Uncategorized

It’s always great to be invited to the UNC women’s basketball alumni game. There’s nothing like chatting with players whose experience stretches across the six decades since Title IX – and even with a few who played prior to the landmark law.

The state of North Carolina has an especially deep tradition of women’s basketball success – one that started long before the Tar Heel women captured their 1994 national title.

In the mid-1930s, the teams from Greensboro’s Bennett College regularly beat all comers among the nation’s HBCU teams. They were widely acclaimed as the best Black college team in the country.

At the time, leaders at most predominantly white colleges saw competitive sports as unladylike. Black college leaders had far broader visions about women’s capabilities, and about the qualities they would need to develop to effectively serve their communities. Women’s basketball thrived.

Women’s industrial basketball also flourished. Companies that depended on female workers often sponsored women’s teams, to advertise their products and bolster employee morale. Southern textile mills, which had always employed women, developed a particularly strong basketball culture.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Winston Salem’s Hanes Hosiery hired noted men’s coach Virgil Yow to build up its women’s team. Scouring the South for top recruits, Yow created a powerhouse squad. Hanes captured the Amateur Athletic Union title, considered the women’s national championship, in 1951, 1952 and 1953.

The daughter of one of Virgil Yow’s cousins, Kay Yow, would make her own history as a pioneering coach at Elon College and N.C State.At Elon, she was the most successful women’s coach in the state when Title IX emerged. N.C. State Athletic Director Everett Case hired Yow to build a fledgling Wolfpack team into a national contender, and she did. She also coached the 1988 U.S. Olympic team to the gold medal at the Seoul Olympics.

The cheering crowd that filled Carmichael Arena at this year’s alumni game testified to the game’s enduring roots and its promising future (although the team lost a heartbreaking contest to Florida State and its dazzling star T’Naya Latson on a buzzer-beating basket).

We can’t wait to see what history gets made next.

Susan graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in 1976. A journalism major, she was the Daily Tar Heel’s first female sports editor. Pamela earned her Ph.D. from the UNC history department in 1997.

Images: Susan with Sylvia Crawley (right) and Charlotte Smith at the 2024 alumni game; Bennett College team, 1935; Hanes Hoisery team, 1953; Kay Yow at Elon College, 1960s; Alumni game, 2025; Pam and Susan, 2025.

Some of our favorite parts of Shattering the Glass involve the remarkable history of Iowa women’s basketball. It’s an inspiring story, with developments that include support for a pathbreaking girls’ high school tournament, the incisive advocacy of University of Iowa athletic director Christine Grant, the successes of coaches such as C. Vivian Stringer and Lisa Bluder, and the record-breaking accomplishments of Caitlin Clark.

At the Ally Tip-off earlier this month, coaches and players from all the participating teams called their game’s present-day successes a “historic moment.” We were able to ask Hawkeye coach Jan Jensen about the ways she and her colleagues make sure that current players know where they fit in their sport’s long history. She gave a great answer.

The expanded edition of Shattering the Glass is almost here!

The first edition, published by the New Press in 2005, was the most comprehensive account of American women’s basketball ever written. It became an integral part of sports history classes across the country. Readers raved.

Bust Magazine termed it “an indispensable resource.” Renowned sportswriter Robert Lipsyte described it as a “nonstop romp through hoops history” that offered “not only lively storytelling but a fascinating window on race, gender, and class on and off the court.” Historian Jacquelyn Hall called it a “sweeping, century-long story that places women’s sports at the heart of the fight for women’s rights.”

Twenty years later, the sport we’ve always loved has taken on new significance. Throughout its history, basketball has made it possible for players and coaches to challenge the limitations imposed on women by American culture and society. Our new chapters explore the factors that have contributed to the game’s recent growth, and the ways that players have used their new visibility to engage issues that include race, sexuality and opportunity. It’s such an important story.

As the sport has changed, so have we. We were so young back then!

We still live across the street from each other in Charlotte, North Carolina. We’ve pursued plenty of projects in the past 20 years, including a history of women’s basketball at Army West Point, a book about using sports to teach U.S. history and an account of segregation, desegregation and resegregation at historically Black West Charlotte High School.

As our new picture shows (see top), we’ve taken on more color, along with a few more wrinkles and a pound or two.

We’ve been so excited to watch the profile of women’s sports rise. It’s been a privilege to be able to update our manuscript, to explore the ways the history we’ve chronicled relates to an ever-changing present.

The great thing about doing history is that it never gets old. The stories we tell – of Senda Berenson and Ora Washington, of Hazel Walker and C. Vivian Stringer, of Cheryl Miller and Pat Summitt, of Dawn Staley and Caitlin Clark – not only shed light on present-day events, they will prove illuminating far into the future.

We haven’t blogged in almost a year. It’s been a challenging time – in basketball, in the world, in our lives. We’ve had to focus particular attention on our families – Susan’s father passed away in June; Pam’s mother in July.

