From Bad Buck to White Hope: Journalism and Sonny Liston, 1958–1965

This study illustrates how mainstream journalists employed racial stereotypes to depict controversial Black American boxer Sonny Liston in the early 1960s. The historical-critical narrative employs Raymond Williams’s theory of hegemony to account for the vacillating media portrayals of the boxer over time, particularly before and after Muhammad Ali emerged as a social problem for White America. This perspective highlights both the practices and the social fissures that defined sports and media promotions during that era.