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The Black Press and Coverage of the Negro Leagues Before and After Integration: When to stop the cheering?
The Black Press and Coverage of the Negro Leagues Before and After Integration:
When to stop the cheering?
By Brian Carroll
Ph.D. Park Fellow
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Contact information:
8 Darian Way
Durham, North Carolina 27713
Phone: 919.402.5543
Fax: 919.493.4454
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
For consideration for presentation at the
AEJMC National Convention,
Aug. 7-10, 2002
Miami
Abstract
The signing of Jackie Robinson cleaved baseball history into eras "before" and "after." This cleaving is reflected in black press coverage, which shifted to the major leagues with Robinson's arrival in Brooklyn. This paper analyzes that fundamental shift in coverage by examining the multidimensional relationship the press had with the Negro leagues, including its officials, team owners, and fans. The transitions in coverage, from brotherhood to paternalism to grandfatherly nostalgic tribute, are examined here.
End of abstract
"After Jackie, we couldn't draw flies."
--Buck Leonard, Negro league player[1]
Black newspaper columnist Joe Bostic described as criminal the killing of Negro baseball, a million-dollar business for New York alone and the third-largest black business in the country.[2] Writing for New York City's People's Voice, Bostic accurately predicted that the black community would see little or no direct economic benefit from integration, at least in the short term. Negro league teams for the most part had black owners, black officials, black scorekeepers, black announcers, black secretaries.[3] Black-owned printers published their programs and printed their tickets. Only the black press covered their games. By dooming the Negro leagues, Bostic wrote, integration would stop monies from going "into Negro pockets."[4] He turned out to be prescient.
Less than five years after Bostic's column, in April 1947, Jackie Robinson put on the uniform of the Brooklyn Dodgers and changed the baseball world. The season prior to Robinson's first with the Dodgers was perhaps the Negro leagues' most successful in terms of numbers of fans and profits. Attendance hit new highs throughout the two leagues, and more than 45,000 attended the East-West Classic all-star game in August. A second all-star game was added in Washington, D.C., attracting another 17,000.[5] Integration was coming, but with the geography of Robinson in Montreal, Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe in Nashua, New Hampshire, and Johnny Wright in Three Rivers, Quebec, there was no direct competition yet for paying fans in Negro league cities.
The signing of Robinson cleaved baseball history into "before" and "after," as Brown v. Board of Education in May 1954 marked eras in the nation's schools. During Robinson's inaugural season in Dodger blue, just one season removed from nearly across-the-board success, 10 of the 12 black teams lost money as attendance plummeted, much of it redirected to big league parks.[6] The 1948 season was even worse, with per game attendance frequently below 2,000. Anemic fan support forced the closure of the Negro National League after 16 years of continuous operation. The Negro American League would limp along until 1963, finishing with schedules filled out more with barnstorming than credible league competition.[7] The Indianapolis Clowns, known for their slapstick acts prior to games, survived until 1968 as the last black team by barnstorming.[8]
Bostic proven right
The cleaving of baseball's history is reflected in black press coverage, which rapidly and comprehensively shifted to the major leagues with Robinson's arrival in Brooklyn.[9] This paper analyzes that fundamental shift in coverage by examining the multidimensional relationship the press had with the Negro leagues, including its officials, team owners, and fans. When black papers such as the Pittsburgh Courier, Chicago Defender, and Indianapolis Ledger, the same newspapers that helped found the Negro leagues,[10] began filling their sports pages with news of Robinson and his Dodgers, little room or resource remained for Negro league teams.[11] The once-strong ties of brotherhood in the fight for equality and full access were loosened as the black newspapers neared their goal. The stance of the black papers vis-…-vis the Negro leagues became paternalistic and highly critical just before and during Robinson's first major league campaign, with little evident sympathy for the dilemma faced by owners in achieving democracy but losing their source of revenue. Coverage remained highly critical through the 1940s. Only after the Negro leagues had largely faded in the 1950s did newspapermen show signs of nostalgia and, in a few instances, hints of regret.
It is these transitions, from brotherhood to paternalism to grandfatherly nostalgic tribute, that are examined here. It is in part a way of looking at one of the great dilemmas for American society, which claims allegiance to the ideals of integration and equal access, in education as in athletics, but often without careful deliberation or an accounting of the social costs of these ideals' fulfillment. This failure is evidenced by the view of the black press of Negro league players as merely chits or pawns in the game to win a chair at the table of democracy. The welfare and, in many cases, plight of Negro league players is conspicuously absent in coverage throughout the period studied.