But we’ve been lucky to be able to work with a great team. Thanks to the staff at UNC Press, our editor and chief cheerleader Mark Simpson-Vos, and to the many coaches, players, fans, archivists and sports information officers who took the time to help us tell this new story.

We can’t wait to get it out into the world.

CHARLOTTE, NC

The hot pink billboard hovers over a shopping center on the east side of Charlotte, North Carolina. At the center, a young Black woman clad in a short skirt and cropped hoodie lounges on a gilded throne. To her left sits a glittering array of hair care products. To her right, the title proclaims: “From One Queen to Another.”

Angel Reese has come to town.

The LSU hoops star played her way to national renown at the 2023 Women’s Final Four, where her Tigers took the championship game from favored Iowa and the celebrated Caitlin Clark, 102-85. With 30 seconds left in that contest, Reese underscored the achievement by holding her hand between her face and Clark’s in a “can’t see me” gesture pioneered in the World Wrestling Federation. Her lacquered index fingernail marked the spot where her championship ring would rest.

Reese was named the tournament’s most outstanding player, and rose quickly to the top of college sports’ brave new world of Name-Image-Likeness (NIL). As of this November, she was the second-highest NIL earner among college basketball players, beaten only by LeBron James’ son Bronny.  She appeared in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. She signed contracts with firms that included Coach, Reebok and Mielle, the line of Black hair care products advertised in the Charlotte billboard.

Around the same time the Mielle billboard went up on Sugar Creek, a downtown banner advertising the Iowa-Virginia Tech Ally Tipoff presented Caitlin Clark in a far different light. Clark, whose pinpoint passing and breathtaking 3-point shooting made her college basketball’s 2023 National Player of the Year, stood in the foreground, hair pulled back, no makeup, all business.

Clark’s NCAA run also brought her plenty of NIL success, including contracts with firms such as Nike, Bose, H&R Block and State Farm Insurance. For 2023, her earnings ranked fourth among female basketball players, twelfth overall.

That two such dramatically different women have drawn this kind of widespread acclamation marks a sharp departure from the restrictions faced by previous generations of female athletes. Historically, athletic women have been encouraged – and frequently required – to blunt the “masculine” associations of athletic success by donning skirts, stockings and makeup, speaking in measured tones and downplaying their competitive zeal.

Efforts to fit top athletes into conventional views of decorative femininity showed especially clearly at the AAU national tournament in the middle of the twentieth century. While no Black squad was invited until the late 1950s, the AAU tournament showcased the nation’s best white players and teams, including powerhouses such as Babe Didrikson’s Golden Cyclones, Hazel Walker’s Lewis & Norwood Flyers and the star-studded Hanes Hosiery. Still, organizers felt the need to augment the top-flight play with an annual beauty pageant (won in 1944 by Hanes Hosiery’s Jimmie Vaughn, pictured below).

Anxieties about conventionally feminine appeal persisted into the early 2000s, when promoters of the fledgling WNBA were still seeking to squeeze players into a one-size-fits-all version of feminine charm.

“There was always this question: ‘How are we going to market women’s sport?’” recalled Sue Wicks, who played for the New York Liberty in those early years. “And their answer was, ‘Well, they need dresses and makeup.’” While some players enjoyed dressing up, many did not. “I see some of the pictures, and it’s comical because the players are so awkward,” Wicks continued. “They would never wear that dress, they would never wear lipstick, and you can see they’re just miserable.”

The world of women’s sports and NILs of course remains entangled in cultural conventions and expectations.

Conventional femininity still sells. Angel Reese’s NIL career has been fueled not simply by her remarkable talent, but by her stature as “Bayou Barbie,” a nickname inspired by her willowy figure, flowing hair, and dramatically long nails and lashes. “As the Bayou Barbie, I love to look my best on and off the court!” she gushed in a Mielle press release. “Mielle has always been there for me.”

In contrast, Caitlin Clark’s State Farm debut paired her with the firm’s trademark khakis. The decidedly non-glamorous attire underscored the classic “girl-next-door” image that is part of Clark’s appeal, and which also invokes the mainstream press goodwill that so often comes with being white.

This goodwill showed when Clark threw a “can’t see me” hand after shooting her sixth 3-pointer in Iowa’s Elite Eight victory over Louisville. Reactions were largely positive, including a shoutout from the gesture’s inventor, WWF competitor John Cena.

But when Reese deployed the gesture, social media became a battleground that featured, as sports journalist Dave Zirin put it, “loathsome right-wing men, mostly white, profanely criticizing Reese” as well as “what felt like a coordinated effort from the most wretched corners of the sports commentariat,” involving “people who two weeks ago did not know who Clark was rushing to her defense and attempting to turn her into their latest fragile white martyr—a casualty of the confidence of a Black woman, a confidence that they wanted to break.”

Mainstream condemnation spread so far that even Charles Barkley called Reese’s move “unfortunate,” prompting Zirin to remark: “If Charles Barkley is reaching for the fainting couch, you know that way too many men in the basketball world have lost the plot.”

