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Making a Pitch for Equality:
Wendell Smith and His Crusade
to Integrate Baseball
ABSTRACT
Pittsburgh Courier sports editor Wendell Smith has been called "the most
talented and influential of the black journalists" of the 1930s and 1940s. In
his personal crusade to end baseball's color barrier, he not only wrote
emotionally about the need to integrate the national pastime, he worked
behind-the-scenes with progressive baseball executives such as Brooklyn Dodgers
president Branch Rickey, who ended segregated baseball by signing Jackie
Robinson. Ultimately, Smith became Robinson's confidante and biographer. This
paper examines the journalist's columns and personal papers. It also includes
interviews with other journalists who worked toward integration.
Making a Pitch for Equality:
Wendell Smith and His Crusade
to Integrate Baseball
Chris Lamb, Ph.D.
Assistant professor, Media Studies
College of Charleston
English/Communication Department
66 George St.
Charleston, SC 29424
(843) 953-9615
[log in to unmask]
Paper proposed to History Division, 1999 AEJMC national conference, New Orleans,
Louisiana
Making a Pitch for Equality:
Wendell Smith and His Crusade
to Integrate Baseball
Paper proposed to History Division, 1999 AEJMC national conference, New Orleans,
Louisiana
Making a Pitch for Equality:
Wendell Smith and His Crusade
to Integrate Baseball
Paper proposed to History Division, 1999 AEJMC national conference, New Orleans,
Louisiana
Making a Pitch for Equality:
Wendell Smith and His Crusade to Integrate Baseball
During the summer of 1933, Wendell Smith pitched his American Legion team to
1-0 playoff victory. After the game a professional baseball scout signed Smith's
catcher and the losing pitcher to contracts. "I wish I could sign you too, but
I can't," he told Smith, who, like other black ballplayers, was prohibited from
organized professional baseball because of his skin color. The scout's words
left Smith shaken. "That broke me up," he remembered. "It was then I made the
vow that I would dedicate myself and do something on behalf of the Negro
ballplayers. That was one of the reasons I became a sportswriter."[1]
As sports editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, the largest and arguably most
influential black newspaper in the country, Smith became a tireless crusader
against segregated baseball. He wrote that integration would weaken racism in
society; he persuaded major league teams to give tryouts to black players; and
he worked with sympathetic whites, such as Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch
Rickey, who ended baseball's color line by signing Jackie Robinson to a contract
in 1945. Smith, who had recommended Robinson, wouldn't merely become the
ballplayer's biggest supporter, he would become his adviser, father confessor,
and biographer. In Smith's own words, he was "Robinson's Boswell."[2]
This paper examines Smith -- the man who got further into the story of the
integration of baseball than any other journalist. More than anyone else, this
story became his, and he treated it as if he owned it -- closely working with
baseball executives, guarding and even suppressing information, and attacking
those who didn't share his views. He could be intrepid to the point of
obsessive, didactic to the point of preachy, passionate to the point of
strident, and emotional to the point of hyperbolic. He rarely missed an
opportunity to extol, even embellish, his own contribution to the integration of
baseball.
Nevertheless, no sportswriter was more involved in breaking baseball's color
barrier. In 1993, Smith became the first black sportswriter inducted into the J.
G. Taylor Spink wing of Baseball's Hall of Fame. Ironically, Spink, the late
sports editor of the Sporting News, was a staunch segregationist who worked with
the baseball establishment to keep blacks out of the game.
Historian William Simons called the integration of baseball the most widely
"commented on episode in American race relations of its time."[3] The news
coverage of the integration story reflects a society in transition as equality
on the baseball field became a metaphor for equality in civil rights.
Integration meant different things to white and black sportswriters. White
sportswriters, either fearful or anxious about how their editors or readers
would react, said little about the issue.[4] Unlike white reporters, who were
trained to be objective, black journalists had no such restrictions. They wrote
with emotion, casting the story in terms of freedom, an important moment in a
long struggle.[5] To black sportswriters, the story symbolized the hopes and
dreams of integration, not merely on a ballfield but in society.[6]
Jim crow laws did not just limit black ballplayers, they also limited black
sportswriters, by depriving them of better-paying jobs on metropolitan dailies,
where their work would have been read and appreciated by more people.[7] Smith
understood this as well as anyone. After all, he had faced discrimination as
both a ballplayer and a journalist. But he wasn't the only sportswriter who
recognized the injustice of segregation. The integration of baseball forged what
was at times an uneasy alliance between Smith, other black sportswriters, and a
few white journalists -- from conservative New York Daily News columnist Jimmy
Powers to the sportswriters of the Daily Worker, a newspaper published by the
U.S. Communist Party.
