A people’s history of leisure studies: The life and ideology of Channing Tobias

Abstract

Histories of the African American YMCA movement have largely silenced the Black actors who made that movement possible. The act of centering those individuals, not just as actors, but as thinkers capable of reshaping leisure’s past and present is an act toward social justice. The purpose of this study is to present and critically examine the ideology of one of those actors: Channing Tobias. His work both inside and outside of the YMCA was devoted to ending racial discrimination. Tobias engaged racial uplift and what I am calling a philosophy of unity as tactics to work against racial discrimination. The goal of his philosophy of unity was to reframe racial discrimination as “everyone’s problem” by connecting it with common social values. Tobias’s ideology challenges the leisure studies discipline to continue to consider the limitations and possibilities of leisure within anti-racist reform.

Keywords:

• Black
• leisure history
• YMCA

Notes

1 Jim Crow refers to a social system present throughout the United States during the time period of this study. Jim Crow reinforced the subjugation and separation in every aspect of social life. Cole and Ring (2012) argued that Jim Crow operated through many mechanisms, of which “legal segregation was only one, along with political chicanery, economic coercion, and outright violence that whites used to circumscribe the life choices of blacks” (p. 2). African Americans resisted Jim Crow in a range of ways, from direct confrontation with unjust laws and policies to creating separate, safe spaces such as YMCAs (see for example Tuck, 2010; Woodward, 1974).

2 Tobias was awarded honorary doctoral degrees from New York University (1950, c.f., NYU honors Dr. Tobias, 1950), the New School for Social Research (1948, c.f., Tobias first to win honorary degree at New School, 1948), Morehouse College (1942), and Gammon Theological Seminary (1924, c.f., “proposing the name”, 1944).

3 The NAACP is a civil rights organization focused on the health and welfare of Black people (NAACP, 2020).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Appalachian State University (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Grant).