Reese stood firm, tweeting: “I’m ‘too hood.’ I’m ‘too ghetto.’ I don’t fit the narrative and I’M OK WITH THAT. I’m from Baltimore where you hoop outside & talk trash. . . . Let’s normalize women showing passion for the game instead of it being ‘embarrassing.’”

Clark refused to play the victim, defending Reese and stating: “I’m just lucky enough that I get to play this game and have emotion and wear it on my sleeve. . . . That should never be torn down. That should never be criticized because I believe that’s what makes this game so fun. That’s what draws people to this game. That’s how I’m going to continue to play. That’s how every girl should continue to play.”

In the end, the sagas of these two remarkable competitors say a great deal about present-day American society and culture. They speak to the expanding media landscape that allows athletes to reach out to multiple audiences, to fans of Southern charm, Midwestern chutzpah, urban panache. They show that women can speak out and be heard, a shift underscored by the jump in popularity the WNBA enjoyed after players took leading roles in promoting Black Lives Matter. There’s a long and likely rocky road ahead for these players and their sport, as the spotlight on the women’s game intensifies. But this holiday season we all have much to celebrate.

CHARLOTTE, NC

The inaugural Ally Tipoff has reached its final minute and the crowd of 15,000 has risen to its feet. The third-ranked Iowa Hawkeyes, captained by the incandescent Caitlin Clark, have been trading three-pointers with the eighth-ranked Virginia Tech Hokies. The lead has changed hands 11 times throughout the game. With 31 seconds left and the Hawkeyes leading 76-71, the teams break for a timeout.

There hasn’t been a scene like this in Charlotte since 1996, when the city hosted the Women’s Final Four. That year, the Tennessee Lady Volunteers, featuring freshman standout Chamique Holdsclaw and Charlotte native Tiffani Johnson, claimed the national title with an overtime win over the defending champion UConn Huskies in the semis, and then with a dominating victory over the Georgia Lady Bulldogs, 86-65.

Back in 1996, fans of women’s basketball evisioned a grand future. That year, a star-studded Olympic team dazzled crowds at exhibition games throughout the country, then took the gold medal in Atlanta. Not one but two professional leagues emerged from the excitement: the independent American Basketball League and the NBA-sponsored Women’s National Basketball Association. (Charlotte got one of the original WNBA teams, the Charlotte Sting, paced by University of Virginia phenom Dawn Staley).

A fierce rivalry between Tennessee, coached by Pat Summitt, and the University of Connecticut, coached by Geno Auriemma, energized the college game. Play constantly improved, driven by stars like UConn’s Diana Taurasi, LSU’s Seimone Augustus, and Tennessee’s Candace Parker. We completed the first edition of Shattering the Glass amid that optimism, hoping the sport would continue to expand.

But then momentum slowed. The ABL had lasted only two years. While the NBA’s deep pockets kept the WNBA afloat, many teams struggled. The league averaged nearly 11,000 spectators per game in 1998, but only 8,500 in 2004. The Cleveland Rockers folded in 2003, the Charlotte Sting in 2007 and the Houston Comets, which had won the first four WNBA championships, in 2008.

The mismatch between improving play and stagnant audiences made it clear that the main challenges lay beyond the game itself. In 2008 the Seattle Storm was purchased by Force 10 Hoops LLC, a group of Seattle women led by Dawn Trudeau and including Lisa Brummel, Ginny Gilder and Anne Levinson. Gilder started attending league meetings, where then-NBA-commissioner David Stern focused on ticket sales. “At that point, he would just rail on everybody,” she explained in a recent interview. “‘You’ve got to sell, you’ve got to sell, you’ve got to sell.’ “I don’t think he ever really understood how much bias there was against women.”

Those biases ran deep. Men’s sports drew on many lines of support, including media exposure and corporate sponsorship. These key arenas were largely run by men, and each presented its own challenges.

Although Seattle was considered a progressive city, it was tough to build corporate support for a women’s team – even a high-performing squad such as the Storm, which had won the WNBA championship in 2004 and would win again in 2010. When Force 10 Hoops bought the team, longtime fan Peggy Haslach, whose financial firm often worked with NCAA teams, approached Gilder about taking on the Storm’s financial planning. Gilder made it clear that the Storm would give priority to firms that were willing to become team sponsors.

“I came back and I went to my boss and I said, ‘The Storm is willing to work with us, but here’s the deal, it’s pay to play,'” Haslach recently recalled. “‘So you have to sponsor the team.’ And he looked at me and he goes, ‘You know, Peggy, I have to do this only for those sports that I feel the whole firm can get into.'”

“And the thing was, the games were accessible,” Haslach noted. “They were inexpensive. And not only that, women were much better behaved on the basketball court than the guys. It was a family situation. So I learned quickly that they really didn’t want to have anything to do with it.”

