Share Your Story and Receive Not Just a Game

Have you used a lesson from this website in your classroom? Share it with us and get a free copy of the classroom friendly documentary Not Just a Game.

In appreciation for your feedback and (when possible) photos to illustrate it, we will send you a DVD of Not Just a Game, a civil rights and sports history documentary by Dave Zirin.

In this powerful film, based on his bestselling book A People’s History of Sports in the United States, Zirin argues that far from providing merely escapist entertainment, sports have long been at the center of some of the major political debates and struggles in U.S. history.

Zirin first traces how sports in the U.S. have glamorized militarism, racism, sexism, and homophobia, then excavates a largely forgotten history of rebel athletes who stood up to power and fought for social justice beyond the field of play. The result is as deeply moving as it is exhilarating: nothing less than an alternative history of political struggle in the United States as seen through the games its people have played. [Producer’s description.]