It could be argued that the exploitation of black players by the likes of Branch Rickey and Bill Veeck was preceded by exploitation by the Negro league team owners, with no notice of it paid by black newspapers. For though a windfall for a precious few, integration cost the vast majority of black players their paychecks.[12] Historian Janet Bruce has estimated that the Negro leagues employed about 500 people and pumped 75% of income back into the black community.[13] Less than 60 Negro league players ever played in a major league game.[14]
The topic of baseball coverage by black newspapers is important for many reasons, including the role the black press played in the integration of the sport at all levels. Journalism historians David Wiggins, Chris Lamb, and Glen Bleske, among others, have examined this role, particularly the influence of the Pittsburgh Courier.[15] To the extent the press contributed to the destruction of the Negro leagues, however, it reduced opportunities for players of those leagues in disproportionate numbers relative to the number created in big league baseball.[16] Before selling her club, the Newark Eagles, for instance, Effa Manley blamed the black press and Negro fans for her organization's financial woes.[17]
Historian Mark Ribowsky described the black papers' switch from the Negro leagues to Robinson's every move as immediate and wholesale: "In the rush to see Robinson through his perilous journey, when homage (to the Negro leagues) was called for, all that came up was silence, or worse, contempt."[18] Team owners and sportswriters often feuded over the uneven league coverage, with the newspapers blaming the teams for failing to consistently send in information, especially when they lost, and league officials blaming the newspapers for regarding them as little more than a booking agency.[19]
For the purposes of this paper, integration refers to the signing of Robinson to a major league contract in April 1947, beginning the migration of top black players from the Negro leagues to the majors. It is acknowledged that integration was far more complicated and gradual. It was a process, requiring a dozen years after Robinson's first season for all big league teams to have even a single black player in uniform. The black press began crusading for integration in the 1920s and continued through the early 1960s, when desegregation in spring training and among the minor leagues still was being fought.[20] Special attention in this paper is paid to the Pittsburgh Courier, the nation's largest black newspaper during the mid-1940s,[21] and the Chicago Defender, the second-largest black news weekly, and to the prolific writing of the two papers' sports editors, the Courier's Wendell Smith and the Defender's Fay Young.
Big business
Black baseball ("blackball" to Ribowsky[22] and others) was more than a source of pride and a focal point of solidarity for black Americans. It was one of the most successful African American business enterprises during the "bleak decades of racial exclusion," along with banking, insurance, and newspapers.[23] Baseball was an important part of the rhythms and routines of summer for the black community, and by the turn of the century was as much social event as athletic contest. Sunday games, for which fans would wear their Sunday best, attracted as many as 50,000, topping same-day turnstile numbers for big league games.[24] Sunday games prompted black churches to let out early and were sometimes preceded by entertainment from stars such as Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Lena Horne.[25]
The Kansas City Monarchs, for instance, were described in the local black newspaper as "the life of Kansas City in the Negro vicinity."[26] On opening day in 1937, the Monarchs and the Chicago American Giants were greeted in Kansas City with a parade of 500 decorated cars, two marching bands, and the renowned Kansas City Monarch Booster Club.[27] When in December 1930 Rube Foster, a founder of the Negro National League and owner of the American Giants, passed away, his body lay in state for three days and services filled with 3,000 mourners.[28]
Nature of coverage before integration: brotherhood
The relationship between the press and baseball was conflicted. The two were intertwined to varying degrees throughout the existence of the black leagues. Since before the founding of the Negro National League by Foster in 1920, black newspapers performed the duties of a league governing body.[29] The partnership dated back to the League of Colored Base Ball Players, a precursor to the Negro leagues, which was organized in 1886 by Walter S. Brown, formerly a correspondent covering Pittsburgh for the Cleveland Gazette, a prominent weekly black paper.[30]
Sol White, arguably black baseball's first historian, joined with two white sportswriters from the Philadelphia Item to form one of the earliest dominant black teams, the Philadelphia Giants, in 1902.[31] One of those sportswriters, later White's publisher, Walter "Slick" Schlichter, also managed the Giants,[32] served as their press agent, and challenged white baseball to a championship game with his International League Cup-winning club. After a lengthy playing career culminating in 1909, White went on to write for two black newspapers in New York City, the Age and the Amsterdam News.[33] Still highly regarded and widely cited, White's history has been called "the dead sea scrolls of black professional baseball's pioneering community."[34]
Brother from birth