But now, 15 years later, circumstances seem more promising. For one, women have more corporate decision-making power. Many of today’s female executives played sports in high school and college, and some have reached the point where they can direct company resources towards the games that meant so much to them.

Ally Financial, the main sponsor of the Tipoff game, has become one of the leaders of this effort. Andrea Brimmer, a standout soccer player who became a top-performing advertising executive, put together a team of “badass” women that included former Yale basketball player Stephanie Marciano (seen with us below), former Michigan State softballer Bridget Sponsky and former UNC Chapel Hill track athlete Jackie Hartzell, who attended Hopewell High right here in Mecklenburg County. In 2022, the 50^th anniversary of Title IX, Ally pledged to start splitting the company’s sports promotion dollars 50-50 between men’s and women’s sports.

The bank also put its clout to use in broadcast negotiations.

Ally became a top sponsor of the National Women’s Soccer League in 2021 and a year later drove the effort to move the league’s championship game into a primetime TV spot, putting up extra money to make it happen. In 2023, NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman negotiated a rights deal for an impressive $240 million and was resolute in what the rights required.  “Jessica, in the NWSL broadcast negotiations was, ‘It’s got to be a game of the week,” Brimmer explained. “’It’s got to be prime time. We’ve got to have a prime time championship. It’s requisite as part of the deal.’”

The Tipoff was dreamed up by Charlotte Sports Foundation executive director Danny Morrison, who was dazzled by Caitlin Clark’s performance at the 2023 Final Four and wanted her to play in Charlotte. Ally, which had a major presence in the banking-focused city, was an obvious partner. Morrison asked, and got a yes almost immediately.

The Tipoff’s promotion team resolved to shine the brightest possible spotlight on the game. Morrison, whose career included a stint as president of the Carolina Panthers, knew what it would mean to orchestrate a top-level event – one as far removed as possible from the sad situation at the 2021 NCAA tournament, which exposed the glaring inequities between men and women’s college ball.

The players were treated with style, from the state-of-the-art court to the top-quality locker rooms to the banners that greeted them as they headed to the court. Off-court attention was so enthusiastic that Clark reportedly had to hide beneath a hoodie when she ventured out onto the Charlotte streets.

The teams responded with a terrific game. They showed some early-season rust – neither team shot well in the first half. But as the halftime buzzer sounded, Virginia Tech’s Georgia Amoore hit a swisher from half court to pull the Hokies within one point – 33-32. After a slow shooting start, Clark drove repeatedly to the basket, drew 16 fouls and ended with 44 points to Amoore’s 31. The final score was Iowa 80, Virginia Tech 76.

At the postgame press conference, coaches and players raved about their experience. We asked Clark how she saw this moment in women’s sports history, and her response took social media by storm, as well as being featured prominently in the national press.

“Crowds like this should become normal for women’s basketball,” she said. “Iowa has a great history in Title IX, and making it important. I grew up a fan of women’s basketball, and I’ve always understood there’s really great players in this game who are really fun to watch. At the same time, they’re some of my biggest role models, and to see myself on this stage now, it’s very hard to wrap my hands around the environments we get to play in.”

It was a joy to experience such a standout event.

Our work on Shattering has taught us not to take such moments for granted. American women’s sports has a history of ups and downs. At the end of the 19^th century, student excitement over intercollegiate competition was diverted into intramurals and physical education. The vibrant competition that took shape in high schools during the 1930s and 1940s was largely squelched in the conservative Cold War era. Then came the post-1996 stagnation.

But at the moment, from where we sit, things look pretty good.

Note: The photo of the 1996 Olympic team is courtesy of USA Basketball and the photo of the Ally banner is courtesy of the Charlotte Sports Foundation. We took all the others.

When Kim Mulkey’s LSU Tigers won the national women’s basketball title in April 2023, she became the first coach in the college women’s game to capture the crown at two different NCAA Division 1 schools. About six months later, LSU made Mulkey the highest paid women’s college basketball coach with a 10-year, $32 million contract.

Mulkey won her previous titles at Baylor in 2005, 2012 and 2019. Before Baylor, she was a longtime assistant at Louisiana Tech and star point guard there. She was also a member of the first U.S. women’s basketball team to win an Olympic gold medal, in 1984.

In preparing an update to Shattering the Glass, I caught up with Coach Mulkey for a few moments to reflect on the game and her career. Here are excerpts from the interview.

An LSU fan told me to ask about your being an all-star baseball player when you were growing up.

“I was a 12-year-old and tried out for the Dixie Youth baseball league. I was the only girl, and the first one selected by the worst team. I played pitcher, shortstop and catcher. At the all-star game, I was warming up and was told they would not let me play, that I wasn’t properly put on the roster. But I had been told I was an all-star.

“My dad had gotten wind of this earlier in the day and had TV cameras there. He came to the dugout and said, ‘Here are your choices: play and it’s a team forfeit, or not play, and sit outside the dugout.” I decided I was not going to punish my team. I was fighting back tears, and my teammates came by where I was sitting and tipped their caps. The situation was a form of discrimination, but as a 12-year-old, you’re thinking, ‘I can’t play because of what reason?’”