In recent years, scholars and other writers increasingly have studied the role
of the press in the integration of baseball.[8] A few writers have recognized
Smith's contribution. Jules Tygiel, author of Baseball's Great Experiment,
called Smith "the most talented and influential of the black journalist of the
era."[9] Baseball historian David Wiggins described Smith as the writer "who
most doggedly fought for the inclusion of blacks in organized baseball."
According to Wiggins, Smith wasn't merely one of the first journalists to call
for racial equality in the national pastime, he was its most determined. Smith
repeatedly stressed that baseball could never really be the national pastime
until it allowed blacks the opportunity to share ballfields with whites.[10]
In a another article, journalism historian Glen Bleske said that Smith
recognized that black soldiers had gone to Europe and Asia to fight
discrimination in World War II, but returned home to face discrimination and
segregation in America. This wasn't merely ironic, it was unjust and
un-American. The war made it harder, though not impossible, for the country to
deny black
Americans racial equality. Smith reminded readers of this hypocrisy: American
had won a war against discrimination, now it was time for the country to end
discrimination on its own soil, starting with baseball.
Smith wasn't merely a critic of segregation, he was a preacher, emphasizing the
need for racial unity and self-respect; but foremost, he was a sportswriter.
Baltimore Afro-American sportswriter Sam Lacy, who has joined Smith in
Baseball's Hall of Fame, called his colleague the best black sportswriter of his
time. "Anybody can be a reporter - a kid coming home from school and telling
his parents what happened in class that day is a reporter - but it takes more
than that to be a journalist," Lacy said. "Wendell had that something extra. He
was always thinking ahead and never quite satisfied with what he had
accomplished."[11]
Yet the story of Smith and the integration of baseball is far from complete
without examining the journalist more closely, particularly his relationships
with other main characters in the drama that changed sport and society -- such
as Robinson, Rickey, Powers, and Daily Worker sports editor Lester Rodney. Smith
was a complex, often contradictory figure. For many years he promoted the Negro
Leagues, then helped to destroy them. He saw nothing wrong with the journalist
becoming a part of the story -- even accepting a paycheck from the Brooklyn
Dodgers while working as a journalist. And finally, Smith could be sarcastic and
petty, unnecessarily attacking Rodney and the Daily Worker. Eventually, he grew
bitter because he felt he had not be given enough credit for his part in
integrating the national pastime. He had a falling out with Robinson, whom he
had shared so much. Ironically, Smith died just a month after Robinson in 1972.
While Robinson and the integration of baseball has been recognized as an
important story, it isn't complete without examining the people who wrote the
story as it was happening, to examine not only what they wrote but why. Sixteen
years ago, Wiggins wrote the most comprehensive article on Smith. Since then,
scholars and journalists have written extensively on the integration of
baseball; because we know more about what happened, we can better understand
Smith's part. To do so, this paper examines Smith as both journalist and
activist. It includes interviews with journalists who knew him and also covered
the integration story. And finally, this paper examines Smith's personal papers
- letters, columns, and essays, which are at the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Segregation was institutionalized in the American consciousness in the decades
prior to the Civil Rights Movement. Many white journalists, reflecting the views
of their readers, opposed or feared integration of any kind - especially in the
South. In general, the mainstream press covered black America as little more
than a curiosity, rarely giving it the social or cultural context it deserved.
The reporting was limited, both in context and content, by a mindset that kept
white journalists, their newspapers, and their readers from appreciating the
historical significance and meaning of the story. To most journalists, the issue
of civil rights was little more than a human interest story.[12]
The decades of segregation also hid the enormous talents of black ballplayers
such as Josh Gibson, "Satchel" Paige, "Cool Papa" Bell, and Oscar Charleston.
"Black players were denied the opportunity to play in the major leagues and the
white public was denied the opportunity to watch black players," Lacy said.[13]
This had not always been the case. Perhaps dozens of blacks played in organized
professional baseball from the 1870s to the mid-1880s. Shortly thereafter, team
owners, reflecting the growing distrust of blacks in the years after
Reconstruction, agreed to prohibit blacks. This "gentlemen's agreement," as it
became known, remained in effect until Robinson broke baseball's color barrier.
