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Excerpt from The Murmurmontis, 1924, Vol. 19 We cannot stand forever upon the thresh old oi life and look forward to a glorious future, for the time must come when we shall be called into the great arena upon which we are now gazing. When we shall have been encompassed by the smoke and the din of the strife, when days of sore temptation and difficulty meet us face to face, then, indeed, will it be as a ray of Orion piercing the darkness of night to turn to those familiar faces upon which we once looked with pleasure, and live over again the days which Time has decreed we shall see no more. For no other. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This chronicle of sports at West Virginia's 40 black high schools and three black colleges illuminates many issues in race relations and the struggle for social justice within the state and nation. Despite having inadequate resources, the black schools' sports teams thrived during segregation and helped tie the state's scattered black communities together. West Virginia hosted the nation's first state-wide black high school basketball tournament, which flourished for 33 years, and both Bluefield State and West Virginia State won athletic championships in the prestigious Colored Intercollegiate Athletic Association (now Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association). Black schools were gradually closed after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, and the desegregation of schools in West Virginia was an important step toward equality. For black athletes and their communities, the path to inclusion came with many costs.