with a real accomplishment and interest in the history of running and today it is pam cooper time welcome fit to this of this fascinating program always interesting to get to talk to significant people through one of the best and most significant books about the history of running the american marathon published by syracuse university press and in the very distinguished sports history series patty let's start with how the book began because this brings you in the person as well as the book you say in the introduction the idea of this book american marathon tell us about that visit and about that st marathon well about the visit it was i was disappointed that people didn't make more fuss about the origins of the marathon i was interested in it and the perfect certainly encouraged me on on doing the history and of course john john j kelly had a biography that i found fascinating but there was so much more to write and there was there was just nothing and i had done some research and in college i'd finished my degree in one thousand nine hundred and three at bard college and i had done some research on that i was encouraged by my advisor mary a bit and i realized somewhere along the line that this was i don't know my calling but i was going to continue researching the history of the marathon foot race now the st marathon stamford connecticut to columbia oval and the bronx won by j j mcdermott who also won the st boston marathon and mostly middle class young men who were part of running clubs but that ended the marathon in new york city i think there was a lot of the stablish really didn't know how to take it in what to do with it it was kind of an outl think your book is so interesting about the social makeup of the marathon and that's really is its main contribution i think as a work of history you say that is just about the way the marathon started and the way it appealed to people who had a beginning to work in the new kind of industrialized corporate jobs which took them a long way away from the real world of agriculture because white collar positions in corporations you say trapped men in routine in the hierarchy and separated them from each other and from physical middle class men asserted that autonomy and physical individuality in sport among their peers not found that a re ally interesting statement about why sport began when it didn't this is when basketball was invented for nice for these men for exactly that purpose and so middle class mom wanted organized sports most social trends begin with the middle class or the upper class and they drift down to the working class and that's pretty much what happened with the marathon the marathon a new york ended in with that one and then it came back in one thousand no seven when there was more interest and you remember until frank shorter won the olympic marathon and i nine hundred and seventy two the interest in the marathon occurred once every four years and then everybody forgot about it except in boston yes boston where continued boston is quite interesting the costs you had the boston athletic association putting on it was very definitely a working class event you say something that i've not seen anywhere else about the distinction between new york and boston as a kind of locus for the m they could kind of regenerate and modernize each time it was revive it yes it could be the latest thing in sport it could be a new thing a could attract a new constituency every every time and you did later it was the bicentenary and they went out into the streets and so yes that race was was reinventing the whole sport it was as you said boston was conservative this is how we do it yeah the boston marathon and it's put on by this group over this route but new york didn't really have kind of a i don't mean it class that was running the marathon it was the people ran it what the point and i think the famous the book which was to me most important was boston established a foot race new york city created a marathon culture oh that's really interesting way of putting it well that's raises another point which is still true of the sport of running by comparison with with most other sports in that it is that is that it is almost entirely a participant sport we've got we've got big case right from the start of the yes but i really want to argue with you about that it's a participant sport the spectators are also participants in the marathon they are right there they're not up in the stands and especially the new york city participants the spectators that was a friday and slipped the hands of the spectator is a participant when you run the new york city marathon anyone will tell you you get so much from the crowds and the crowds know it and there are people who volunteer year after year to hand out water they're not spectators they are participants and that's what creates th devotion you wrote a chapter in your book cool new york city marathon culture would you read the opening paragraph of it forced please page twenty seven i think this is about where we are in the history yes the marathon foot race returned to the new york city area in one thousand nine hundred and seven to be claimed by a new sport constituency after ten years the race had evolved into a sport with mostly working class participants it was public boisterous and earthy runners pass close by the spectators streaming with sweat their labored breathing clearly audible as they kicked to the dust of the roads the marathon gave ethnic groups a way to participate in patriotic celebrations by watching representative sports as the middle class did but on the king class terms john bodner explains that quote immigrants sought to enter capitalist society on their own terms and formulate their own definition of their status and condition and that's what they did in the marathon the immigrant groups entered on their own terms they represented themselves as hyphenated americans and most of the working class at this time and i had a wonderful time at the new york city library happiest place on earth researching this and i would go through a list and look at the last names and process reference and get the ethnicities and i would cross reference you know what i was in the tabloids going through and figuring out and these were irish americans and italian americans and african americans and jewish people and it's exactly that in running gives as it were known threatening context in which they can succeed yeah i wanted people to who are actually part of your text rather than just the idea of ideas of the book important because that's a fine vivid piece of writing which actually bring brings the whole sport to life so yet that's that that's what writing history it's makes it so fascinating is  the historical generalisations are