Beginning in the 1880s, black players took up their positions on ballfields in
the distant shadows of organized professional baseball, barely acknowledged even
by the black press.
White ball players had organized professional baseball and black ballplayers
had their own brand of baseball, disorganized and vaguely professional, separate
but hardly equal; they barnstormed against semi-pro teams, playing
catch-as-catch-can, traveling long distances and making little money. While the
Negro Leagues provided black ballplayers the opportunity to play professional
baseball, it was a poor imitation of the Major Leagues. White players traveled
by trains, black players by car. White players stayed in hotels, black players
sometimes had to sleep in fields. While white players generally played one game
a day, black players regularly played two or three games and, generally, were
paid a fraction of white players.
Segregation also restricted the sportswriters who covered the Negro Leagues,
such as Smith, Lacy, "Fay" Young, Joe Bostic, and Rollo Wilson. Most blacks,
including Smith, grew up in this world of denial. Yet Smith's upbringing wasn't
typical of other blacks; he grew up with whites. Smith's father worked as a chef
for automobile giant Henry Ford and he remembers playing ball with Ford's
children. He encountered few racial problems in school, largely because he was
the only black, therefore his white classmates didn't feel threatened, he
said.[14] However, he was reportedly dropped from his American Legion team
because of his color; as legend goes, he was put back on the team when Ford
himself intervened.[15] And then came the playoff game when he realized he would
never be a big league ballplayer. These events left a lasting impression on
Smith. After high school, he played sports at West Virginia State College, where
he graduated in 1937. By then, the campaign to integrate baseball had already
begun.
Beginning in the early 1930s, several journalists began challenging the issue
of segregation in baseball. Columnist Jimmy Powers was one of the first to raise
the issue. In 1933, Powers wrote a column that said he had recently asked
players and managers if they had any objections to allowing blacks in baseball
and most had said they didn't.[16] Over the next decade or so, other white
sportswriters such as Shirley Povich, Dan Parker, Hugh Bradley, and Dave Egan
challenged baseball on the race issue.
While no mainstream columnist wrote more often and more indignantly about
segregated baseball than Powers, no sportswriter wrote more often than Lester
Rodney of the Daily Worker, who turned baseball's color line into a personal
crusade. The newspaper began its campaign to integrate baseball in August in
1936, as part of an overall campaign to end discrimination against blacks in all
phases of American life. Over the next decade, it published hundreds of articles
on the race issue.[17]
Discrimination had particularly resonance for black journalists, who called for
racial equality not only in their editorial columns but in their news and sports
stories. One historian wrote that no group had a greater responsibility as an
organ of racial unity after World War II than the black press, and "the extent
to which it understood and met its responsibility can be observed in its
handling of the assault on professional baseball's `color line.' "[18]
Black sportswriters began their crusade against baseball's color line in 1933.
Courier sports editor Chester Washington introduced what he called a Big League
Symposium, which ran for four months and examined the reasons for and against
blacks in baseball. When he queried baseball executives, owners, and managers
about the color line, they denied that discrimination existed. National League
president John Heydler said that the only requirements for the Major Leagues
were good athletic ability and good character. Before the game would admit
blacks, therefore, the newspaper suggested, baseball would have to be convinced
that black ballplayers had both the requisite athletic ability and
character.[19]
But, of course, Courier sportswriters understood that talent and character had
little to do with the color line. During its series of articles, the newspaper
told its readers that black ballplayers were being kept out of organized
baseball -- not because of their ability but because of racial discrimination.
The newspaper would repeat this argument often in the coming years.
While other black newspapers, such as the Chicago Defender, Baltimore
Afro-American, Philadelphia Tribune, and New York Age, became involved in the
cause of ending baseball's color barrier, none did so more as actively as the
Courier, which had the largest circulation of any black newspaper. Under editor
Robert L. Vann, the newspaper's circulation grew from 46,000 to more than
250,000 between 1933 and 1946 -- in part because of its campaign to change
baseball and in part because of its campaign to unify blacks during World War
II.[20] The Courier achieved prominence through a series of editorials and
articles that came to be known as the Double V campaign. The first V stood for
victory over Germany and Japan, the second for victory over racial prejudices in
this country.[21]
Segregated baseball brought together an activist newspaper with activist
sportswriters. The result had profound impact. To Smith, the campaign didn't
really start until he became involved in it. According to him, he came up with
the idea. "I suggested a campaign for the . . . inclusion of Negro ballplayers
in the big leagues. The paper picked up on it. Everyone seemed to think it was a
good idea and so I began interviewing big league ballplayers and asking them
whether they would welcome a Negro player as a teammate," he remembered later.