Sportswriters from several leading black papers, including the Kansas City Call, Indianapolis Freeman, Indianapolis Ledger, and Chicago Defender, were integral in 1920 in the founding of the first enduring black league, the Negro National League, even drafting its constitution.[35] Later, roster sizes for the NNL were influenced by the same coterie of sportswriters.[36] The NNL's acceptance of a white owner - the Monarchs' J.L. Wilkinson - was significantly helped by the support of the Indianapolis Freeman and by Fay Young of the Defender.[37] A Call sportswriter helped Wilkinson come up with a name for his team with the headline, "Monarchs of all they survey."[38]
Further underlining the symbiotic relationship of NNL teams and the black press, the Monarchs' traveling secretary, Q. J. Gilmore, would often write the game stories for the Call and wire them in from the road, the method used to generate much of the black papers' coverage of Negro league contests.[39] At the national level, when the NNL needed arbitration to settle disputes between its often-contentious owners, it looked to W. Rollo Wilson, a sportswriter for the Courier, even naming Wilson league commissioner.[40]
Portal and posting service
Only the black papers carried game results and statistics, albeit incompletely. They served as a kind of "public message board for opposing managers to announce challenges," and they frequently advocated fairness and sportsmanship.[41] The Freeman, Indianapolis' black newspaper from 1884-1927, as well as the Call and the Courier, often gave space to black baseball's luminaries, including players, managers, and owners. In 1913, former player, manager, and future NNL, Rube Foster, used the Freeman to prescribe for black baseball an organizational structure mirroring big league baseball. In his lengthy analysis, he also argued for coverage by the daily newspapers, if such an organization could be achieved.[42] Cum Posey, owner of perennial champion, Pittsburgh's Homestead Grays, and secretary of the NNL, wrote several first-person columns in the sports pages of the Courier, a newspaper in which Posey was a stockholder.[43] In one article, appearing where regular columnist Wendell Smi
th's weekly views ran, Posey wrote in the interests of the league's "self-preservation."[44] When Posey died in March 1946, the Courier devoted a page and a half to the "Famed Baseball Leader," or virtually all of its weekly diet of sports coverage.[45]
Prior to Robinson's big break, it was the major leagues that existed in the periphery, at least for the black community, and black press coverage reflected this reality. The Defender, for example, did not run a single story on the major leagues during the 1945 season until Robinson's signing was announced in October.[46] Coverage of the Negro leagues resembled that of major league baseball by the New York Times and Chicago Tribune, including news on player moves, accounts of league meetings, box scores and game coverage, schedule information, and features. According to Ribowsky, "but for (black press) coverage, the Negro leagues would probably dried up long ago."[47] Defender sports editor Frank "Fay" Young, one of the first black newspapermen to champion integration in the 1920s,[48] often extolled the black press in general and the Defender's efforts specifically for support of black baseball.
Young: "The Chicago (East-West all-star) game taught the promoters a lesson. Of the 32,000, less than 1,500 were white baseball fans paying their way. In other words, the success of the game was made by Negro newspapers and the daily press . . . It was the Negro press that carried the percentages, the feats of the various stars all through the year, and it was the readers of the Negro newspapers who had the knowledge of what they were going to see."[49]
Cheerleader and political ally
Whenever league attendance slipped, the black press rallied behind the Negro leagues, at least until Robinson and Campanella were Dodgers. In the early 1920s, for example, Kansas City sportswriters responded to declining attendance at Monarchs' games by urging civic groups to buy blocks of seats, asking women to come out for "Ladies Night," and publicizing "Knothole Day" for kids.[50] As late as 1953, the Call encouraged attendance at Monarch games: "Negro baseball ain't dead yet . . . It may not be as fat and sassy as it once was, or as robust at the gate, but it is still actively ambulatory."[51] When the federal government's Office of Defense Transportation ordered Negro league teams to surrender their buses to the war effort, the Call organized a petition drive and argued in its pages that, "Negro baseball is an integral part of the national game which President Roosevelt wishes continued ... Baseball has been the chief summer entertainment of many of the signers of this petit
ion. Let Negro baseball live."[52]
Black press support was perhaps most energetic for the East-West Game, an all-star contest similar to the major league version and an event that owed its existence in part to the press. The black papers picked the players and heavily promoted the game, which was played annually in August at Chicago's Comiskey Park. It was celebrated as the "Dream Game" and "the greatest promotion in the history of the Negro sports world," "a gigantic business comparable in every way with the big league all-star game."[53] Smith pointed out that the 1947 edition, which rated "with the biggest sports attractions in the country," outdrew the major league all-star game 47,000 to 29,000.[54] The 1945 game, in which Monarch shortstop Jackie Robinson starred defensively was, at least to Smith, "the game of games."
