From slavery to freedom, baseball, football and other games valorized blacks. Their institutions and organizations sponsored sandlot, amateur, and professional sports for recreation, race pride, solidarity, and uplift. Sponsors included schools and colleges, hubs of physical education and athletics; churches; fraternal orders; businesses; YMCAs and YWCAs; Boy and Girl Scouts.

As a rule, black athletes were segregated until the mid-twentieth century. Boxing was an early exception. Jack Johnson reigned as world heavyweight champion (1908–15), as did Joe Louis (1937–49). The National Football League (NFL) drafted a black player in 1946 and Jackie Robinson entered Major League Baseball (MLB) in 1947. Those, as well as other firsts, inspired African American athletes to pursue a level “playing field” for themselves and their community.

Black education and athletics related in their mission. For example, southern black high schools told “student athletes to excel at northern colleges and debunk negative stereotypes of the race” (Kuska, 2004, p. 215). Although the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) began in 1906, it neglected small and Negro colleges until 1937. Johnson C. Smith University and Livingstone College christened black college football in 1892. Virginia Union–Virginia State and Tuskegee–Talladega's games soon followed. In 1912 Hampton Institute, with Howard, Lincoln, and Shaw universities, created the first black association: the Colored Intercollegiate Athletic Association. The Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and Southwestern Athletic Conference formed in 1913 and 1920, respectively. They pooled resources for programs, notably baseball, track and field, basketball, football, and tennis, besides fostering principles of dignity, hardwork, fairness, and teamwork. Teams enlisted huge followings and produced a number of All-Americans and Olympians, among them Tuskegee high jumper Alice Coachman, the first black female Olympic champion and only American woman gold medalist in the 1948 Olympics.

Pro conferences and players not only pursued profit but also displayed athleticism. In such venues, many “players from black colleges and universities were given an opportunity to display their talents” (Ross, 2001, p. 54). Teams competed on local, state, and national levels, and selected all-star players. This occurred in Negro basketball, the so-called “Black Fives” (1906–49), whose most dominant teams were the famed Harlem Renaissance Big Five (1923) and Chicago-born Harlem Globetrotters (1926). Created by businessmen, academics, and physicians, the American Tennis Association (1916–50s), in addition to regular competition, held an annual tournament to select men and women singles and doubles champions.