"Some were for it and, naturally, some were against it."[22]
Smith, to his discredit, often neglected the contributions of other
sportswriters. The idea wasn't his; he didn't join the newspaper until 1937,
four years after Washington's symposium on race and baseball. In an article he
wrote about his role in integration, he said he began his crusade to change
baseball shortly after he became sports editor in 1938; but Washington remained
sports editor until 1940.[23]
One can question Smith's veracity but neither his commitment nor his passion.
Shortly after he became assistant sports editor in 1938, he asked why blacks
should continue to patronize Major League baseball games, though they were
prohibited from the game. "We keep on crawling, begging, and pleading for
recognition just the same. We know they don't want us, but we still keep giving
them our money. Keep on going to their ball games and shouting till we are blue
in the face -- we pitiful black folk. Yes, sir -- we black folk are a strange
tribe," he wrote.[24]
Smith's activism went beyond shaming black baseball fans and pleading with
white baseball. His column, "Wendell Smith's Sports Beat," became his pulpit,
and from it he preached integration. In January 1939, he proposed that something
similar to the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People be
organized to attack the color line "until we drop from exhaustion."[25] A month
later, he interviewed National League president Ford Frick, who had succeeded
Heydler. Frick told him that baseball was interested in signing blacks but it
couldn't until whites could accept blacks as equals. Smith then interviewed
nearly 50 big league players and managers. He concluded that 75 percent said
they had no objections to blacks in organized professional baseball.[26]
But integration couldn't occur until Americans changed their attitudes on
racism. World War II changed a few minds. During the war, black and white
American soldiers fought and died as equals in a war against racism. By the end
of the war, black newspapers expressed a greater sense of confidence and urgency
that integration would be realized.[27] Yet neither a world war nor optimism
would end segregation.
Integration also needed the support of influential whites. A few black sports
editors, such as Smith and Lacy, enlisted the support of white columnists,
baseball executives, and politicians. "(We) approached owners and friendly
writers and helped lobby them. Owners were restrained by (Commissioner) Landis.
Several columnists went along with it on the basis of common sense," Lacy said.
When baseball commissioner Kenesaw Landis died in late 1943, it removed,
according to one writer, "one of the most implacable and influential opponents
of integration."[28]
Between 1936 and 1945, the Daily Worker published hundreds of stories on the
issue of segregated baseball.[29] While the black press agreed with the
communists on the need for integration, it disagreed with communism in
general.[30] While some black journalists, like Lacy, distanced themselves from
the communists, others, like Smith, praised them for their support.[31] In 1939,
Smith wrote Rodney a letter, commending him for his efforts. "I take this
opportunity to congratulate you and the Daily Worker for the fine way you have
joined with us on the current series concerning Negro players in the Major
Leagues, as well as all your past efforts in this respect . . . In the meantime,
I wish you the best of luck and admire you for your liberal attitude."[32]
But once Smith began working with Brooklyn president Branch Rickey, an
anti-communist, he, too, distanced himself from the communists. On Aug. 23,
1947, during Robinson's first year with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Smith wrote that
the communists "did more to delay the entrance of Negroes into organized
baseball than any other factor."[33] Rodney responded by reminding Smith how he
had supported the Worker. Rodney told Smith that if he criticized the Worker
again, the newspaper would embarrass him by reprinting his earlier letter.[34]
Smith, it appears, did not criticize the communists in print again.
If a sportswriter working for a mainstream daily called for integration, Smith
usually mentioned it in a column. He praised the contributions of such
sportswriters as Powers, Povich, Dan Parker, and Dave Egan; unfortunately, these
columns came few and far between. "The baseball writers, at that time, were very
conservative," he said. "As a group they never have been known to be overly
liberal. As an organization they didn't do much to advance our cause," he
said.[35]
Discrimination limited the reporting of black sportswriters, who were deprived
press cards from the Baseball Writers Association, meaning they were prohibited
from interviewing big leaguers in locker rooms or dugouts. Smith was told he
couldn't get a card because he didn't work for a daily newspaper; however, he
understood the real reason. He couldn't take the field before a Major League
game for the same reason a black ballplayer couldn't take the field during a
Major League game. Racism prohibited it.
