Are you wondering how sports directly or indirectly impacted the Civil Rights Movement? I'll assume this is just a general question so either works. Then the question becomes one of how you define the Civil Rights Movement. If you're looking at specific actions taken in the 1950s and 1960s (Civil Rights Era) and are wondering if sports played any role in those, that's one thing. But I have a feeling you're just looking at a general history of race and sports and how athletes have affected the trend towards African American civil rights in the 20th Century.

With that framework in mind as to how I'm reading the question, I suppose it's best to just paint in broad strokes here. The sports world (not all sports are equal here, but in general) was often one where the black athlete could contest with white athletes on a level playing field. Especially in the late 1800s and early 1900s, in the sports that segregation did not yet touch, sports opened up avenues to (some) social and economic freedom. It allowed the black athlete to achieve some sense of power that had been politically and also socially denied.

Tom Molineaux was a Virginian slave who would perform in boxing matches for his owner. His fame in boxing and the amount of money he won for his master was enough to earn him his freedom. Molineaux then moved to England to fight, as there was little opportunity for a freed black boxer in American in the early 1800s.

Isaac Murphy was one of the many black jockeys that dominated horse racing from the 1870s-1910. Their skill in the saddle showed that a job previously seen as "nigger work" was actually a lucrative profession, earning them social and economic mobility. Of course, this led to their downfall as well, since the professionalization of the jockey brought about an influx of white jockeys and Jim Crow took care of the rest.

Other early African-American sports leaders were Jack Johnson, defying the Great White Hope and white supremacists and Rube Foster, establishing the Negro Leagues and a uniquely black institution.

But continuing onward to the Civil Rights Era, the power the black athletes tried to gain wasn't just to be used for their own mobility, but to push for change for all black athletes. Now you had athletes like Muhammad Ali who claims that he threw his gold medal from the 1960 Olympic games into the Ohio River after being denied service at a restaurant. There's John Carlos and Tommie Smith who famously held up raised fists in protest (Smith denies it was a "black power salute") on the medal stand at the 1968 Olympics. These athletes gave another face to the black struggle and did so on an international stage.

If we're looking at specific connections, I know this is a bit more speculation here, but I believe that the 1967 Detroit Riots had some connection to the Tigers season. At the very least, the Detroit Tigers championship in 1968 was a cathartic experience for a city that had just undergone such a violent upheaval.

I haven't even touched on integration yet and the various waves that occured in the sports world, but if there's one main theme to take away, it would be power. I know there's many studies that show it to be both of these, with books titled The Level Playing Field and The Unlevel Playing Field, but I believe the sports world to be generally a level playing field for the black athlete to attain power and mobility. (Yes, they need to overcome the barriers to get INTO the field in the first place, but over the various waves of integration, what was expected of black athletes has changed)