# High Five *The archive holds the modern high five as a Black-authored gesture of joy and solidarity, first documented in Major League Baseball through Glenn Burke and Dusty Baker and then carried into global popular culture without their full credit.* > Black's Encyclopedia — the sourced record of Black American life. > Portal: The Culture · Status: In review · Revised: July 23, 2026 · Revisions: 1 > Canonical: https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/high-five-e12f ## Questions this record answers - Who really invented the high five? - How did Glenn Burke and Dusty Baker create the high five in Major League Baseball? - Why is the Black origin of the high five mostly missing from the mainstream record? - How did the high five spread from Black sports culture into everyday American life? ## Summary The modern **high five** enters the documented record in Black baseball, when Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Glenn Burke raised his hand to meet Dusty Baker’s on October 2, 1977, and the two turned a dugout greeting into a repeatable gesture of triumph. Burke then made the high five his signature, teaching it across the clubhouse, the league and later the Castro, building a new language of celebration that the wider culture adopted while detaching it from its Black authors. ## The archive's standing The archive holds the high five as a Black-created element of global body language, authored in the specific genius of Glenn Burke and his partnership with Dusty Baker. It is not a random evolution of human behavior but a documented act of invention inside Black sport, carried by Black athletes into the center of American popular culture. That the gesture now feels universal is itself the measure of how thoroughly Black creative practice has built the shared references of modern life. The record of Burke’s exclusion from the sport only underlines that the authorship of joy and style so often outlasts the institutions that tried to push its makers aside. ## Origins in Black Baseball In the closing days of the 1977 regular season, the Los Angeles Dodgers were chasing individual milestones and a sense of swagger that went beyond the box score. Outfielder Dusty Baker hit his 30th home run on October 2 to complete the team’s unprecedented four-player 30-homer slate, and as he returned to the plate, teammate Glenn Burke raised his right hand high in an improvised welcome. Baker, by his own later account, did not know what Burke was asking for, but he slapped Burke’s palm in mid-air, and the dugout locked in on something new: a vertical, above-the-head slap that read on television and in the stands as pure exuberance. Burke and Baker repeated the gesture through that game and into the postseason, turning a one-off improvisation into a ritual greeting between Black players in a league still struggling with its own racial dynamics. Burke used his charisma and social reach in the clubhouse to teach the high five as the Dodgers’ new language of success, making it part of the team’s image as much as its statistics. The act belongs to Burke as a creative origin—he initiated, named and evangelized it—but it was the immediate uptake by Baker and the club that turned it into a durable pattern. ## Glenn Burke’s Authorship and Life Beyond MLB Glenn Burke, a Black outfielder from Oakland, brought to the Dodgers not only speed and defense but a sense of style and interpersonal warmth that set him apart. Teammates and journalists described him as the emotional center of the clubhouse, the man who “lit up a room” and made even mundane moments feel like events. The high five was one expression of that energy: Burke insisted on greeting teammates with it, using the gesture to build camaraderie and affirm little victories that did not show up in the stat line. Burke’s baseball career was constrained by the homophobia and racism of the era. He was widely known among teammates as gay, and later spoke of pressure from Dodger management to conform, including alleged offers to pay for a marriage that would neutralize rumors. His playing time diminished, and he was eventually traded and eased out of the league. After baseball, Burke moved to San Francisco’s Castro district, where he worked in local businesses and became a visible figure in the gay community. There, he continued to use and teach the high five, this time as a greeting among friends, a symbol of queer joy, and a mark of resilience in the face of the AIDS crisis and economic precarity. ## Diffusion Into American Popular Culture From the Dodgers dugout, the high five spread quickly through sports broadcasting, youth leagues, and playground culture. Television cameras loved the gesture’s clarity: viewers could read a high five instantly even at a distance, making it a perfect visual shorthand for success in highlight reels and postgame footage. Young athletes imitated what they saw their heroes do, carrying the high five into school gyms, street courts and sandlots. By the 1980s, the gesture had moved beyond sport into sitcoms, advertising and everyday office life. Television comedies used the high five to signal friendship and comedic victory; brands deployed it in commercials as an image of teamwork and customer satisfaction. In each of these new settings, the gesture’s Black baseball origin was almost never named. The high five was treated as a spontaneous human behavior, an “obvious” way to celebrate, rather than as a specific cultural creation authored by Burke and his peers. ## Erasure, Partial Credit and the Archive’s Position Mainstream accounts of the high five’s origin appear decades after its creation and often approach the subject as a curiosity, asking “who invented the high five?” as though the answer were unknowable trivia. Some profiles of Glenn Burke now acknowledge him as the likely originator, yet they tend to file the story as an anecdote about his personality rather than as a recognition of Black authorship in the language of the body. Others hedge by presenting competing, thinly sourced origin stories from different sports, despite the clear and early documentation around Burke and the Dodgers. The archive reads this pattern as part of a wider reluctance to name Black individuals as creators of the everyday habits that shape social life. The higher the gesture rose in public acceptance, the more its origin was flattened into “everybody does it.” Official credit sits nowhere because the system never envisioned bodily communication as something that could belong to a Black inventor, yet this absence functions like any other exclusion: it removes Burke’s name from the shared story of celebration. By restoring that credit, the record does not diminish the universality of the high five; it acknowledges that universality as the reach of a particular Black spark. ## The High Five as Black Cultural Technology The archive holds the high five as a form of Black cultural technology: an engineered interaction built from Black social practices of call-and-response, affirmation and rhythmic movement. It uses precise timing, mutual recognition and visible display to transform a private feeling into a collective statement. In the dugout, it told a team who belonged and who was lifted up; in the wider world, it became a quick, embodied way to say “I see you” and “we did it” without words. As with so many Black contributions to popular culture, the gesture’s origin was contested only after it had already made the world feel more alive. Young players who grew up with the high five and never knew Burke’s name are nonetheless inheritors of his work. The archive names that inheritance plainly: a Black athlete engineered a new way for people to celebrate one another, and the world, without thinking about it, decided to keep using what he built. ## Sources 1. Jon Mooallem, "The High Five," ESPN The Magazine, October 5, 2011. 2. Andrew Maraniss, "Singled Out: The True Story of Glenn Burke," Philomel Books (Penguin Young Readers), 2021. ## Related records - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/end-zone-celebration - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/sitcom-laugh-track - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/catchphrase - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/soul-train - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/moonwalk-dance-move --- Cite as: Black's Encyclopedia, "High Five," revised July 23, 2026. https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/high-five-e12f Text under the Black's Record License: cite the record, keep attribution attached, cite the revision date.