Smith knew as well as anyone that the stars of the Negro Leagues were good
enough for the Major Leagues. Working in Pittsburgh, he covered both the
Pittsburgh Crawfords and Homestead Grays, two of the best teams in the Negro
Leagues. Smith and the Daily Worker began pressuring William Benswanger, who
owned the struggling Pittsburgh Pirates in the Major Leagues. In August 1942,
Benswanger agreed to hold a tryout for four players recommended by Smith. But
the tryout was canceled without explanation.[36]
A year later, Smith wrote Landis asking him if team owners and he would meet
with several black journalists about the possibility of ending baseball's color
line. In December 1943, Landis agreed. He began the meeting of team owners by
saying that baseball had no rule prohibiting blacks. The baseball establishment
listened quietly to a number of black leaders, including newspaper executives
and entertainer Paul Robeson. "The reaction, frankly, was silence," Smith said.
Smith, who was present but didn't speak, noticed that Rickey, then the general
manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, seemed to paying closer attention anyone
else.[37]
Over the next year and a half, baseball edged closer to integration: Landis
died and was replaced by the relatively progressive "Happy" Chandler; Rickey
became president of the Brooklyn Dodgers; World War II neared its end; and Smith
became more involved in the integration of baseball, whether by urging baseball
executives to give tryouts to black ballplayers or simply by continuing his
unrelenting series of columns and articles.
In one of his more memorable pieces, he quoted Willie Wells, who had left the
Negro Leagues to play in Mexico, where the ballplayer said had found freedom and
democracy. "They wouldn't give me a chance in the big leagues because I was a
Negro, yet they accepted every other nationality under the sun," Welles said in
a "Sports Beat" column in 1944. "Well, here in Mexico, I am a man. I can go as
far in baseball as I am capable of going. I can live where I please and will
encounter no restrictions of any kind because of my race."[38]
In April 1945, the Boston Red Sox agreed to look at three ballplayers after
being contacted by Smith and city councilman Isadore Muchnick.[39] Smith
selected Jackie Robinson, Sam Jethroe, and Marvin Williams. On April 16, the
three practiced for an hour with a dozen or so "high school players," Smith
remembered. "It was demeaning to put these black stars with a bunch of kids.[40]
And yet it was better than no nothing. When it was over, they were told they
would be contacted but nothing happened. To make matters worse, Smith thought
Boston sportswriters would report the tryout in the next day's newspapers. "I
envisioned quite a big play in the papers the next day. But the papers didn't
take it very seriously. The publicity would have helped," said Smith, who wrote
about the tryout in the Courier.[41]
A month earlier, Joe Bostic of the New York Age and Nat Low of the Daily Worker
took two Negro League ballplayers with them to the Brooklyn Dodgers' spring
training in Bear Mountain, N.Y., and demanded that the team give the ballplayers
tryout. The confrontation angered Rickey. He knew he would be criticized if
refused; therefore, he approved a perfunctory tryout. Bostic admitted he did it
strictly for the publicity.[42]
Soon after, Rickey announced the creation of a new Negro league: the United
States League, which, he hoped, would legitimize black baseball as a minor
league, making it possible for integration. In fact, this was a smokescreen,
whereby Rickey would scout prospective black players for the Brooklyn
organization.[43] Rickey met with Smith, who was apprehensive. "If you aren't
serious about this, Mr. Rickey, I'd rather not waste our time discussing it," he
said. "But if you are serious, I do know a player who could make it. His name is
Jackie Robinson." Initially, Smith thought that Rickey wanted Robinson for the
United States League but, at some point, he figured out that Rickey wanted him
for the Brooklyn organization.[44]
Rickey secretly signed Robinson in late August, 1944. Smith knew about it but
kept the news quiet, putting his personal beliefs of moving cautiously ahead of
his journalistic instincts to break the story.[45] In mid-October, Smith wrote a
column that praised Rickey as "a sincere man."[46] A week later, on Oct 23, the
Montreal Royals, the top minor league team in the Brooklyn organization,
announced the signing of Robinson, ending six decades of segregation in
baseball.
