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" The peculiar fascination with Davis reflected the way sports-crazed Southerners were struggling with race: On the one hand, they were steeped in the white South's revulsion at the presence of blacks, but on the other, they couldn't suppress their admiration of—and need for—the black physical presence. It was writ large in the South in 1966, but it's a paradigm that continues to define the dilemma of race and racism in sports in the United States: Behind the cheering often lurks angry resentment. "


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 quote : The peculiar fascination with Davis reflected the way sports-crazed Southerners were struggling with race: On the one hand, they were steeped in the white South's revulsion at the presence of blacks, but on the other, they couldn't suppress their admiration of—and need for—the black physical presence. It was writ large in the South in 1966, but it's a paradigm that continues to define the dilemma of race and racism in sports in the United States: Behind the cheering often lurks angry resentment.