was discovered by Temple, sorry, by Coach Temple, Tennessee State University's track coach who was reffing one of her games. She began training with the university team while still in high school and attended the Olympics in Melbourne where she won a bronze medal with her team for the four by 100 meter relay. Her achievements in track resulted in a scholarship which enabled her to be the first in her family to attend university. And of course she went to Tennessee State. Which brings us back to Rome. According to historian Amira Rose Davis, Rudolph desperately wanted to go home after the games. But the State Department sent her team the Tiger Bells on a three week tour of Europe. According to a sports illustrated article from November 1960 she tore up Rome then Greece, England, Holland and Germany. In Cologne it took mounted police to keep back her admirers. In Wuppertal police dogs. In Berlin the public stole her shoes. Surrounded her bus, she boarded in her bare feet and beat on it with her fist to make her wave. Autograph hunters jostled her wherever she went and she was deluged with letters, gifts, telegrams and please that she stay where she was or come to a dozen cities where she wasn't. The tour was one of several efforts by the United States to apply Rudolph's international star power to inform and influence publics in the promotion of the national interest. That language is part of the United States information agency or USIA, an arm of the State Department. It's part of their mission. Slide please. These are a couple examples that you can see in the exhibition of the types of materials the USIA produced featuring athletes. To promote a positive image of the United States in the 1950s and 60s. The US and the USSR were battling for influence over Latin America and the Middle East and the decolonizing states in Africa, Asia and Oceania. The poster on the left emphasizes the spirit of fair play as a value shared by Americans and Filipinos. The Philippines being one of the countries the US hoped to save from communism. The piece on the right depicts Mildred McDaniel, one of Rudolph's teammates at the Melbourne Olympics in 1956. It's part of a series that features diverse American athletes, presumably to demonstrate equality of opportunity in the United States. Slide please. The USIA, of course, capitalized on Wilma's fame. They produced a film about her and I'm going to show you a few clips from it. Let's go ahead and run the film. Thanks. She won everything she entered. The 100 meters in the record time of 11 seconds flat. It was to be the first of three gold medals. Her next victory came in the 200 meters. Watch her in this slow motion film. The long strife. The beautiful running style. 24 seconds was her time for the 200 meters, her second Olympic triumph. Her third would come in the 400 meter relay. Her teammates were fellow students from her own university. Wilma Rudolph took over for the last 100 meters to victory. Her three gold medals made her the standout figure of the Olympics. Clarksville welcomes you. That sign and the acclaim of the mayor and city officials of her hometown greeted Wilma Rudolph on her return from the Olympics. They rode together in the welcome home parade. This is Wilma's home where her family lives. When she came back from the Olympics, she showed the medals she had won. On Sunday, the church beckons. Holding her little niece by the hand she comes to attend religious services. She feels close to her family and her friends and neighbors. She has been all over the world and made friends everywhere. But still, there is no place like home. Surrounded by the people she has known since childhood. Invited to the White House in Washington, Wilma, her mother and coach at Temple met Vice President Johnson and President Kennedy who wanted to thank Wilma for the high example she has set for the nation's youth. They know her everywhere in the United States as a champion. As Wilma Rudolph, the girl with a winning smile. It's pretty rosy, isn't it? Don't you love that music? It paints a very rosy picture and one that Wilma did not entirely share. In fact, she spoke to a reporter in Rome during the Olympics and was quoted as saying, in America they push me around because I'm a negro. Here in Europe they push me to the front. And added that it will all but kill me to have to go home and face being denied this, that and the other because I'm a black American. So while Wilma Rudolph's story is pretty well known, her activism for civil rights is not as well known and what the film doesn't show you is that before she would agree to appear in the parade and go to the banquet that was held in her honor, she insisted that those events be desegregated. The mayor acquiesced and those were two of the first events in Clarkville, Tennessee's history that were integrated. This film premiered in West Africa in 1963 and Wilma was there because she was on a month-long tour as a goodwill ambassador representing the United States. She was sent there unpaid by the State Department to visit various countries in West Africa, attend sporting events and visit schools and make TV and radio appearances. The main event of the trip was the friendship games in Dakar, Senegal. The International Olympic Committee sponsored the games in hopes of avoiding a boycott of the West African countries at the next Olympics which they threatened because of the inclusion of apartheid South Africa. The State Department, recognizing that racism was an obstacle to foreign policy goals, invested in cultural diplomacy tours to open doors to business interests and promote what historian Penny von Eschen calls a vision of a colorblind American democracy. Wilma Rudolph with her charm, charisma and beauty could not have been a more perfect embodiment of that vision. For her part, the trip was an opportunity to experience places where the color of skin had no bearing on her reception. I just felt at home, she said. There was something about the people that just made me fall in love with them. So it may not be a coincidence that following her return from Africa, she was involved in a civil rights protest at a local restaurant in Clarksville, Tennessee. But this time, the power of her platform did not immediately open doors or open doors to solve the problem. The protest went on for a few days and they were heckled by onlookers and tear gassed and it was quite traumatic and she spoke about that trauma later in her life. It was ultimately successful however, a few days after the protest ended, Clarksville City Council voted to desegregate all of its restaurants and public facilities. Last slide, please. This final slide is a poster in Arabic. It was likely produced to counter anti-American sentiment in the Middle East. The caption describes Wilma Rudolph as the human rocket. In interviews later in her life, Wilma Rudolph spoke about the doors that sports opened to her. Her athletic achievements enabled her to attend university, travel the world and win multiple awards and honors. But after her Olympic triumph, she spent years moving around the country seeking employment, besieged as she described it with money problems. After various jobs in education, coaching and youth development, Rudolph took a position at UCLA's newly formed African American studies department where she was reportedly outspoken about pay inequities for women and the way that she had been used as an instrument of propaganda. She's quoted as saying, I felt exploited both as a woman and as a black person and this bothered me very much. Sports did not make Wilma Rudolph's life easy but she used her power to make real and lasting change. And she laid a foundation for athletes who followed her. We can draw a straight line from Wilma Rudolph to athletes like Megan Rapinoe and to achievements like the equal pay agreements recently designed by men's and women's soccer. When we dig into these stories, we find they're more complex than the legends we've grown up with but that makes these champions all the more admirable and their stories their complete stories give us more insight into our shared history. There are many more stories represented by the National Archives represented on display in the exhibition and as Lee invited you, I will invite you as well if you haven't already to please, to please visit. I'd like to thank you for your attention and invite you if anyone would like to come down and talk to me to please do so. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you.