Behind Smith, the Courier covered the news as if it were the beginning of a new
day, which, of course, it was. The newspaper published several photos and
stories about Robinson, including a front-page story written by the ballplayer
himself. Smith interviewed Rickey at length. He included the reactions of other
black and white sportswriters. In his "Sports Beat" column, he informed readers
that Moses Fleetwood Walker and other blacks played in organized baseball in the
1880s. But that was then and this was now. He stressed that Robinson would face
tremendous pressure during spring training in a few months.[47]
The hard part lay ahead. Integration's first test would come during spring
training in Daytona Beach, Florida, deep in the South, where segregation laws
restricted blacks from hotels, restaurants, swimming pools, and baseball
stadiums. Between late October and the beginning of spring training, Smith
became more than just a crusading journalist, he became Robinson's confidante
and Rickey's point man in Daytona Beach. This is evident in a series of
correspondences with Robinson and Rickey.
On Oct. 30, Robinson wrote Smith, thanking him for his support. "I want to
thank you and the paper for all you have done and are doing in my behalf,"
Robinson said. "As you know I am not worried about the white press or people
think as long as I continue to get the best wishes of my people."[48] Smith and
Rickey both were aware of the problems that a black ballplayer would have in
Daytona Beach. On December 19, Smith wrote Rickey, inquiring if Brooklyn had
made the necessary provisions for Robinson.[49] In his reply on January 8,
Rickey asked the sportswriter if he could go to Daytona Beach early to find room
and board for Robinson and Johnny Wright, a second black prospect with Montreal.
Rickey asked Smith if he could watch over the ballplayers "because much harm
could come if either of these boys were to do or say something or other out of
turn."[50] During spring training, Smith was Robinson's constant companion and
Rickey's liaison. For that, Smith was paid $50 a week - or the same as his
salary with the Courier.[51]
Few athletes ever had more riding on their shoulders than Robinson did during
baseball's first integrated spring training. As expected, there were problems.
Robinson was prohibited from playing in games in every city, except Daytona
Beach. In one column, Smith admitted suppressing negative stories for fear of
jeopardizing the experiment.[52] But when Robinson went hitless in his first
game on March 17, Smith gushed: "Six thousand eyes were glued on the
mercury-footed infielder each time he came to bat. His performance with the
willow failed to provide any thrills, but, his vicious swings and air of
confidence as he faced real major league pitching for the first time, won the
admiration of a crowd that seemed to sense the historical significance of the
occasion."[53]
Because of his association with Robinson, Smith said white reporters sought him
out with questions about Robinson. Smith, who would become Robinson's
biographer, spent considerable time with the ballplayer. Dr. Samuel Johnson had
Thomas Boswell; Robinson had Smith. "I was Jackie's Boswell," he said. After the
day's game or practice, Smith, Robinson, Johnny Wright, and Billy Rowe went one
way, and the white ballplayers and white sportswriters went another. "I never
socialized with the writers. In the South it was forbidden," Smith said. "It was
against the law."[54]
Smith personally took offense to any criticisms of Robinson. In a column
shortly before the beginning of spring training, Smith told his readers about a
skit at the annual banquet of New York baseball writers, where someone, in black
face, spoofed Robinson as a butler explaining how he had bought by Rickey. "Next
time you read a story in a New York newspaper about Robinson, he said, "It will
probably come the pen of a writer who was part of that `act' they pulled on
Robinson and Rickey.[55] During spring training, New York columnists Jimmy
Powers and Dan Parker took issue with a profile of Rickey in Look magazine. The
sportswriters criticized Rickey as a phony and dismissed integration as a
publicity stunt. Again, Smith responded viciously, calling the sportswriters
"smutty," "putrid," "wacky," and "violently prejudiced."[56]
By the end of the spring, Robinson had secured a position with Montreal. A year
later, he played his first game for Brooklyn, forever changing baseball and
society. Smith continued to cover the story, but it had grown beyond his grasp,
even though he clung onto it. In 1948, he wrote Robinson's first biography,
Jackie Robinson: My Own Story. By then, the relationship between the two men had
cooled. Robinson was upset by the number of errors in My Own Story. Smith, for
his part, felt hurt because he hadn't received a sufficient amount of credit for
his part in integration. He directed his frustration at Robinson, who had become
the most famous athlete in America, who didn't have as much time for the
sportswriter. Robinson owed everything he had to the black press, Smith wrote.