Smith: "There have been many colorful, sensational East-West games in the past. Stars have glittered and sparkled on the silken turf of Comiskey Park, with a blinding brilliance to make the classic the game of games. In fact, their stellar performances have made it possible for sports writers to refer to the contest as 'the Dream Game.'"[55]
Epitomizing the state of baseball coverage prior to Jackie Robinson's life as a Dodger, the Defender promoted the East-West game in 1946 on its front page with an eight-column headline predicting it to be "Most Colorful in History."[56] The advance story was 43 column inches, the longest baseball story in the Defender that year, and with it appeared lineups, four photos, and nine other Negro league stories. Robinson and Campanella, on the other hand, both toiling in the minor leagues north of the border, alone represented the major leagues in that issue with a pair of two-inch stories.
There is evidence that black sportswriters were aware of what integration would do to the Negro leagues. The Baltimore Afro-American's Sam Lacy, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame's Writers' Wing, told historian Jim Reisler that he knew it would spell their doom, but that after Robinson, "the Negro leagues was (sic) a symbol I couldn't live with anymore."[57] Eight years prior to Robinson cracking the color barrier, the captain of perennial Negro league champs the Homestead Grays, Vic Harris, told Lacy that if big league teams began signing black players, it would mean the end for the Negro leagues.
Harris: "We do have some good ballplayers among us, but not nearly as many fit for the majors as seems to be the belief. But if they start picking them up, what are the remaining players going to do to make a living? Our crowds are not what they should be now . . . How could the other 75 or 80% (of black players) survive?"[58]
Nature of coverage after integration: Paternalism
In 1947, fans and the black press with them turned their near full attention to the major leagues. The shift was discernible, dramatic, and, for Negro league team owners, disastrous. The Newark Eagles, to name but one example, counted 120,000 patrons for home games at Ruppert Stadium in 1946. By 1948, however, the season total was 35,000 and the club shut down.[59] Black press overage of the major leagues in 1948, for example, strikingly resembled, at least in amount, its coverage of the Negro leagues in 1945.[60]
The NNL folded after the difficult 1948 season, with its surviving teams absorbed into the Negro American League. Almost ignored by the press, the Negro American League and its two divisions limped through the 1950s and early 1960s, disbanding after the 1963 campaign.[61] After 1946, the black press, interested as it was in the new class of black major leaguers, reported Negro league games even more inconsistently, relying on feeds from the teams. Post-1946 editorials and columns commenting on the Negro leagues focused either on the ineptness of league officials and owners or the need to continue supporting the leagues for the purpose of completing baseball's integration, a startling change in posture after for so long energetically promoting the game on its own merits.
Don't forget the "golden goose"
Black newspapers called on the black community not to turn its back on the Negro leagues while the press did precisely that, at least in terms of the amount and types of coverage. In May 1947, Ric Roberts, the Courier's Washington, D.C.-based writer, implored fans:
"It is important, therefore, that our baseball fans should remember that (the Negro leagues) is the lone channel through which Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe might have traveled to the hitherto lily-white side . . . Now, more than ever, the leagues need your support, and none of the smart-alecky disdain that some fans seem to be developing _ the golden egg is wonderful _ but let's not forget the goose that laid 'em."[62]
Within a few weeks of Roberts' column, Smith issued an equally emphatic call for support, saying that Negro league owners deserve consideration because of their big investments.[63] "The lush days haven't been here long," he wrote, referring to the banner 1946 season, "and they won't be here much longer." As late as May 1948, Fay Young at the Defender was simultaneously crusading to integrate the Cubs and White Sox and urging black community support for the Chicago American Giants. But the tone is similar to that of a parent talking a child into taking medicine:
Young: "It is only right that all of us roll up our sleeves now and give the team our fullest support. It is all right to yell for what we want but it sure wouldn't be right if we didn't patronize the club when it appears to be what we asked for. It takes money to run a first class ball club. If we want Chicago to have one we have to attend the ball games. There is no other way around it."[64]
Continued fan patronage was more important than ever because the black leagues had become a breeding ground, according to Smith and Young. After decades of being sold on the quality of the black game, fans were being campaigned in paternalistic tones to get behind a diminishing product for the greater good of the race or, in another writer's words, for the American way of life. Courier columnist Mal Goode wrote of lament for the loss of black business ownership with the death of the Negro leagues, but what was gained was "greater - we got our self-respect back - and you have to have been black to understand what we meant."[65] Anticipating Robinson's first action in a Dodger uniform in Ebbets Field, Smith wrote it would be a day he could truthfully say, "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Golry! (sic)"[66] Missing from coverage was any hint of sympathy for most black players, whose playing days had just been numbered.
