Boston Book Festival 2018

Join us for what is sure to be a fascinating and timely discussion of the outsize role athletes can have in effecting social change. Former NBA player and activist Etan Thomas interviewed dozens of athletes, media personalities, and family members of young blacks killed by police for We Matter, “an important read, executed uniquely,” according to Library Journal.  Amy Bass, in One Goal, tells the uplifting story of a high school soccer team that overcame racism in a Maine town whose residents now include many Somali refugees. Wil Haygood’s Tigerland is an inspirational tale of how two high school teams from a segregated, poor school in Ohio won state championships in the racially charged atmosphere of the late ’60s. Finally, Howard Bryant’s The Heritage takes a nuanced approach to athlete-activists, showing how the activist tradition of Jackie Robertson, Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith, and others was undermined by apolitical, corporate-friendly athletes like O.J. Simpson, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods and is now being revived by the likes of LeBron James and Colin Kaepernick. Moderated by the legendary Bill Littlefield, who hosted WBUR’s Only a Game from 1993 to 2018.