When Mexicans Could Play Ball : : Basketball, Race, and Identity in San Antonio, 1928–1945 / / Ignacio M. García.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Texas Press Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
• VerfasserIn: García, Ignacio M.,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2021]; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (292 p.)

In 1939, a team of short, scrappy kids from a vocational school established specifically for Mexican Americans became the high school basketball champions of San Antonio, Texas. Their win, and the ensuing riot it caused, took place against a backdrop of shifting and conflicted attitudes toward Mexican Americans and American nationalism in the WWII era. “Only when the Mexicans went from perennial runners-up to champs,” García writes, “did the emotions boil over.” The first sports book to look at Mexican American basketball specifically, When Mexicans Could Play Ball is also a revealing study of racism and cultural identity formation in Texas. Using personal interviews, newspaper articles, and game statistics to create a compelling narrative, as well as drawing on his experience as a sports writer, García takes us into the world of San Antonio’s Sidney Lanier High School basketball team, the Voks, which became a two-time state championship team under head coach William Carson “Nemo” Herrera. An alumnus of the school himself, García investigates the school administrators’ project to Americanize the students, Herrera’s skillful coaching, and the team’s rise to victory despite discrimination and violence from other teams and the world outside of the school. Ultimately, García argues, through their participation and success in basketball at Lanier, the Voks players not only learned how to be American but also taught their white counterparts to question long-held assumptions about Mexican Americans.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction. The Punch Heard ’round the Barrio -- Chapter 1. A Coach Comes to Sidney Lanier -- Chapter 2. Mexicans Can Play, but Not Everyone Is Pleased -- Chapter 3. Lanier Makes Its Run at State and Finds Its First Stars -- Chapter 4. Sidney Lanier: An American-Mexican Landscape -- Chapter 5. War Comes to the West Side, and Lanierites Respond -- Chapter 6. Adjusting to War and Getting Back to State -- Chapter 7. The Voks Finally Make It to the Top -- Chapter 8. On the Summit Looking Up -- Chapter 9. The Rodríguez Boys Must Be Stopped -- Chapter 10. An Era Comes to an End, but a School Remains -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index