This article traces the parallel development of lynching culture and the fandom surrounding the black athletic body. While only recently have fan studies scholars started to theorize the relationship between racism, sports, and fandom activity, their shared history goes back to at least Jack Johnson, the first black boxer to win the heavyweight championship. From this first encounter with the black athletic body, sports fans with white supremacist leanings have employed lynching iconography and rhetoric to discipline athletes who challenged the general perception of how a public black figure out to behave. I argue that not only is racialized fan violence directed toward black athletes a common occurrence, but that the logics of lynching culture are deeply and perhaps irrevocably intertwined with those of sports fandom writ large.
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