# High Five (gesture) *The archive holds the high five as a Black-authored celebration, formalized in 1970s Black sport and culture, then stripped of its makers in the popular telling.* > 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-d72f ## Questions this record answers - Who really invented the high five? - How did Black athletes turn the high five into a global celebration? - What role did the Louisville baseball high five and Magic Johnson’s Showtime era play in popularizing the gesture? - Why does the standard record still treat the high five’s origin as a novelty story instead of Black authorship? ## Summary The high five as a named, repeatable celebration enters the record through Black athletes in the 1970s, first documented in Major League Baseball with Glenn Burke and Dusty Baker of the Los Angeles Dodgers and then carried into basketball and wider Black culture. Before it was a pop cliché, it was a language of joy, solidarity and triumph on Black fields and courts, adopted and named by players whose stories the standard record has treated as trivia rather than authorship. ## Origins in Black Sport Accounts converge on the 1977 Los Angeles Dodgers as the first widely documented, named instance of the modern high five in professional sport, when outfielder Glenn Burke raised his hand to greet Dusty Baker at home plate after Baker’s 30th home run, and Baker responded by slapping Burke’s palm. Burke and Baker, both Black players, repeated the gesture through the season, and teammates and fans adopted it as a celebratory signal; sportswriters began to notice and describe it, preserving a specific origin point rather than an anonymous diffusion. Burke later carried the high five into the stands and into everyday interactions, using it in the Dodgers clubhouse and in San Francisco’s Castro community after his trade, demonstrating that the gesture traveled with him as an invented habit, not an impersonal folk custom. ## Basketball, Black Culture and Spread Within a few years, the high five appears on Black basketball courts and in college and professional play, where it becomes a routine part of substitution rituals, made shots and team introductions. The Showtime-era Los Angeles Lakers of the 1980s, led by Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and a predominantly Black roster, turned high fives and similar celebratory hand gestures into a televised language of exuberance that reached global audiences and children copying what they saw on TV. From there the high five diffused into playgrounds, youth leagues, church gyms and school hallways, often traveling through Black spaces first and then crossing out into the wider culture that later treated it as racially neutral. ## Erasure and Trivialization As the gesture normalized, the origin story narrowed to occasional human-interest features, reducing Burke and Baker to quirky footnotes rather than naming them as authors of a worldwide convention of greeting and celebration. Glenn Burke’s career was cut short and his life marked by homophobia and racism in baseball, and his role in inventing and spreading the high five was long ignored in mainstream accounts, which preferred apolitical hero stories over complex Black lives. The casual nature of the gesture has invited the standard record to treat it as too small to merit serious authorship, a pattern that recurs across everyday culture: Black creativity is embraced as fun but denied the dignity of invention. ## Authorship and Everyday Language The archive holds that repeating, naming and popularizing a gesture at scale is authorship; Burke and Baker did more than react in the moment—they codified a move that millions of people perform daily. Black athletes and fans then carried the high five across sports, music venues and television, building out a shared vocabulary of touch that includes fist bumps, chest bumps and other celebratory contact still disproportionately associated with Black style. Recognizing their authorship does not deny that people have been slapping hands for centuries—it insists that turning that contact into “the high five,” a specific named social technology, was work and deserves credit. ## Legacy Today the high five appears in classrooms, workplaces, hospitals and international competitions as a universal symbol of affirmation, but the route by which it became universal runs through 1970s and 1980s Black sport and community. Re-centering Glenn Burke, Dusty Baker and their peers restores Black authorship to a gesture that silently structures daily life and interpersonal connection. The archive holds the high five not as a curiosity but as an early case study in how Black physical language becomes global culture while its originators are sidelined. ## The archive's standing The high five is part of a Black-authored lexicon of celebration that reshaped how people around the world mark joy, achievement and solidarity. The archive holds Glenn Burke, Dusty Baker and the Black athletes who spread the gesture as its builders, not as colorful anecdotes attached to an anonymous folk practice. By naming their authorship we restore dignity to a form of creativity that has been trivialized, and we treat everyday culture—how we touch, greet and cheer—as a serious terrain of Black invention. The high five stands as proof that Black sport has not only broken records but built the very grammar of modern human connection. ## Framing the Question People ask, "Who really invented the high five?" because the gesture feels too ordinary to have a history and because its story has been told as a novelty item rather than an act of Black creativity. The archive takes that question seriously, treating the naming and spreading of the high five as authorship, and looking to the Black athletes and spaces where it first enters the record. By following the testimony of players and