Black papers wanted their cake and the luxury of eating it, too, chronicling seemingly Robinson's every move but simultaneously pleading with fans not to let black baseball fade away. Longtime radio man Jack Saunders wrote a column in a September 1948 Courier celebrating the new big leaguers, but begging for black baseball's support:
"For God's sakes, fans, don't let Negro baseball die . . . I know you want to see (Robinson, Doby, and Campanella) play . . . I, too, make a bee-line for Shibe Park whenever the Dodgers and Indians come to town . . . But if Negro fans don't start supporting those teams again, they will fold up! . . . The way I see it, Negro fans are doing Negro baseball, future Negro stars and potential major leaguers a great injustice by withdrawing their support . . . How will major league scouts be able to look over Negro material if there are no Negro teams playing?"[67]
The utilitarian view of the press toward the Negro leagues, which had to continue supplying black talent, was motivated, at least in part, by the goal of guaranteeing full status for blacks. Democracy was the goal, Wendell Smith frequently wrote. In June of Robinson's first season, the Dodgers were playing in Boston on Memorial Day, inspiring Smith to parallel Robinson's "blow at big league hypocrisy" with Revere's ride "to fight those who would deny them the rights of America."[68] When Robinson first saw action in white baseball, playing for Montreal in April 1946, the headline for the Courier's front page read, "American Way Triumphs in Robinson 'Experiment,'" and it appeared with verse from Robert Browning declaring, "God's in His Heaven - All's right with the world!"[69]
In the black press' new economy, Robinson was part of a noble experiment and the Negro leagues merely a farm system to be judged on its crops. The currency in this new economy was progress toward full access and full rights. In 1947 alone, Bill Veeck and the Cleveland Indians paid the Negro league's Newark Eagles $15,000 for the contract of Larry Doby, who integrated the American League in July 1947, the St. Louis Browns shelled out $20,000 for two Monarch players, and Branch Rickey acquired the contracts of pitchers Roy Partlow (from the Philadelphia Stars) and Don Newcombe (from the Eagles), both "bargains" at $2,000 apiece. "Obviously, there is gold in them thar bronze stars," Smith proclaimed. [70] This "bargain basement" sale of players could be viewed as a final, self-immolating exploitation by Negro league team owners and the beginning of players' exploitation by major league owners. Rickey, after all, paid the Monarchs nothing for Robinson. The Giants tried the same with their first black player, Monte Irvin, but backed down to Eagles' owners Abe and Effa Manley.
'Get your house in order'
An unlikely alliance against Negro league owners formed in Rickey, then major league commissioner A.B. Happy Chandler, and the black press. In a seminal meeting with Negro league officials in January 1946 following Robinson's signing by the Dodgers, Chandler baldly told black baseball to, "Get your house in order," making that cleansing a requirement before the Negro leagues could approach big league baseball for any type of negotiations. [71] Negro league officials had hoped to forge some type of formal relationship with big league baseball, perhaps an arrangement akin to minor league affiliation, and had petitioned Chandler to that end.[72]
Prior to the commissioner's indictment, Rickey defended his decision not to pay the Monarchs for Robinson with the claim, "There is no Negro league as such as far as I am concerned. Negro baseball is in the zone of a racket and there is not a circuit that could be admitted to organized baseball."[73] If no Negro league existed, there could be no contractual obligation requiring Rickey to pay the Monarchs for Robinson's services.
It is easy to imagine a pre-Robinson black press rushing to the defense of Negro league owners, demanding compensation for top players and holding Chandler accountable for baseball's Jim Crow legacy. It did not happen. The response was the opposite. The Courier and Defender used banner headlines to proclaim Chandler's charges, columns to echo and support his demands and to again list what the writers believed to be the problems plaguing the black leagues.
With the major leagues freshly integrated and powerful voices bastardizing the Negro leagues, the black press had an opportunity to distance itself from black baseball, and the press took it, blaming the black leagues for slides in attendance. After a difficult 1948 season and in anticipation of the 1949 campaign, Smith wrote it was the year that would determine the black leagues' future. Hinting at his own prediction, he referred to the game as "burlesque" acted out as a "corny routine," monotonous and illegitimate, wondering:
" . . . whether we are going to have it in the same gaudy colors and the identical, corny routine. The stage is set and the audience is waiting for the show to go on. The shows in the past haven't been anything to write home about. The theme has been monotonous at times and there have been instances when the cash customers have gotten up and gone home because they refused to accept burlesque after being promised legitimate acts."[74]
Smith's bad theater metaphor followed by a few months a description from the Defender's Young likening the shoddy Negro league play to bad food and the black press to cooks forced to dish it out. Don't blame the cooks for the bad reviews, blame those buying the food, Young advised.[75] When officials failed to punish the Newark Eagles for disputing an umpire's call by walking off the field, the failure to act was for Wendell Smith evidence that Rickey was right - the league must not actually exist.[76] Smith responded to Chandler's advice in his weekly column with the charge that black owners were far more interested in "preservation of their shaky, littered, infested segregated baseball domicile" and a "perpetuation of the slave trade they had developed" than in improving the status of the black ball player.[77] Despite a segregation-forced existence, black owners were characterized by an erstwhile brother in the fight as "slave traders." It is difficult to imagine a more stinging rebuke.
