“Growing up in Little Rock, I preferred to think of myself as white and simply get on with life. He is Turkish, a different ethnic group from most of the lighter-skinned peoples who populated northern Europe for centuries. Still, I know while my mother is a ‘white’ American, my father is not. It’s the checkbox that feels the least like lying when I’m speeding through government forms. “I definitely look ‘white,’ and I label myself as such for the sake of simplicity. “All good and well, a reader may wonder, but why does a ‘white guy’ like me care so much about African-American history?” he writes in the introduction to his book. William Fulbright, etc.”Īnd Demirel had his own, more personal reasons. I wanted to “Arkansas-ify” Ali and his Black Muslim beliefs - look at the Arkansas Delta origins of the black nationalist movements he represented, go deeply into the ties between his anti-Vietnam stance and those of J. The more I looked into the stories surrounding the controversy leading up to his speech at the UA, the more I realized that he kind of served as a nexus point for all kinds of significant historical movements. “Here was this titan of sports, arguably the most important athlete of the 20th century, who had spent nearly an entire week in Arkansas at the height of his fame.
“The idea for the anthology really crystallized after Muhammad Ali’s death last summer,” explains Demirel, a former award-winning feature writer with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette who has also written for the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Daily Beast, SLAM, Vice, the Arkansas Times, Arkansas Life and the Turkish Basketball Federation. That’s just one of the reasons Demirel wrote “African-American Athletes in Arkansas: Muhammad Ali’s Tour, Black Razorbacks & Other Forgotten Stories.” He’ll be among authors showcased at an “Arkansas Sports Night” tonight at the Bank of Fayetteville on the square. That’s a lesson we in the 21st century can learn from.” They were, in essence, going out of their way to commune and seek out the best (athletically) from each other. “Young men representing two races were competing each other and building friendships despite laws trying to keep them apart. For more information, visit his Website at .Īuthor takes unique look at race, civil rights, politicsīECCA here in Fayetteville, in the 1930s, blacks - wearing Razorback uniforms and being coached by Razorback coaches - were competing against whites in football,” says author Evin Demirel. Evin Demirel is a Rogers-based writer focusing on the intersection of sports, race relations and history.