African-American athletes stand taller after Obama swearing-in

By Steve Keating

DETROIT, Jan 20 (Reuters) - From the Australian Open to NBA locker rooms and playgrounds across the United States, African-American athletes stood a little taller on Tuesday as Barack Obama was sworn in as the country's 44th president.

It was with special pride that American sportsmen and women shared in the historic moment because it was on their fields and inside their arenas where some of the most important battles against prejudice and segregation have been waged.

But even as America embraced its first black president, there are signs that old prejudices remain at the highest level of U.S. sport.

On the momentous day that Obama stepped forward to take the oath OF office, the NFL was still enforcing the "Rooney Rule" requiring all teams to interview at least one minority candidate for any vacant head coaching position.

Even the NCAA was not above the fray, fending off charges of racism sparked by the lack of black head coaches in top flight college football.

At NASCAR races the Confederate flag still flutters from motor homes parked in the infield even as America's most popular motor racing series tries to shed its "good ol'boy" image by reaching out to minorities with a driver diversity program.

While a few colour barriers remain to broken, black athletes have transformed America's sporting landscape and along it with the social values and attitudes that helped clear Obama's path to the White House.

Jackie Robinson, who famously broke baseball's colour barrier in 1947, Willie O'Ree, the first black NHL player, Wayne Embry, the first African-American to be named general manager and then president of an NBA team, all nudged Martin Luther King's dream closer to the reality with their fearless determination.