Shifting blame to "foolish" and "whining" owners
In June 1947, as interest in and coverage of Negro league baseball was trending down, Smith claimed that no one in either league was willing to keep the public informed, excusing the Courier's omission of regular and comprehensive league coverage.[78] The press and the public had been "forgotten" due to the inability of the leagues to funnel information to the black papers. It was this failure that threatened to crack the "very foundation of Negro baseball," not the Courier's shift in allocation of resources to the major leagues. Those who claimed integration as the cause of their woes at the turnstiles were "simply dodging the issue." The Defender's Fay Young also used his weekly column to grill Negro league "would-bes" for failing to supply the news and to defend coverage of Larry Doby and Jackie Robinson.
Young: "We haven't any white complex. When the news is of importance, it gets space - the same is of pictures. The columns are not for sale. Our business is to cater to John Q. Public, who buys the newspaper, not to the promoter or the coach. But when either the publicity man, the coach or the promoter fails to get us the news when we want it, the kind we want and the pictures - he is a very foolish man."[79]
The Courier's W. Rollo Wilson, once briefly the Negro leagues' commissioner, listed the leagues' problems as having too many poor ball clubs, fat player salaries, and a surplus of old players, among other ills.[80] And in anticipation of a meeting of league officials, the Courier predicted in an unbylined article that these "many evils" would not be corrected, evils that also included the lack of a commissioner, club owners with conflicting interests serving as league presidents, the absence of a farm system, the need for territorial rights, excessive booking fees, and free-lance umpires with no accountability to the league offices.[81]
Prodigal brother
In addition to criticism, the black press negated the Negro leagues with its silence. In July 1947, for example, Courier coverage praised Veeck and major league baseball for the signing of Larry Doby. No mention was made of the fact that Newark had lost the Negro leagues' all-time home run king nor of the economic impact the loss would have on the Eagles.[82] In fact, when Effa Manley complained of losses of $20,000 in part because of Doby's departure, she was, in Smith's words, "crying the blues . . . What (the owners) must realize is that the 'boom' is over and they'll now have to cut salaries and everything else if they expect to keep going." It was advice he would repeat several times during the 1947 season.[83]
Emblematic of the shift in coverage, in its 13 September issue that season, the Courier accompanied a single, six-inch story on the Cleveland Buckeyes winning the Negro American League pennant with blanket Dodger coverage: a page one promo, a page two advance on the Dodgers road trip to St. Louis, a story on Don Newcombe's ailing wife, a story on Roy Campanella's International League-leading statistics, and a story on the Chicago Cubs' manager's praise of Robinson. Similarly, in October 1948, the Defender promoted with an eight-column, banner headline on its front page the first game for Larry Doby and Satchel Paige as major leaguers, while running on page 12 a nine-inch story on the Grays' Negro League World Series title over the Birmingham Black Barons.[84]
In October 1947, Jackie Robinson's game-winning home run was front-page news for the Defender and subject of three page-one photos, a 21-inch bylined article, and extended coverage on the sports pages.[85] In contrast, the Cubans winning the Negro World Series against Cleveland in five games was buried in a page-0, eight-inch article. Other page one Defender stories on baseball that season included the signing of Robinson by the Dodgers in April, Robinson's favor among fans in May, Larry Doby's signing by the Indians and the St. Louis Browns obtaining Willard Brown and Henry Thompson in July, the major leagues scouting eight Negro league players in August, and the progress of the Dodgers' Dan Bankhead, also in August. No stories on the Negro leagues appeared on the Defender's front page that season.[86]
A microcosm
The Scoreboard columns of Joe Bostic in Harlem's The People's Voice represent in microcosm the evolution in perspective, philosophy, and advocacy among black press writers regarding the Negro leagues. Bostic's columns go from almost unqualified support to finger pointing to abandonment and neglect. In 1942, Bostic was unequivocal in defending the Negro leagues as a critical part of the black community's economy and culture. In a July 11 column that year, Bostic said it comes down to money:
"Since all baseball prognostications are made under the sign of the dollar mark . . . why shouldn't the fledgling that is Negro organized baseball take the same attitude. The whole (integration) discussion breaks down into the query, `Would Negro baseball profit or lose by the entry of Negroes into the American and National leagues?' Scoreboard feels that the net result would be written in red ink on the ledgers of Negro baseball."[87]
Like many other black sportswriters, Bostic would later re-prioritize, putting the democratic ideal of equal treatment and opportunity before monetary "practicality." Less than three years after arguing against "killing" black baseball, in April 1945 Bostic very publicly called for and obtained a tryout with the Dodgers for two black players. The Dodger brain trust of Branch Rickey and Clyde Sukeforth put the players through the drills, but signed neither. Still, that the "first official tryout" occurred was, for Bostic, "the most momentous single adventure in the fight of Negroes for entry into the major leagues,"[88] a fight Bostic had only recently joined.