When Robinson criticized the Negro Leagues, Smith and other black sportswriters
attacked the ballplayer for his ingratitude.[57]
Yet Smith, in trying to ingratiate himself to white baseball executives, also
had criticized the Negro Leagues himself. Smith, who had once praised Negro
League stars in his column, "began looking from afar at Negro League business
with a sneering, snobbish disdain," one writer said.[58] The Negro Leagues
couldn't survive integration -- as its ballplayers and fans turned toward the
Major Leagues. Yet Smith urged readers to support black baseball, perhaps not
knowing that his campaign to integrate baseball had resulted in an end game for
the Negro Leagues. In July 1949, he wrote Rickey asking the Brooklyn
organization to help itself by signing talented black players before other Major
League teams did.[59]
His letter to Rickey demonstrated how Smith tried to live in both worlds, black
baseball and white baseball. As black ballplayers signed with Major League
teams, Smith, ultimately left his job with the Courier in 1948 to write sports
for the Chicago American. Now that he was working for a daily newspaper, he was
finally accepted in the Baseball Writers Association, where he received his
long-sought-after press card. He stayed with the American for 14 years, leaving
to become a sportscaster for WGN; however, he continued to write a weekly column
for Sun-Times. When he died in 1972, he was president of the Chicago Press Club.
Smith began his career as a crusader for racial equality. He never quit
crusading. After Robinson broke the color barrier, Smith called for Major League
teams to sign more blacks. When that happened, he expanded his cause and began
calling for the integration of spring training camps in his columns in the
American. On November 9, 1961, he told his readers that the Chicago White Sox
had announced that they would integrate their spring training camp.[60] Smith no
doubt played a part in a changing world.
From childhood, Smith learned that blacks could live and succeed with whites,
or they could live and succeed apart from whites. To that end, he was
consistent. In his campaign for racial equality, he was driven by single-minded
determination. This helps explain his contributions, it also helps explains his
faults -- his inconsistencies, his pettiness, and his exaggerated sense of
self-worth. Yet no sportswriter accomplished more in the cause of integrating
the national pastime than Smith. He remained first, foremost, and always, a
crusader.
[1] Untitled article written by Wendell Smith, Wendell Smith papers, Baseball
Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York.
[2] Untitled article written by Wendell Smith, Wendell Smith papers.
[3] William Simons, "Jackie Robinson and the American Mind: Journalistic
Perceptions of the Reintegration of Baseball," Journal of Sport History 12
(Spring 1985): 40.
[4] Donald L. Deardorff, "The Black Press Played a Key Role in Integrating
Baseball," St. Louis Journalism Review, July/August 1994, pp. 12-14.
[5] Glen Bleske, "No Runs, No Hits, No Blacks: Wendell Smith, the Black Press
and a Strategy for Racial Equality in the Spring of 1946." Paper presented to
the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Southeast
Colloquium, Stone Mountain, Georgia, March 1992.
[6] Chris Lamb and Glen Bleske,"Democracy on the Field: The Black Press Takes
on White Baseball," Journalism History 24 (Summer 1998): 52.
[7] Jules Tygiel, Baseball's Great Experiment (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1983), p. 36.
[8] See, Simons, "Jackie Robinson and the American Mind," pp.39-64; Lamb and
Bleske, "Democracy on the Field," pp. 51-59; Bill L. Weaver, "The Black Press
and the Assault on Professional Baseball's `Color Line,' October, 1945-April
1947, Phylon 40 (Winter 1979): 303- 317; ; William Kelley, "Jackie Robinson and
the Press," Journalism Quarterly 53 (Spring 1976): 137-139; Patrick Washburn,
"New York Newspapers and Robinson's First Season" Journalism Quarterly 58
(Winter 1981): 640-644; David K. Wiggins,"Wendell Smith, The Pittsburgh
Courier-Journal and the Campaign to Include Blacks in Organized Baseball,"
Journal of Sport History 10 (Summer 1983): 5-29; Chris Lamb and Glen Bleske,
"The Road to October 23, 1945: The Press and the Integration of Baseball," Nine:
A Journal of Baseball History and Social Policy Perspectives, 6 (Fall 1997):
48-68; Chris Lamb, " `I Never Want to Take Another Trip Like This One': Jackie
Robinson's Journey to Integrate Baseball," Journal of Sport History (Summer
1997): 177-191; and Chris Lamb, "L'Affaire Jake Powell: The Minority Press Goes
to Bat Against Segregated Baseball," Journalism and Mass Communication
Quarterly, in print.