After you were a star point guard at Louisiana Tech in the early 1980s, a coaching career was not on your radar. Why?

“First of all, my degree was in business administration. I was working on an MBA on an NCAA scholarship, but Dr. F. Jay Taylor wouldn’t take no for an answer. That program was started because of students who went to his office about it, and he was a visionary. He put money in women’s basketball before most schools did.

“Coaching was not on my radar because I didn’t think I would make a lot of money doing that. CEOs made big money and traveled the world. Little did I know that is possible with women’s basketball. It is rewarding financially, and I have the opportunity to travel. At La Tech, my first salary was $35,000 a year as an assistant. To me, at that time, that was a lot of money.”

Women coaches are sometimes criticized more than male ones when they are passionate and outspoken. You’ve always exhibited those traits, both as a player and coach. How do you see this?

“I have been criticized much and many times. It doesn’t faze me. If you’re passionate about what you do and intense—what is wrong with being passionate in the athletic setting? Passiveness is not who I am. I played and coach the same way and don’t mean any harm by it; I love to compete.”

What inspires you to wear bright, sometimes glittery outfits to coach games?

“People in the fashion industry who are LSU graduates wanted to provide me with sequined jackets and things to spruce it up. We live in Louisiana, and we like colors and bright stuff.

“I have fun with this, and it’s brought a lot of conversation to women’s games at LSU. I don’t want it to be about me, but people ask, ‘What’s Kim wearing tonight?’ I know some people come to watch what I wear, and they may not have much interest in basketball. But once they get there and see what I wear, then maybe they learn about basketball and our team. For me, it’s all about the kids on the floor.”

In your 15 years as an assistant coach, what were the biggest things you learned or developed that helped make you such a highly successful head coach?

“I learned to pay attention to detail. There are things as a player you didn’t have to focus on, but as a coach I learned how important they are.

“You also learn rejection. You find out people you recruited hard aren’t going to come play for you. You learn how to pick yourself up and keep going. When I was hired at La Tech, there was no assistant (to help with recruiting). It was, ‘Here, you go figure it out.’

“I also just believe you work hard, you outwork the next institution. If you lose a kid, the one thing you don’t want to say is I didn’t work hard enough.”

You advanced parity in college women’s basketball by breaking through to a national title at Baylor after only five years at the school. You commented at the time that other schools can achieve this, too. Why weren’t more schools breaking through to the elite level?

“Maybe they didn’t have the commitment or resources. I just know how difficult it is to win a national championship. People don’t understand that—they see the glory and glamour— ‘Oh, Baylor is one of the elite.’ It was seven years between those championships at Baylor.

“At LSU, it happened after two years. Things have changed. The portal made it quicker, but it can also be detrimental and can cost you your job if all of a sudden players want to leave. We were fortunate to bring in recruits that could help us, but certainly we never thought of a national championship in only two years.

“To me, historically, why players transferred is they want to play more. Now, it can be anything, and NIL (Name, Image, Likeness deals) could be a reason. But as coaches we are limited in what we can say about that. Social media can also be an influence.”

Thinking about the audience for college women’s basketball—why do you think it has increased considerably in the last few years, and what will keep growing it?

“I think the (2023) championship game and the Final Four covered a lot of the real world–you had everything people would be interested in. It covered a multitude of facets–great talent, great coaching, great fans and a lot of trash talking. Everything was good and positive, including ratings.

“Now, everybody is on TV, social media and the internet. Everybody sees something that interests them, and it brings them out. Some people turned on that championship game and it was a revelation, ‘Oh—those girls can play—wow—that’s some talent on those teams—those coaches know what they are doing.’”

You’ve been a part of many historical moments in women’s basketball. What are the most meaningful and why?

“I don’t view myself that way. I get embarrassed when people say that. I don’t live my life viewing my accomplishments. If what you did yesterday looks big to you today, you haven’t done much today. Maybe one day when I am retired I’ll say, ‘Yeah, I did that.’”

The following is adapted from Hoops and Heroes: The Inspiring History of Army West Point Women’s Basketball, which debuted in spring 2023. Susan Shackelford, co-author of Shattering the Glass, wrote the book for Friends of Army Women’s Basketball and provided this adaptation of the book’s Introduction. For more on the book, go to hoopsandheroesbook.org.

Lisa Jaster was one of the first three women to become an Army Ranger when the opportunity opened to women in 2015. It was a big national story.

But what’s little known is Jaster would not have been in a position to accomplish such a feat if it hadn’t been for Carol Barkalow, one of the first players on the Army women’s basketball team and a member of the first West Point class to include women, 1980.

As a 12-year-old living in a small Wisconsin town, Jaster became energized when she read Barkalow’s book “In the Men’s House.” It explored academy life, challenges of the first female cadets and a budding women’s basketball program, West Point’s first intercollegiate sport for women.

