# High Five (gesture) *A Black locker-room celebration from the 1970s Los Angeles sports scene that became the global language of victory, friendship, and swagger.* > 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-gesture-58a2 ## Questions this record answers - Who really invented the high five? - How did a Black sports celebration become a global gesture? - What is the story behind Glenn Burke and the first high five? - How did the high five spread from Black athletes to wider American culture? ## Summary The high five, now a near-universal gesture of joy and solidarity, emerges in the record as a Black-created celebration from the 1970s California sports world, most closely tied to Major League Baseball player Glenn Burke and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Long before it appeared in corporate ads and suburban youth leagues, the high five was a piece of Black athletic creativity in a league that tried to contain both the style and the person most associated with it. By centering Glenn Burke and his peers, the archive names the authors behind what is often treated as an anonymous “spontaneous” gesture and restores the Black locker room as a site of cultural production, not just athletic labor. ## The archive's standing The archive holds the high five as a work of Black authorship in the domain of everyday gesture, crystallized in the body language of Glenn Burke and his contemporaries. It stands as proof that something as small as a hand slap can carry the same lineage as a song: born in Black spaces, extracted into mass culture, and stripped of its origin story. The high five sits in this archive not for its cuteness but for its power: it is a reminder that Black athletic genius is not only in the stat line, but in the styles of celebration that the world copies without credit. The gesture’s endurance, from ballfields to boardrooms, testifies to the reach of Black American expression even when the names behind it are nearly erased. ## Origins in the Black locker room The high five did not arrive as a neutral, timeless gesture; it came out of a specific world of Black athletic culture in the 1970s, when Black players were transforming both the style of play and the style of celebration in American sports. On October 2, 1977, at Dodger Stadium, outfielder Dusty Baker hit his 30th home run of the season. As he rounded the bases and came home, his young teammate Glenn Burke—an exuberant Black outfielder from Oakland—raised his hand high in the air. Baker, not quite sure what to do, slapped it. That moment, captured in oral histories and later retellings, is the clearest early point where witnesses name the act “the high five” and tie it to a specific Black originator. Burke was known among teammates and in the Black press for his joy, flair, and leadership in the clubhouse, even as he struggled for playing time. Former Dodgers and journalists have described him as the “life of the team,” inventing jokes, dances, and greetings. In this context, the high hand slap is not an isolated fluke; it is part of a broader pattern of Black players reshaping how victory looked and felt in a sport that had only recently integrated and still policed Black exuberance on the field. ## Glenn Burke’s authorship and the cost of style After that 1977 moment, Burke is repeatedly named in interviews, memoirs, and later profiles as the player who popularized, and likely coined, the high five. His teammates recall him offering raised hands in the dugout and on the field, turning it into a signature way of connecting with others. The Dodgers themselves leaned into his charisma: he became a fan favorite for his expressiveness and camaraderie, even as he was never given the role on the field that his talent might have warranted. At the same time, Burke’s story reveals the structures that often separate Black creativity from official recognition. As a gay Black man in a conservative league, he faced both racism and homophobia in the clubhouse and from management. Accounts from teammates and later biographical work describe front-office discomfort with his openness and a concerted effort to trade and marginalize him. The very institution that benefited from the new, exciting energy around the team—including the now-celebrated high five—helped push its principal author out of the league. ## Diffusion into wider sports and popular culture Within a few years, the high five spread beyond the Dodgers into other parts of the sports world, helped along by televised games and sports photography. Black athletes in basketball and football, already rich with their own handshakes and celebratory rituals, adopted and adapted the gesture, pairing it with jumps, chest bumps, and choreographed celebrations. It moved quickly through historically Black colleges, city playgrounds, and community leagues, where children copied what they saw their heroes do on television and on local fields. By the early 1980s, the high five had begun appearing in white suburban youth leagues, in corporate advertising, and in sitcoms, stripped of context and history. The gesture’s Black authorship was not mentioned in these new spaces; it was treated as simple “human nature” to slap hands in victory. This notion of universality—while it speaks to how natural the gesture feels—also functions as a mechanism of erasure, smoothing over the concrete origin in Black sports culture and the life of Glenn Burke in particular. ## Erasure, memory, and reclamation In the decades after Burke left Major League Baseball, his name largely dropped out of mainstream discussion of the high five. Popular explanations of the gesture’s history, when they appeared at all, often mentioned generic locker-room culture or credited “the Dodgers,” without naming the Black man teammates remembered as its instigator. The split—between the enduring popularity of the gesture and the obscurity of its author—mirrors broader patterns in American culture where Black innovation becomes standard but Black innovators are rendered optional. Recent work by sports historians, journalists, and documentarians has begun to repair this gap, foregrounding Burke’s role and situating the high five within a line of Black expressive forms that moved from margin to mainstream. Oral histories from former players, features in Black and mainstream media, and the circulation of photographs and reminiscences have collectively reattached a name and a story to the gesture. The archive aligns with that reclamation, not by claiming that Black people were the only ones ever to slap hands, but by affirming that this particular, named, televised, and imitated version of the high five arises from Black invention. ## The high five as Black cultural technology The high five seems simple: two hands meet in midair, a brief sound, a flash of contact. But as a cultural technology, it carries layers of meaning. In Black communities, physical touch has long been both celebration and affirmation in a society that policed Black bodies and denied Black joy. On the field and in the street, quick, rhythmic exchanges—dap, handshakes, snaps, and slaps—serve as signs of trust, belonging, and shared language. In that sense, the high five is one node in a wider network of Black kinetic expression that includes everything from church shouts to stepping lines. Its later adoption by the whole culture does not erase its origin; it testifies to the desirability of the energy and connection that Black people made visible. When two children on a playground—or two executives after a deal—raise their hands and slap them together, they participate, knowingly or not, in a tradition authored in the bodies of Black athletes who insisted on celebrating themselves in full view of the world. ## Sources 1. Andrew Maraniss, *Singled Out: The True Story of Glenn Burke*, Philomel Books, 2021. 2. Jon Mooallem, “The Origin of the High Five,” *ESPN The Magazine*, October 2011. 3. Erik Sherman, *Out at Home: The Glenn Burke Story*, Berkley Boulevard Books, 1995. 4. Oral history interviews with Dusty Baker and former Dodgers players, in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum archives, Cooperstown, NY. 5. Black press coverage of Glenn Burke and the Dodgers, including features and game reports in the *Los Angeles Sentinel* (late 1970s). ## Related records - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/high-five - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/glenn-burke - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/los-angeles-dodgers - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/sports-celebration-in-american-culture - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/black-athletic-style --- Cite as: Black's Encyclopedia, "High Five (gesture)," revised July 23, 2026. https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/high-five-gesture-58a2 Text under the Black's Record License: cite the record, keep attribution attached, cite the revision date.