[9] Tygiel, Baseball's Great Experiment, p. 35.
[10] Wiggins, "Wendell Smith," p. 10.
[11] Jim Reisler, Black Writers/Black Baseball (McFarland and Co.: Jefferson,
N.C.), p. 33.
[12] Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), p. 13.
[13] Telephone interview with Sam Lacy, 17 February 1995.
[14] Untitled article written by Wendell Smith, Wendell Smith papers.
[15] Wiggins, "Wendell Smith," p. 10.
[16] Richard Crepeau, Baseball: America's Diamond Mind (Central Florida
University: Orlando, 1980), pp. 163-165.
[17] See Chris Lamb and Kelly Rusinack, "Hitting from the Left: The Daily
Worker's Assault on Baseball's Color Line." Paper presented to the Association
for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication national conference,
Baltimore, Maryland, 1998.
[18] Weaver, "The Black Press and the Assault on Professional Baseball's `Color
Line,' p. 303.
[19] Wiggins,"Wendell Smith," pp. 6-7.
[20] Wiggins, "Wendell Smith," p. 6.
[21] Patrick Washburn, "The Pittsburgh Courier's Double V Campaign in 1942,"
American Journalism 3 (1986): 73-86.
[22] Untitled article written by Wendell Smith, Wendell Smith papers.
[23] Untitled article written by Wendell Smith, Wendell Smith papers.
[24] Pittsburgh Courier, 11 May 1938.
[25] Wiggins, "Wendell Smith," p. 11.
[26] Untitled article written by Wendell Smith, Wendell Smith papers.
[27] Roland Wolseley, The Black Press, U.S.A. (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State
University, 1971), p. 54.
[28] Tygiel, Baseball's Great Experiment, p. 41.
[29] Lamb and Rusinack, "Hitting from the Left."
[30] Lamb and Rusinack, "Hitting from the Left."
[31] Telephone interview with Lester Rodney, 6 November 1997.
[32] Sunday Worker, 20 August 1939.
[33] Pittsburgh Courier, 23 August 1947.
[34] Telephone interview with Lester Rodney, 6 November 1997.
[35] Untitled article written by Wendell Smith, Wendell Smith papers.
[36] Wiggins, "Wendell Smith," p. 16; Tygiel, Baseball's Great Experiment, pp.
39-40
[37] Untitled article written by Wendell Smith, Wendell Smith papers.
[38] Pittsburgh Courier, 6 May 1944.
[39] Tygiel, Baseball's Great Experiment, p. 43.
[40] Untitled article written by Wendell Smith, Wendell Smith papers.
[41] Untitled article written by Wendell Smith, Wendell Smith papers.
[42] Tygiel, Baseball's Great Experiment, p. 46.
[43] Tygiel, Baseball's Great Experiment, 48-49.
[44] Untitled article written by Wendell Smith, Wendell Smith papers.
[45] Lamb and Bleske, "Democracy on the Field," p. 53.
[46] Pittsburgh Courier, September 1, 1945, Wendell Smith papers.
[47] Pittsburgh Courier, 3 November 1945.
[48] Letter from Jackie Robinson to Wendell Smith, 31 October 1945, Wendell
Smith papers.
[49] Letter from Wendell Smith to Branch Rickey, 19 December 1945, Wendell
Smith papers.
[50] Letter from Branch Rickey to Wendell Smith, 8 January 1946, Wendell Smith
papers.
[51] Untitled article written by Wendell Smith, Wendell Smith papers; telephone
interview with Billy Rowe, 10 March 1993.
[52] Pittsburgh Courier 6 April 1946.
[53] Pittsburgh Courier, 23 March 1946.
[54] Untitled article written by Wendell Smith, Wendell Smith papers..
[55] Pittsburgh Courier, 23 February 1946.
[56] Pittsburgh Courier, 30 March 1946.
[57] Arnold Rampersad, Jackie Robinson (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1997), pp.
206-207.
[58] Mark Ribowsky, A Complete History of the Negro Leagues (New York: Birch
Lane Press, 1995), p. 286.
[59] Letter from Wendell Smith to Branch Rickey, July 5, 1949, Wendell Smith
papers.
[60] Chicago American, November 9, 1961.
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