Sol Butler

An Olympian's Odyssey Through Jim Crow America

By: Brian Hallstoos

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Hardcover | 20 January 2026

At a Glance

Hardcover
304 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.5 x 15.6

Hardcover

RRP $260.00

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A little-known Black athlete's fearless commitment to integration through sports A superstar in both football and track and field Sol Butler pioneered the parlaying of sports fame into business prosperity. Brian Hallstoos tells the story of a Black athlete's canny use of mainstream middle-class values and relationships with white society to transcend the athletic, economic, and social barriers imposed by white supremacy. Butler built on his feats as a high school athlete to become a four-year starter for the football team at Dubuque German College (later the University of Dubuque), a record-setting sprinter and long jumper, and an Olympian at the 1920 Summer Games. Hallstoos follows Butler's sporting accomplishments while charting how family and interracial communities influenced the ways Butler tested the limits of social and physical mobility and gave him an exceptional ability to discern where he might be most free. From there, Hallstoos turns to Butler's use of fame to boost his entrepreneurial efforts and his multifaceted success capitalizing on his celebrity in the Black communities of Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. An engaging look at a forgotten trailblazer, Sol Butler illuminates the multifaceted life of a Black sports entrepreneur.

Industry Reviews

"Before Bo Jackson, there was Sol Butler. Brian Hallstoos has written a fabulous book about the most unheralded athlete of the WWI era. Butler, the son of an ex-slave and a free woman of color, was a world-record-setting sprinter and jumper, a whirlwind on the football field, and a top attraction on the hardwood. At a time when few Black people had the opportunity to ply their trade in their chosen profession, Butler painstakingly carved out his own path using his amazing athleticism to traverse the tough terrain of American prejudice." --Louis Moore, author of I Fight for a Living: Boxing and the Battle for Black Manhood, 1880-1915

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