Roller Derby/Roller Games History

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Permalink Reply by Mark Furcick on March 9, 2010 at 9:33pm

Try going to Wikipedia to get a brief history ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roller_Games ) of the T-Birds. For a comprehensive Roller Derby history, look for the book "Roller Derby To Roller Jam" by Keith Coppage. Also, google the internet and you'll find a variety of sites and articles with information.

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Permalink Reply by Grand Poobah on March 10, 2010 at 8:46am

Wikipedia has an article on the history of roller derby. As odd as this might sound, I've found that to be the most accurate telling of roller derby history anywhere. The writers don't appear to have written it with any presumptions, and had easier access to info that previous writers maybe didn't (like Lexis-Nexis).

For example, it has the ONLY mention of Leo Seltzer losing a lawsuit in the 1930s that he filed against a competing promoter who staged a marathon called a "roller derby." The judge found that because there had been skating marathons before Leo Seltzer's Transcontinental Roller Derby that were called "roller derbies" that the trademark on "Roller Derby" only extended to it as a game or as a brand of roller skates. You almost wonder if Leo actually turned roller derby into a game in part to protect the brand name. Leo losing the suit and there being 'existing art" was probably not a fact that would have been convenient for the Seltzer family to have widely known.

The list of roller derby leagues there also gives rough approximations of when various pro leagues started and ended.

It's difficult to put exact dates on certain things because much of the reporting on such leagues is a fair bit less than journalistic. Often the only sources of info are the leagues' PR releases/web sites or if they got a mention in Frank DeFord's Five Strides on the Banked Track or Keith Coppage's Roller Derby to RollerJam. The former doesn't cite sources and Frank DeFord may have taken everyone at their word. I don't have Coppage's book yet.

One recent coffee table book on roller derby gets a fair bit of the sport's history entirely wrong, and from reading how it states the history it seems like the primary source of info was off some league web sites.

Five Strides on the Banked Track has a LOT of useful tidbits of information, but it's not sourced and what's included is probably just what the author found interesting. It is probably the best-written book on roller derby to date. Stuff that otherwise may have been lost to the ages include the fact that originally there were originally three teams playing at a time, all of which were named for Indian tribes.

It also makes no bones about the fact that Roller Derby was obviously "sports entertainment." It doesn't shy away from the fact that there were gay skaters (but also notes that contrary to stereotypes most of the female skaters were heterosexual). There's a fair bit of stuff that's hilarious in a historical context, like one unnamed skater's implication that the skaters of the 1950s weren't as good or hard-hitting as those of the 1940s. Kind of a "My era was the best, everything that's has come after was less good" type of thing. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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