The Great Black Hope

The story of two pioneering Black NFL football players that changed the face of America’s game for generations to come.    

There is no position in pro sports more important than an NFL quarterback. But quarterbacking was the exclusive domain of white players for many years, and when Doug Williams and Vince Evans arrived in the league in the late 1970s, they got death threats, faced racist questions, and knew that a single mistake could end their careers. The Great Black Hope tells the twin stories of Vince Evans,an electrifying dual-threat quarterback ahead of his time, and of Doug Williams, the first Black quarterback to become a champion. Moore shows how easily Williams’ triumphant story could have gone wrong and how his success changed the game and the country. 

A skillful blend of game-time drama and social commentary, this book captures unheralded heroes of the NFL and all that they meant, both on the field and off.     
 

• “Like a sharp pass zipped into the hands of a speedy receiver, Lou Moore hits his target in stride with The Great Black Hope. This is one of those delicious books with the ideal match of author and subject. Moore, a preeminent scholar of race and sports, tells the story not only of the historic NFL matchup between Doug Williams and Vince Evans, but of the nearly impenetrable fortress the league had built around the quarterback position that few Black men had been permitted to enter. This is a story that transcends sports, ultimately demonstrating that even the most aggressive attempts to sack Black achievement can’t withstand the opposing forces of persistence, talent, and courage forever. Eventually someone breaks through, and a position or a sport – or a country – is changed forever.”
  David Maraniss, New York Times bestselling author of Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South
• “Dr. Lou Moore is changing the way we understand the intersection of sports and the fight for Black liberation because he is perhaps the best researcher in the field. He understands the historic value of Black media in allowing the subjects of his research to speak for themselves. His book We Will Win the Day was a masterwork of this, weaving the story of desegregation into the world of sports in a manner we had not seen. Now, with The Great Black Hope, Moore is writing about the history of the Black quarterback with a depth of research and analysis that is unmatched.”
  Dave Zirin, The Nation
• “In this book, Lou Moore doesn't just tell the story of the Black quarterback through football history in ways it's never been told before -- he also seamlessly weaves in football schematics and civil rights to perfectly illustrate everything Black quarterbacks have gone through to get here, from pioneers to the superstars of today.”
  Doug Farrar, USA Today Sports
• “As with most things in life, sport evolves through time. What is typically missing from the discourse though, is cultural and historical context. In The Great Black Hope, Moore accounts the racial battles, history, and impact of African-American quarterbacks on American professional football."
  Shakeia Taylor, Chicago Tribune
• "The Great Black Hope is a revelatory work—insightful, richly reported, and packed with fascinating detail. Like the best of all sports books, it’s about much more than sports. It’s about race, about America, about the past, present, and future. It’s an eye-opening, entertaining read from beginning to end."
   
  Jonathan Eig, author of King: A Life
• "Lou Moore writes with a sports journalist's eye for the action on the field, and a historian's sense for societal forces affecting the games we play -- politics, business, tradition, and, above all, race. He spells out how the NFL's reflexive prejudice against Black quarterbacks stunted several professional careers, and derailed others before they could begin. Doug Williams and Vince Evans weren't the first Black quarterbacks in NFL history, nor were they the most statistically successful. But Moore sifts through the numbers and contemporary press accounts to build a persuasive case that Williams' and Evans' careers changed the game for Black quarterbacks -- and the entire NFL. The league we see today owes a lot to those two players, and their staying power. If we want to understand how and why, we need fewer sports debate shows and more Lou Moore."
  
   
  Morgan Campbell, author of My Fighting Family
• “A piercing look at racial politics on the gridiron.”
  Kirkus
• “Moore makes a persuasive case that Williams and Evans expanded the notion of what was possible for Black athletes. It’s a winning examination of an overlooked milestone in football history.”
  Publishers Weekly