UC Berkeley

My dissertation focuses on black student-athlete protest in the 1960s and how universities managed, conceptualized and disciplined student-athletes similarly to how employers disciplined labor throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. My project uses four case studies at four universities: University of Wyoming, Syracuse University, the University of California-Berkeley and Oregon State University. My research into protests by athletes at these universities discovered that these universities employed strategies that were remarkably similar to techniques employers often used to control and discipline labor in the late 19th and early twentieth centuries. These disciplinary measures indicate that by the 1960s, college sport was a last bastion of 19th century workplace norms, and culture. My research highlights important questions we should ask about the relationship between student-athletes and universities: the historical complexities of how student-athletes were managed, conceptualized and ultimately treated as labor should be of paramount importance for how we think about student protest and black radicalism in the 1960s, as well as how we think about student-athletes today.This dissertation hopes to link the experiences of student-athletes to the history of capitalism. Athletic departments, with many university’s blessings, were structured like, and often operated similar to corporations throughout the 20th century. A critical part of this incorporation was how the university and coaches decided to classify and manage student-athletes. Throughout the twentieth century, Student-athletes worked for their respective universities off the field, and were subject to rules that other employees had, with none of the protections that traditional laborers had. Debates over how student-athletes’ labor, how were controlled and managed stretch back to the 19th century. In order to link sport and labor together, coaches and universities argued that they would teach student-athletes the essential links between sport and work. In order to do this, they borrowed tactics that employers used from the 19th century to the mid twentieth century to restrict labor movement. Universities also provided coaches with near complete authority for on field and off field matters like housing, restricted the wages of student-athletes for on and off the field labor, and consolidated disciplinary policies to athletic departments. The development of athletic departments in the 1920s and 1930s were consolidations of power from students to administrators, and from administrators to coaches. These processes all coalesced around student-athletes, transforming them into a hybrid of student and labor, with all of the burdens and none of the protections.