University of Nebraska Press

Lifetime achievement award

UNP author and sports journalist, Ron Thomas, is the recent recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Sports Journalism given by Sport in Society and the Northeastern University School of Journalism.

He is receiving this award based on the articles he has written over the last 38 years, as well as his book, They Cleared the Lane (University Nebraska Press, 2002).

They Cleared the Lane tells the story of what basketball was really like for the first black NBA players, including recent Hall of Fame inductee Earl Lloyd, and early superstars such as Maurice Stokes and Bill Russell.

Sports Illustrated said, “San Francisco sportswriter Ron Thomas has produced a tribute to these [African-American pioneer players] that is full of surprises. . . . The book's most intriguing point is that African-Americans have not only contributed to the game of basketball but also transformed it.”

Congrats Ron!

Freedom Riders

Fifty years ago this month, the Freedom Riders -- a group of seven black and six white civil rights activists --embarked on a journey from Washington D.C. to New Orleans on a series of interstate busses. Along the way, they challenged segregation rules aboard busses, in restaurants, rest stops and elsewher. The riders faced threats, arrest and violence, but also drew national attention to their cause, and became an example to civil rights activists everywhere.

Today NPR ran a story called “Remembering The 'Freedom Riders,' 50 Years Later” discussing this anniversary. A new documentary titled Freedom Riders will air this month on PBS. You can listen to the story here, and if this sparks your interest in the civil rights movement, the University of Nebraska Press has three books you might want to check out.

Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus: A Daughter’s Civil Rights Journey by Ana Maria Spagna explores the author's father's roll in a similar experiment in desegregation, when he and five other young men boarded a white bus called the Sunnyland inTallahassee, Florida.

The Rhythm Boys of Omaha Central: High School Basketball at the ’68 Racial Divide by Steve Marantz is the story of Omaha Central basketball team’s first all-black starting lineup, which qualified for the state tournament just before George Wallace came to town and the city nearly erupted in violence.

And forthcoming from UNP is Jackson, Mississippi: An American Chronicle of Struggle and Schism by John R.Salter Jr. is the story of the civil rights movement in Jackson, told by one of its foremost activists.

February sale

A collection of our books honoring Black History Month are on Sale! Save 25 % on books like, The Rhythm Boys of Omaha Central, which debutes in March, tells a true story about high school basketball, black awakening and rebellion, and innocence lost in a watershed year. The drama of civil rights in 1968 plays out in this riveting social history of sports, politics, race, and popular culture in the American heartland.

For other books on sale and to get the discount code, click here. Offer expires Feb. 28.

Off the Shelf: The Rhythm Boys of Omaha Central by Steve Marantz

Read the Prologue from The Rhythm Boys of Omaha Central: High School Basketball at the '68 Racial Divide by Steve Marantz:

"In March 1968, two high school basketball teams played for the Nebraska state championship, a contest with decades of wholesome tradition. But this game was different.

A few days earlier former Alabama governor George C. Wallace had come to Omaha to campaign for president. He brought the Deep South—“segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” and the jackboots of Selma—and set it down two blocks from Omaha Central High School. His searing rhetoric scalded the sensibilities of many, including eighteen-year-old Dwaine Dillard, Central’s African American basketball superstar.

Bill Russell receives medal from President Obama

The White House announced yesterday that President Obama will be giving Bill Russell, a former NBA star, the Medal of Freedom. This high civilian honor is presented to individuals who have made contributions to the security or the national interest of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.

Bill Russell is a former Boston Celtics Captain who led the team to eleven championships in thirteen years and was named NBA’s Most Valuable Player 5 times. He then went on to be the first African American to coach in the NBA. Russell is also an impassioned advocate of human rights and marched along side Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Dandy Dons by James W. Johnson describes for the first time how the unprecedented accomplishment of the Dons, led by coach Phil Woolpert and future hall-of-famers Bill Russell and K. C. Jones, paved the way for black talent in major college basketball and transformed the sport.

 

 

They Cleared the Lane by Ron Thomas shows how in the first half of the twentieth century pro basketball was tainted by racism, as gifted African Americans were denied the opportunity to display their talents. Thomas tells the largely untold story of what basketball was really like for the first black NBA players, including Bill Russell.