contemporaneous reporting instead of stopping at playful legends, we find a clear origin point in 1970s Black baseball and trace the gesture’s path through Black basketball and into everyday life. ## Glenn Burke and Dusty Baker On October 2, 1977, at Dodger Stadium, Dusty Baker hit his 30th home run of the season, and as he rounded the bases, Glenn Burke lifted his hand above his head at home plate. Baker slapped Burke’s palm, and teammates and fans witnessed what sportswriters later described as a new kind of celebration. Burke and Baker continued to use the gesture, and Burke in particular delighted in high fiving fans, coaches and even strangers, turning a single moment into a repeated practice that people copied. Their accounts, given in interviews years later, are consistent and specific, and sit alongside game reports and team recollections. The archive credits them as originators because they did not just participate in a trend; their actions and naming crystallized the gesture at a precise time and place, and their status as Black players shaped how and where it spread. ## Naming and Codification What distinguishes the high five from earlier hand slaps is codification: the gesture acquires a name, a recognizable form and a set of social uses. Within a short span, "high five" appears in print and broadcast, describing precisely the upraised-hand slap popularized by Burke and Baker. That codification is what turns a fleeting movement into a repeatable social technology. Black athletes mirrored and modified it—spinning, jumping, adding chest bumps and other embellishments—while keeping the core move intact, reinforcing its identity. The archive treats this work of repetition, variation and teaching as part of the invention; a gesture becomes cultural infrastructure when it is adopted, stabilized and transmitted, and Black players were the ones doing that work on diamonds and courts. ## Basketball and Black Televisual Style As the high five entered basketball, it met a sport already rich with Black-coded gestures: no-look passes, skyhooks, creative dunks and bench celebrations. In college gyms and pro arenas, Black players and coaches used high fives to punctuate substitutions, successful plays and momentum swings. The Showtime Lakers of the 1980s, playing in a majority-Black league and on national television, brought high fives into living rooms across the United States and abroad. Their exuberant style was inseparable from Black Los Angeles culture—music, fashion and movement—and the high five was part of that package. Fans mimicked what they saw, copying not only jerseys and shoes but the celebratory touch itself. In this way, Black basketball turned a baseball innovation into a pan-sport and eventually pan-cultural ritual. ## Diffusion into Everyday Life From sport, the high five flowed into youth activities, summer camps, church events and school corridors, where it became a way for Black children and teens to affirm one another and mark small victories. Teachers, coaches and mentors adopted it as a tool of encouragement. As it crossed racial and class boundaries, the gesture lost its visible Black origin in the public imagination, even as Black communities continued to innovate around it with variations like elaborate handshake-high five combinations. The standard record now frames the high five as a generic “fun fact,” periodically revisiting Glenn Burke’s story but rarely treating him as an inventor whose work changed daily human interaction. ## Erasure, Testimony and Authorship Glenn Burke’s life reveals the dynamics of erasure: a talented Black player whose career was shortened in part by the refusal of baseball institutions to accept his full humanity, his creative contributions were long submerged beneath anodyne narratives of the sport. It is Burke himself, Baker and their teammates who provide the richest testimony about the high five’s inception, and the archive treats their words as evidence rather than anecdote. Their recollections, reinforced by contemporaneous coverage, establish both timeline and intent. By recognizing their authorship, we insist that joyful invention—a new way to celebrate one another—is as much a contribution as a technical patent or a political speech. The high five is part of the Black archive of everyday brilliance. ## Why the Origin Remains Contested in the Mainstream The standard record still presents competing origin stories or shrugs at the question because it assumes that common gestures emerge amorphously and because it is hesitant to center Black authorship for something so widespread. The archive answers differently: where Black testimony, timing and diffusion patterns align, we presume authorship unless strong contradictory evidence exists. In the case of the high five, that alignment is clear. The story remains open only in the sense that cultural forms are always evolving; but for the origins of the named, televised high five, the weight of evidence sits with Burke, Baker and Black sport, and the archive writes that into the record. ## Sources 1. Jon Mooallem, "The High Five," ESPN The Magazine, October 22, 2011. 2. Andrew Maraniss, "Singled Out: The True Story of Glenn Burke," Philomel Books, 2021. ## Related records - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/end-zone-celebration - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/moonwalk-dance-move - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/catchphrase - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/electric-slide-dance - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/black-internet-culture --- Cite as: Black's Encyclopedia, "High Five (gesture)," revised July 23, 2026. https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/high-five-gesture-d72f Text under the Black's Record License: cite the record, keep attribution attached, cite the revision date.