By Dasia Garner, N.C. A&T
William C. Rhoden has dedicated nearly five decades to covering the intersection of sports, race and society. He spent 34 years at The New York Times, including 26 years writing the “Sports of The Times” column. Since 2016, he has written “Locker Room Talk” at ESPN’s Andscape.
Rhoden is a graduate of Morgan State University, where he played football and studied English. He began his career at The Baltimore Afro-American, and he later worked at Ebony and The Baltimore Sun before joining The Times in 1982. In 2017, he founded the Rhoden Fellows, a partnership between Andscape and the Walt Disney Company, which trains aspiring sports journalists at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Rhoden also teaches opinion writing at Arizona State University.
Rhoden authored “Forty Million Dollar Slaves,” a New York Times Bestseller that compares the treatment of black athletes to their ancestors on early plantations. Rhoden’s storytelling has extended to film, earning him a Peabody Award for HBO’s Journey of the African American Athlete. His career honors include induction into the NABJ Hall of Fame in 2018 and the National Sports Media Association Hall of Fame in 2021.
Dasia Garner is a junior multimedia journalism student from Chicago.