UNP editor talks about immigration

In 2009, the University of Nebraska Press published Hurricane Katrina: America’s Unnatural Disaster,  which questions the efficacy of the national and global responses to Katrina’s central victims, African Americans. This collection of essays explores the extent to which African Americans and others were -- and are -- disproportionately affected by the natural and manmade forces that caused Hurricane Katrina.

 
One of the book's editors, Dr. Matthew Whittaker (also a historian at Arizona State University) spoke at A Conversation with Cornel West – How We Got Here on Oct. 2. He spoke about the Arizona immigration law and the history of immigration in the United States. Whittaker quoted Mark Twain in saying, “History doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes.” Watch the video clip below:

  

Two more awards for UNP

Last Friday, Oct.8, the Nebraska Book Awards were announced and UNP came away with two awards.

 
Bruce A. Glasrud and Charles A. Braithwaite’s  African Americans on the Great Plains: An Anthology won for the anthology category. This book, the first of its kind, supplies the critical missing chapter in American history of African Americans in the western frontier. There might have been a mention of Estevan, slavery, or the Dred Scott decision, but the rich and varied experience of African Americans on the Great Plains went largely unnoted until recently.

  

For the nonfiction honor, Robert Cochran’s Louise Pound:  Scholar, Athlete, Feminist Pioneer won. Cochran captures the amazing life of Louise Pound. She was a distinguished literary scholar, renowned athlete, accomplished musician, and devoted women’s sports advocate.

 
And actually, we received one more. The award for fiction went to Ladette Randolph for A Sandhills Ballad which was a A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. The University of Nebraska Press will publish a paperback edition in April 2011.

Last week was huge for awards, hopefully this coming week we’ll continue the trend!

Off the Shelf: Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus by Ana Maria Spagna

Read from Chapter 1, "In Front of Speed's" in Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus: A Daughter's Civil Rights Journey by Ana Maria Spagna:

"The paint-peeling sign above the door is barely legible: Speed’s Grocery. I stand on the sidewalk sweaty with nerves. This can’t be the place, I think. This is nothing like I pictured. Behind heavy iron bars, darkened windows sport stickers for cigarette brands: Newport, Camel, Winston. Men with graying beards and ball caps pulled low lean against the storefront, paper bags in hand, while I loiter across the narrow tree-lined street, rereading the plywood sign. Beer Milk Ice it reads, and below that, Meats Bread Grocery Lotto. Beside each line of words coils a hand-painted rattler, the mascot of Florida A&M University, only two blocks east. But there are no students here, no one younger, by the looks of it, than forty. There are also no women. I’ve been in crowds like that before, plenty of times, but this time it’s different. There are no white people in front of Speed’s, and I have never, in thirty-eight years, been the only white person anywhere.

Off the Shelf: Black Officer in a Buffalo Soldier Regiment by Brian G. Shellum

Read the beginning of Chapter 1, "Awaiting Orders" from Black Officer in a Buffalo Soldier Regiment: The Military Career of Charles Young by Brian G. Shellum:

"When Charles Young graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1889, he hoped he had ended a difficult chapter in his life. His five-year struggle to earn his coveted diploma and receive a commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army was full of challenge and triumph. He repeated his plebe year after failing mathematics and graduated two months after his classmates because he had to make up for a deficiency in engineering. While West Point was a struggle for any young man, Young had to face this ordeal in a racially charged atmosphere where most of his classmates ignored him or refused to have anything to do with him. Yet he persevered and graduated.

Speaking of summer reading lists…

The University of Nebraska Press title In the United States of Africa made a summer reading list put together by Public Radio International program The World. Here’s the description of In the United States of Africa that The World posted on its Web site:

"In the United States of Africa by Abourahaman A. Waberi. Translated from the French by David and Nicole Ball. University of Nebraska Press. Waberi, a French-speaking African writer, makes expert use of an acidic satiric set-up worthy of Swift. History has reversed itself: millions flee the poverty of the United States and Europe for the prosperity of Africa. A short, bittersweet, and amusing mediation on multicultural reversals of fortune."

To see what other titles The World recommends, click here.

And have a great weekend!