all based on this actual process which we all relate to and everybody watching this program loves to start with considerably two thirds of it is what you might call a story of increasing inclusiveness yes so different groups where you just spoken very well about the immigrant groups coming and making it an activity of their own  but gradually the sport expanded till it now reached the point where it's become as i just tried to say by using mid as an example really a paragon a model of inclusiveness in an age when that concept is being challenged again and so running i think is arguably very important and more important that it's than it's ever been and you'll story becomes a very important but i'm interested because there's a chapter in my book about the cold part of it was the economy you could get a job you could live on very little and almost a hippie ideal would be the runner who lived on practically nothing and devoted himself to becoming better and better at the that was very much the concept and medieval equipment yes i remember that as part of the appeal for me in the sixty's and still is which is why it's still we're a forty year old watch and no fancy equipment but it was also part of  political situation that americans were regarded by the russians the soviets back then as weak and the olympics had turned into this heavily political event you know we had medal counts and who won the most amount of medals and the americans were trying to prove their strengths and whatever and when frank shorter won in one thousand nine hundred and seventy two that was pretty much a turn i think sure really feel to the american public because he made it look so beautiful i would say easy but but he made it look he made it look like poetry and this was a its image had been suffering grew masing exhaustion collapse it showed american strength it was a political victory and it reached right down and made the marathon acceptable because the french order went to yale he was an ivy league graduate and he went to law school he was someone you could admire you know middle class values yeah frank's contribution i was think he made as you just said he made the marathon the big thing the big desperation variable in america who got into running before that yes thanks to a great extent to billy mills native american become popular and if you jog enough you'd get better at it and faster and eventually it might consider entering a competition that i had to come across before was you know very perceptive point about the political implications of this to be sometimes says you know the other students who are doing drugs and rock and roll of things and he did running as you said it was his thing that was all part of part of the the freedom freedom of expression of that  ok so that's there as it were the social change that came into the marathon and then let's talk about two other kinds of change you know racial and gender because this is this is a story of increasing inclusiveness now the racial one is something that i know right now i think that is the most important thing that happened to the marathon it was a black track quote started in one thousand nine hundred and thirty six at the height of the great depression at a time when harlem was hit harder by the depression than the rest of new york city when harlem parents usually worked both parents worked at jobs far from home and children were unsupervised and three men one of them joseph yancey started to track club for boys now this was william cobra joseph yancey and william douglas starting a track club they were middle class men and what they were doing it took me a long time to figure this out and a lot of research at the schomburg rest still spent a lot of time they started to track up and it was the goals were education and integration and becoming a better person any boys could join we guard lists of ability they were recruiting for the middle class and that was the point so it started on the sidewalks of new york with a group of middle class men and i have some quotes here message sanction track and field meets call for proper deport meant on the part of athletes a track meet is a carefully structured occasion and a value of propriety and formality surrounds the displays of bursting speed and strength as little competition demonstrates the compatibility of manliness and restraint joseph yancey was recruiting for the middle class he was teaching what we now call the soft skills and i have a quote from ed levy yancey did a lot of talking about being a gentleman st and the values of sportsmanship and growing up to be good citizens and much of the talking and teaching that we had every night was a lecture of some kind and these are the topics that we covered in addition to how to run how destroyed to share your races and so on but a great amount of time was spent on personal development and subjects to that nature so there was the emphasis on education but they also you know they brought the boys in with their lure of sport they emphasized education they encourage them to apply to colleges and if they had an interview they would pay for haircuts they would buy the boy a new suit they gave them the chance it gave them the soft skills to succeed it took us a long time to realize that the  person in the in the family to go to college was at risk now we know those students really need certain special attention they know it back then and in my  people's stereotypes that he you have a group of african americans coming into the activity and making it more respectable than it was it's really fascinating one of the remember when well you do research to in a library when you go there the world is the next book and so i'm overwhelmed with reading because i have to read about the black middle class i have to read about the caribbean immigration which was a tremendous influence and new york had this incredible unique black middle class that was remember in the south there was a land so the middle class could establish their own residential enclaves which would be segregated by economics as well as race but in march on washington that didn't happen when roosevelt opened government jobs to af to everyone meaning that african americans could no longer be discriminated against joe yancey formally integrated the pioneer track club before that it was integrated more and more white youth they saw running and they would tell each other in high school there's a club where you can go and run with the men and so more white kids would go and in one thousand nine hundred and two was formally it you know on on the table intricate it over again in these conversations you find that the history of running is much more yes the last discussion i had was let's move move on now to the rd kind of inclusiveness