Wendell Smith, too, changed tacks more than once, switching from "see-no-evil" support of the Negro leagues in the 1930s and early '40s to impassioned support for Robinson in the mid-40s, even giving Robinson his own column, which Smith ghost-wrote,[89] to seeking in the 1950s absolution for abandoning the black game.[90] As early as late 1949, nostalgia was creeping into Smith's weekly columns. He wrote of the "cherished days" of the roaring twenties when Rube Foster ruled the black baseball world, putting it "on its feet." In February 1950, in a column titled, "Negro Baseball Won't Give Up," Smith wrote that it would be "tragic if Negro baseball disappears from the sports scene," a sentiment he repeated in several columns of the 1950s.[91] After the 1950 season, Smith called the Negro baseball picture "much brighter today," a description supported by fellow Courier columnist Ric Roberts, who even pointed to a "colored baseball comeback."[92]
By mid-1950, when still only five major league teams had been integrated, the harsh criticism and scorn had faded and was replaced with pity. Smith described black baseball as the "orphan" of the sport, and an illegitimate one at that, and a "waif" born by necessity and sponsored by the "curious and the fanatical."[93] In August of that year, the Negro leagues' talent pool was deemed "dry," drained by major league teams.[94] The obituary in process, Smith followed a year later with a celebration of the contributions by black baseball, the "garden spot" for talent:
Smith: "Every single Negro player in the big leagues is a graduate of either the Negro American or National Leagues. Ninety per cent of the Negro players in the minors also came from those two circuits. In other words, in the space of six years, the Negro leagues have sent a million dollars worth of ebony talent to the majors and three top minor leagues."[95]
Smith's nostalgia for better days was in full swing by late in the Negro American League's disastrous 1951 season, a campaign that proved financially lethal for four of the league's ten teams. In anticipation of the 19th East-West Classic, Smith used his column to say, "Thanks to Negro baseball . . . for the part they have played in lifting the Negro player from a state of bondage to a state of respectability in the sports world." Nostalgia for black baseball's glory days, a nostalgia that became a big business in the late 1990s,[96] became institutionalized in 1957 with the start of a campaign to get former Negro league players into the Baseball Hall of Fame.[97]
Conclusions
The black press and the Negro leagues were brothers in the fight for equal opportunity in baseball for more than a quarter-century. On the field and in the papers they fought for a fair chance based on the merits of a ball player's skill and not his skin color. This brotherhood, with its origins in the very founding of the Negro leagues, produced for most of organized black baseball's history a close working relationship.
When the shared goals began being realized, however, the bonds loosened. The black press was fulfilling a duty sworn to also by Negro league owners. Just before Robinson was signed, an August 1945 issue of the Courier published its Negro Press Creed: "The Negro Press strives to help every man in the firm belief that all are hurt so long as anyone is held back."[98] Team owners, however, were businesspeople with much more to lose than the newspapers by that creed's fulfillment in baseball. Criticizing this will to survive after integration, the black press took a paternal, highly critical stance toward its erstwhile brother in the fight against segregation, urging the leagues to straighten up, mind their manners, and honor those who had invited their players to the feast. The rhetoric reflected no sympathy with the dilemma team owners faced choosing between the American ideals of democracy and capitalism. Newark's Effa Manley, for example, spoke for owners when she said integration
"squeezed" them "between intransigent racial considerations on one hand and cold business reasoning on the other."[99] Sports writers instead echoed the stern, fatherly "advice" of major league luminaries Chandler and Rickey, among others, for the Negro leagues to get their house in order and begin behaving as a legitimate league.
