The Case:
A pair of sports tickets from 1927 are discovered in a used book.
The tickets are for a basketball game featuring Jim Thorpe, the legendary Native American athlete who was known for his 1912 Olympic gold medals and Herculean strengths as a football and baseball player.
Thorpe’s sporting legend looms large, but is this ticket evidence of a chapter of his career almost completely forgotten by history... as a professional basketball player?
History Detectives goes to New York and Pennsylvania to investigate the life of a sports legend and uncover some harsh truths about racism in the sports world.
Related Content
Technique:
Feature:
Feature:
Feature:
Related Links
Explore
-
Also with Wes Cowan
Manhattan Project Patent
Was this drawing part of America's secret plans to fuel the atomic bomb?
-
Also with Wes Cowan
Confederate Eyeglass
Is this how southern sympathizers identified each other during the Civil War?
-
Also with Wes Cowan
Mankato Spoon
What does this delicate silver spoon have to do with the largest mass execution in American history?
-
Also in Season 3
Poison Pin
Are these prototypes for poison suicide pins carried by spy plane pilots during the Cold War?
-
Also in Emerging Modern America: 1890-1930
Transatlantic Cable
How did this twisted fragment of metal spark a communications revolution?
-
Also in Emerging Modern America: 1890-1930
Connecticut Farmhouse
Why did this Connecticut farmhouse have so many owners in such a short space of time?
Comments
This is a place for opinions, comments, questions and discussion; a place where viewers of History Detectives can express their points of view and connect with others who value history. We ask that posters be polite and respectful of all opinions. History Detectives reserves the right to delete comments that don’t conform to this conduct. We will not respond to every post, but will do our best to answer specific questions, or address an error.