After reading the book, Jaster became so determined to get an appointment to West Point she shifted her extracurricular focus from dance to playing basketball and running to enhance her chances to get in. And get in she did, entering the academy as part of the Class of 2000.

Years later, as a mother of two children and captain in the Army Reserves, she passed the grueling course training to become a Ranger at age 37. The average Ranger at the time was a 23-year-old male.

Jasper’s story points to how powerful women’s basketball has been to the recruitment of women to the academy. Though Jaster never played basketball there herself, her pursuit of the sport in high school demonstrated her athleticism, a prized trait at West Point.

Army women’s basketball has always been bigger than itself. It draws not just talented female basketball players to the academy but talented female cadets. The team’s following with the public also helps illuminate West Point and its educational proposition.

Hoops and Heroes highlights the team’s history as well as player accomplishments, both at the academy and beyond. The book also spotlights the diversity of the players through the years and the sisterhood they feel with teammates and others in the program. For many, having a close group of female teammates at an institution that remains overwhelmingly male has been a significant support group.

When women arrived at West Point in 1976, the salutary effect of the basketball team could not be underestimated. Tensions were high because the academy was forced to admit women in an era when all-male institutions were opening to women during the women’s rights movement of the 1970s.

West Point—whose formal name is the United States Military Academy—had been the exclusive province of men since its founding in 1802 during the administration of President Thomas Jefferson.

Given the male-only focus of West Point for so many years, graduating from there became a sign of manliness to many in the American culture. When the academy opened to women, there was a backlash. Many West Point leaders, teachers and male cadets believed women couldn’t cut it and some tried to thwart them. Some doubters were genuinely baffled by why women wanted to be there; the idea of training female Army officers challenged their very notion of women and their aspirations.

Begun shortly after women first enrolled as cadets, the women’s basketball team became a bridge to help many of the doubters see that women indeed possessed the strength and determination that made them West Point material.

DALLAS, TEXAS

Angel Reese’s left leg flashes royal purple as she glides across the court, sporting a single-leg athletic “sleeve.”

In a recent talk with The Sporting News, Reece explained she wears the covering in part to hide a surgical scar, and in part as a nod to WNBA stars A’ja Wilson and T’ea Cooper, who pioneered the popular look within their league.

Although she did not mention it, for many more “mature” basketball fans, the outfit also invokes the glamor of sprinter Florence Griffith-Joyner, whose flowing hair, elaborately painted nails and stylish, one-legged running suits transformed the image of female track stars in the 1980s.

As long as American women have played sports, their appearance has been closely examined for clues about their relationship to prevailing feminine ideals – ideals that the assertive clashes of competitive sports have often challenged. Some of this century-long interplay among clothes, players, and changing social norms can be found in Bloomers and Beyond, an article I published in Southern Cultures in the fall of 1997. It’s a fun read – I recommend it.

The present-day is no different. But in a departure from much of women’s basketball history, the uniforms worn by college players at the Final Four and elsewhere have not been deliberately designed to address questions of femininity.

Not that the NCAA doesn’t regulate what college athletes wear. On any imaginable subject, the specifics in the NCAA rules books boggle the mind. To take just one example, in the 2022-23 women’s basketball book Section 16, Article 1 decrees: “The ball shall be spherical. Spherical shall be defined as a round body whose surface at all points is equidistant from the center, except at the approved black rubber ribs (channels and/or seams).”

Uniform requirements display similar detail. They regulate colors, the size, number, and placement of school and manufacturer logos, and the design of sleeves, headbands and socks. They designate a “neutral zone” on jerseys within which “commercial names, logos, marks, and slogans are prohibited.” There is some leeway regarding color: “a tonal design effect is permitted within the neutral zone(s) provided the tonal shifts are not more than 15 percent from the color of the neutral zone.” Players must tuck in their shirts.

The regulations fill five and a half pages of the NCAA women’s basketball rules book as well as six pages of a separately issued “Supplemental Apparel Guide,” which includes instructions such as “Institutional names, mascots or logos are permitted on the game shorts. There is no limit to the number of these permissible logos on the game shorts, but these count toward the color of the shorts.”

Despite their Byzantine appearance, the regulations embody a fairly straightforward set of priorities – helping coaches and referees identify players, tamping down commercial entanglements, and in the words of the supplemental guide, regulating “IMAGE – How players appear on television/fan appeal” (this seems to reference the tucked-in shirt requirement).

Unlike the guidelines laid out by North Carolina officials in 1921, which declared that the state’s female high school players “should be dressed in clothing which is not only proper but attractive, and which will remain in place during the game,” NCAA rules are essentially identical for men and women.

Such developments do not mean that college basketball games unfold in a gender “neutral zone.” Rather, it is left up to coaches and players to chart their own paths, using tools such as hairdos, makeup, and the outfits worn by coaches on the sidelines. And although female athletes have more leeway than ever regarding self-presentation, the greatest social media followings, and the highest NIL payments tend to go to those women who fashion images that mesh well with persisting ideals about glamorous femininity.

