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2019 Foreword INDIES Award, Honorable Mention for Adventure, Sports
& Rec 2020 Nebraska Book Award Akoy Agau led Omaha Central High
School to four straight high school basketball state championships
(2010-13) and was a three-time All-State player. One of the most
successful high school athletes in Nebraska's history, he's also a
South Sudanese refugee. At age four, Akoy and his family fled Sudan
during the Second Sudanese Civil War, and after three years in
Cairo, they came to Maryland as refugees. They arrived in Omaha in
2003 in search of a better future. In Omaha the Agaus joined the
largest South Sudanese resettlement population in the United
States. While federal resources and local organizations help
refugees with housing, health care, and job placement, the
challenge to assimilate culturally was particularly steep. For Akoy
basketball provided a sense of belonging and an avenue to realize
his potential. He landed a Division 1 basketball scholarship to
Louisville for a year and a half, then played at Georgetown for two
injury-plagued seasons before he graduated in the spring of 2017.
With remaining eligibility, he played for Southern Methodist
University while pursuing a graduate degree. In a fluid, intimate,
and joyful narrative, Steve Marantz relates Akoy's refugee journey
of basketball, family, romance, social media, and coming of age at
Nebraska's oldest and most diverse high school. Set against a
backdrop of the South Sudanese refugee community in Omaha, Marantz
provides a compelling account of the power of sports to blend
cultures in the unlikeliest of places.
In the spring of 1968, the Omaha Central High School basketball
team made history with its first all-black starting lineup. Their
nickname, the Rhythm Boys, captured who they were and what they did
on the court. Led by star center Dwaine Dillard, the Rhythm Boys
were a shoo-in to win the state championship. But something
happened on their way to glory. In early March, segregationist
George Wallace, in a third-party presidential bid, made a campaign
stop in Omaha. By the time he left town, Dillard was in jail, his
coach was caught between angry political factions, and the city
teetered on the edge of racial violence. So began the Nebraska
state high school basketball tournament the next day, caught in the
vise of history. "The Rhythm Boys of Omaha Central" tells a true
story about high school basketball, black awakening and rebellion,
and innocence lost in a watershed year. The drama of civil rights
in 1968 plays out in this riveting social history of sports,
politics, race, and popular culture in the American heartland.
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