{"id":1441,"date":"2014-01-01T10:00:17","date_gmt":"2014-01-01T15:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.umw.edu\/gl\/?p=1441"},"modified":"2021-02-23T13:27:56","modified_gmt":"2021-02-23T18:27:56","slug":"jim-thorpe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/2014\/01\/01\/jim-thorpe\/","title":{"rendered":"Jim Thorpe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lecture Date: February 20, 2014<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"2\/20 Jim Thorpe\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/91309162?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"1100\" height=\"619\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/umwwebmaster.wpengine.com\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2014\/01\/Jim-Thorpe.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-full wp-image-59568 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/umwwebmaster.wpengine.com\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2014\/01\/Jim-Thorpe.png\" alt=\"Jim-Thorpe\" width=\"185\" height=\"274\" \/><\/a>\u00a0Jim Thorpe (1887-1953) was the greatest multi-sport athlete the world has ever seen \u2013 and likely to remain so as sports since his heyday have been marked by an irreversible movement to specialize. One of the best collegiate football players when the sport was in its infancy, twice an All-American, for the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The first international celebrity athlete as double gold medal winner \u2013 by huge margins \u2013 in both the pentathlon and decathlon in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. The athlete who put the struggling sport of professional football on the map in Canton, Ohio and, in recognition of his contribution, was voted in 1920 the first president of the organization that became in 1922 the National Football League. A major league baseball player who, in 1919, playing for the Boston Braves, was the leading batter in the National League, ahead of Ty Cobb (in the American League) and Joe Jackson, until an injury took him out of the running. Born in Oklahoma as a Potawatomi and Sac &amp; Fox American Indian, Thorpe became a symbol in that highly socially stratified time of the ethnic or racial outsider who transcended such barriers by sheer excellence on the supposedly equal playing ground of sports. When he was stripped of his amateur Olympic gold medals in 1913 for being a professional \u2013 he had played minor league baseball in 1909-1911 \u2013 he became an even more potent example of the outsider humiliated and banished by an exclusionary elite. Intelligent, genial, generous, Jim Thorpe was not a complicated man, but what happened to him was.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"color: #b81237;font-family: MuseoSlab;font-weight: 900\">Lecture Pictures<\/h2>\n<p>[flickr_set id=&#8221;72157643798644823&#8243;]<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"color: #B81237;font-family: MuseoSlab;font-weight: 900\">Speaker: Kate Buford<\/h2>\n<figure id=\"attachment_59569\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-59569\" style=\"width: 210px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/umwwebmaster.wpengine.com\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2014\/01\/Kate-Buford.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-59569\" src=\"http:\/\/umwwebmaster.wpengine.com\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2014\/01\/Kate-Buford.png\" alt=\"Kate Buford, Author of  Native American Son: The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe\" width=\"210\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-59569\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kate Buford, Author of Native American Son: The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Kate Buford\u2019s <i>Native American Son: The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe<\/i> (Knopf 2010) was an Editors\u2019 Choice of The New York Times and won awards from the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and the Professional Football Research Association (PFRA). The paperback was published in 2012 by the University of Nebraska Press. <i>Burt Lancaster: An American Life<\/i> (Knopf\/Da Capo\/Aurum UK), also a New York Times Editors\u2019 Choice, was named one of the best books of 2000 by the <i>Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post<\/i> and others. In 2013 Knopf released an ebook edition in honor of the centennial of Lancaster\u2019s birth. Buford has written for <i>The New York Times, Film Comment, Bluegrass Unlimited, History Now,<\/i> and <i>Readex<\/i>, among other publications, appeared on Charlie Rose and C-SPAN, and was a commentator on NPR\u2019s Morning Edition and APM\u2019s Marketplace from 1995 \u2013 2004, and on Virginia\u2019s NPR affiliate, WMRA. A member of PEN, the NYU Biographers Seminar, and Biographers International Organization (BIO), she lives in Virginia and New York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lecture Date: February 20, 2014 &nbsp; \u00a0Jim Thorpe (1887-1953) was the greatest multi-sport athlete the world has ever seen \u2013 and likely to remain so as sports since his heyday have been marked by an irreversible movement to specialize. One of the best collegiate football players when the sport was in its infancy, twice an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"umw_cb_additional_links":[[]],"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_advisory_expires_time":"","_advisory_meta_include":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4],"class_list":{"0":"post-1441","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-lectures","7":"tag-4","8":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.9 (Yoast SEO v26.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Jim Thorpe - Great Lives<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/2014\/01\/01\/jim-thorpe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jim Thorpe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Lecture Date: February 20, 2014 &nbsp; \u00a0Jim Thorpe (1887-1953) was the greatest multi-sport athlete the world has ever seen \u2013 and likely to remain so as sports since his heyday have been marked by an irreversible movement to specialize. 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