The dramatic success of players such as Reese, who has filed to trademark the nickname “Bayou Barbie,” or NIL stars Haley and Hanna Cavinder make clear that while some things have changed, some remain very much the same.

It is the summer of 2003 and I am sitting in the heart of Philadelphia, at a microfilm reader in the archives at Temple University. I squint at the dim screen as I crank through issues of the Philadelphia Tribune, tracking the five-game basketball series played by the Germantown Hornets and the Tribune’s Newsgirls back in 1932. I am having a fine time. The contest see-saws back and forth before my eyes, and the writing is a joy to read.

“The cash customers fanned to fever heat by the ardor and closeness of combat gave outlet to all kinds of riotous impulses,” Tribune sportswriter Randy Dixon wrote after Game 5 went into overtime, and the Newsgirls scored eight unanswered points to triumph 31-23. “They stood on chairs and hollered. Others hoisted members of the winning team upon their shoulders and paraded them around the hall. They jigged and danced, and readers believe me, they were justified. It was just that kind of a game.”

I have come to Temple in search of Ora Washington, the finest black female athlete of the early twentieth century. Basketball fans considered her “the greatest girl player of the age.” In tennis, the Chicago Defender once observed, her “superiority” was “so evident that competitors are frequently beaten before the first ball crosses the net.” Watching her play, one advertisement claimed, could “make you forget the Depression.”

Then, however, she faded from view. In 1976, when she was inducted into a recently organized Black Athletes Hall of Fame, the Times reported that “the seat reserved for her on the dais the night of the induction ceremonies was empty. The silver bowl, gold ring and medallion she was to receive have been returned to the Hall of Fame offices in New York. And Miss Washington’s whereabouts remain a mystery.”

Hall officials did not realize that Washington had passed away five years earlier.

Happily for all of us, she is now getting more notice: a historical marker and online recognition from the state of Pennsylvania, a place in the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, enshrinement in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, an episode of WBUR’s Only a Game, an eight-episode BBC podcast on her life, a piece in the Washington Post’s Retropolis series and now an obituary by Juliet Macur in the New York Times “Overlooked” series, which commemorates people who lived remarkable lives beyond that august institution’s gaze.

Washington has long deserved these honors. Her story also illuminates a vibrant world of African American women’s sports, underscoring the creativity, courage and determination of the generations of African Americans who left the rural South and made new lives for themselves in a rapidly changing world.

Washington retired from competition in the 1940s, just as public attention turned to a rising generation of black players who were finally getting the chance to perform on an integrated stage (in her last national championship, the ATA mixed doubles title of 1947, she and partner George Stewart defeated Walter Johnson and an up-and-coming star named Althea Gibson). She lived in Philadelphia until she passed away in 1971. But when interest in segregation-era sports began to revive, and historians began to tell the stories of stars such as Josh Gibson and “Pop” Gates, they found only traces of Washington – a handful of photographs, a list of victories. Even her name got muddled – some time after she died she was mistakenly dubbed Ora Mae, and the old-fashioned, girlish moniker somehow stuck.

When I started to research Washington’s life for Shattering the Glass, I had a handful of sources: a brief description in A.S. “Doc” Young’s 1963 Negro Firsts in Sports, the pioneering work done by Arthur Ashe in A Hard Road to Glory, and some oral history interviews recorded by Rita Liberti as part of a project on black women’s college basketball. None of them said anything about Washington’s early life. But then, a line in an obituary led me to rural Caroline County, Virginia, where a local librarian connected me with one of Washington’s nephews, J. Bernard Childs.

Childs’ eyesight was fading, but his memory was sharp, and he told story after story about his aunt, and about the large, close Washington family – a narrative backed up by data from the U.S. Census.

Ora had been born in Caroline County at the end of the nineteenth century, the fifth of nine Washington children, in an era when the grip of white supremacy was tightening across the South. Times were hard, and one by one the Washingtons left the family farm to seek their fortunes in Philadelphia. Ora’s aunt Mattie was the first to go. A few years later, when teenaged Ora followed, she stayed with her aunt until she found a job as a housekeeper – work she would do all her life.

Like many young black working women, she joined the “colored” Germantown YWCA, founded in 1918. She picked up a tennis racket sometime in 1924. Her ability must have shown from the beginning – she won her first national title in 1925, and quickly became the brightest star on the black women’s tennis circuit. Women’s basketball was also gaining popularity, and she took up that sport as well, playing center for the Germantown Hornets before switching to the better-funded Tribunes. The promotional talents of manager Otto Briggs, enthusiastic coverage in the Tribune, and Washington’s star power made the Tribunes into the most celebrated female sports team in the nation.

In 1934, for example, the team traveled to Greensboro, North Carolina, to play the Bennett Belles from Bennett College (unlike most white colleges, many historically black institutions encouraged female students to compete). Briggs booked Greensboro’s spacious city arena, where black teams rarely played, and more than a thousand fans showed up to see what the local paper called “the fastest girls’ team in the world,” paced by “the indomitable, internationally famed and stellar performer, Ora Washington.”

She did not disappoint. Six decades later, when Rita Liberti tracked down several of the Bennett players, they had vivid memories of the Tribunes and of Washington. “She wasn’t a huge person, or very tall,” recalled Ruth Glover Mullen. But she was so fast. So fast and so good.”

“She was intimidating,” added Amaleta Moore. “The way she looked at you: ‘You’ve got no business in my way.’”

When Bennett center Lucille Townsend faced off against Washington at the start of the first game she heard a whispered warning: “Don’t outjump me.” She disregarded the admonition at her peril. “I never saw her when she hit me, but she did it so quick it would knock the breath out of me, and I doubled over,” she explained. “She could hit, and she told me that she had played a set of tennis on her knees and won it.”

Ora Washington needed every ounce of that determination. Like most black female athletes, she navigated multiple worlds. African American tennis was dominated by doctors, lawyers and other professionals who saw the genteel game as evidence of their arrival among a national elite. The working-class crowds who packed the Tribunes’ games were looking for heart-stopping entertainment. The wealthy whites whose homes she made her living cleaning – even a star of her magnitude never made enough from sports to pay the bills – expected deference and discretion. Through it all, it seems quite clear, she stayed true to herself.

Her force of personality shows clearly in one of my favorite stories. She officially retired from tennis singles in 1937, after winning her eighth national title. But in the summer of 1939, she picked up her racket for one last tournament. She reached the finals, defeated rising star Flora Lomax, 6-2, 1-6, 2-6, and promptly retired again. She minced no words about her motives. “Certain people said certain things last year,” she told the Baltimore Afro-American. “They said Ora was not so good any more. I had not planned to enter singles this year, but I just had to go up to Buffalo to prove somebody was wrong. I lost the second set to her but this was the first and only set she ever won from me.”

I suspect that self-assurance contributed to her quick slide from the public eye. Unlike Lomax, a flirtatious beauty who became known as “the glamour girl of tennis,” Washington focused on her play, spoke her mind, and formed her closest relationships with other women. Socializing after games was not her style. “The land at large has never bowed at Ora’s shrine of accomplishment in the proper tempo,” Randy Dixon wrote after her retirement, surmising that “She committed the unpardonable sin of being a plain person with no flair whatever for what folks love to call society.”

But that independence also meant she had a life beyond the court. When her athletic career ended, she slipped into obscurity, but not poverty or despair. She kept working, and spent her time with friends and with her large, extended family. In the summers, when she gathered with family members at the Caroline County farm, she avidly joined the games played on the family croquet court. “She was out there mostly with somebody, about every day,” Childs recalled. “They would go there just about every afternoon.”

Ora Washington’s latest wave of fame thus commemorates not simply athletic talent, but the ability to build a new life from the opportunities at hand. She traveled farther and achieved more than anyone could have imagined for an African American farm girl making her own way at the inauspicious start of the twentieth century. Bringing her back into the public eye not only honors her athletic achievements, it reminds us of the courage and determination that remain to be discovered in so many corners of our nation’s history.

For more about Washington, see “Ora Washington: The First Black Female Athletic Star,” published in David K. Wiggins’ fine edited collection Out of the Shadows: A Biographical History of African American Athletes (University of Arkansas Press, 2006).

Ora Washington, trophy in hand, looks over at fellow tennis player Dorothy Morgan, posed beside her with an awkward smile. Morgan is taller and far younger than Washington, but she has been no match for the 40-year-old star, who has just beaten her 6-2, 6-1 to win the Philadelphia Open. Washington stands with balanced, easy grace. Her expression suggests utter satisfaction.

Ora Washington, the greatest Black female athlete of the early twentieth century, left few clues to the private side of her extraordinary career. She wrote no memoir, and the sportswriters of her era offered little insight into athletes’ nonsporting lives. Basic facts remained in doubt – even as the twenty-first century began, the few scattered accounts of Washington’s achievements got plenty wrong.

I started running into these mistakes when I began researching Washington’s life for Shattering the Glass, and it seemed my duty as a historian to nail down as many facts as possible. I visited archives, scrolled through microfilm, and scrutinized photographs. I did some oral history interviews, although the number of people who remembered Washington was rapidly diminishing.

I wrote a short essay about what I had learned and published it with the hope that someone else would come along – someone younger, perhaps, someone more personally invested in Black women’s sports, someone who had the passion and the imagination to dive deeper than I could.
And now, almost two decades later, here we are. I’m delighted to announce that Stance Studios, working with the BBC, has produced an eight-episode podcast on Washington’s life, shaped in many ways by young Black women. Hosted by WNBA star, political activist and team co-owner Renee Montgomery, “Untold Legends” debuted August 29^th. You can listen to it here, and read Montgomery’s thoughts on Ora here.