As integration marched on, albeit ever so slowly, leaving black baseball further and further behind, writers like Bostic, Young, and Smith became somewhat nostalgic. Their writing at times at times resembled the rhetoric of grandfathers sitting on a porch reminiscing of the good old days, a golden era when 50,000 packed Comiskey Park for a summer all-star game, when Satchel Paige had his infielders put down their gloves before striking out the side, when Josh Gibson hit 'em harder and farther than even the great Babe Ruth.[100]
The nostalgia evidenced in the writings of the black sportswriters of the mid-1950s and later point to a process and a problem central to American culture, particularly in the racially charged 1950s and 1960s. To preserve the flower - in this case the Negro leagues - would have been to limit the opportunities of blacks, to perpetuate disenfranchisement and subordination, and, ultimately, to sell short democracy and the American way of life. Achieving these larger societal goals, however, comes with the pain of watching that flower die on the vine. A wincing of sorts is evident in the black press of the 1950s, signaled by desperate, inevitably failed season-long attempts by the Courier and the Defender to revive the Negro leagues through national talent searches.[101]
It could be argued that off the field there are in the 21st century fewer opportunities for blacks in professional baseball than at any point on the Negro leagues' topsy-turvy timeline. Dave Stewart, who is black, for three years served as assistant general manager for the Toronto Blue Jays. In November 2001, when the general manager slot opened up only to be filled with a man many said clearly was less qualified, Stewart resigned his post and left town. "The whole process is a waste of time," Stewart told the New York Times. "For me, the process is disappointing and I'm very discouraged by how things are going in the area of minority hirings."[102] The major leagues had only one minority general manager in 2001 and have had only a handful in their history.
Future research is needed to quantify the shifts in black press coverage and to more closely examine how the black press framed integration over time. When did it become largely an issue of economics, for example, and how early was the fight framed in terms of adherence to the American Creed? These same frames could be examined in relationship to how the black press dealt with the Negro leagues over time, from their founding in the 1920s until extinction in the early 1960s. Additional research also is needed to examine the charges made against the Negro leagues by the black press. How accurate were the many charges, and did the Negro leagues seriously seek their redress? To the extent the problems were real and ignored, Negro league officials must bear the blame for their failings at the box office.
Finally, research is urged in examining how and to what extent the press aided the exploitation of players, first in the Negro leagues and later in the major leagues. These complexities belie the "let's all integrate and be happy" motif found in much of black press coverage and, therefore, warrant a closer look.
[1] In Rob Ruck, Baseball in Pittsburgh (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 1993), 23.
[2] Ruck, 21. Those larger were insurance and numbers games, which were forerunners to lotteries.
[3] There were exceptions to black ownership, most notably J.L. Wilkinson, who owned the Kansas City Monarchs and was a founding member of the Negro National League. Another prominent white owner was Syd Pollock of the Indianapolis Clowns, who ran the club out of upstate New York (Richard Ian Kimball, "Beyond the 'Great Experiment:' Integrated Baseball Comes to Indianapolis," Journal of Sport History 26, No. 1 (Spring 1999): 154. Several of New York's teams, too, had white ownership at various stages of their histories, as did the Baltimore Black Sox.
[4] Joe Bostic, The People's Voice, July 11, 1942.
[5] Donn Rogosin, Invisible Men (Kodansha: New York, 1995), 19.
[6] Jim Bankes, The Pittsburgh Crawfords (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland Press, 2001), 126. The two that made money in 1947 were the Cleveland Buckeyes and the New York Cubans.
[7] Paul Dickson, The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, (New York: Avon Books, 1989): 272.
[8] Paul Debono, Indianapolis ABCs: History of a Premier Team in the Negro Baseball Leagues (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland Press, 1997): 127. The Clowns were known for their shadow ball and clown acts before games, but were also often at the top of the league standings (Chicago Defender, 21 July 1945, 9). For more on the Clowns' history and integration, see Kimball, "Beyond the 'Great Experiment:' Integrated Baseball Comes to Indianapolis."
[9] Brian Carroll, The Black Press and the Integration of Baseball: What to do with the Negro Leagues?, (unpublished manuscript, 2001). The paper includes results of a content analysis empirically comparing coverage by the black press of the Negro leagues and the major leagues before and after Jackie Robinson broke in with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
[10] Phil Dixon and Patrick J. Hannigan, The Negro Baseball Leagues: A Photographic History, Amereon House, Mattituck, NY, 1992: 123.
[11] For one example, the Indianapolis Clowns and coverage in the Indianapolis Ledger, see Debono, Indianapolis ABCs: History of a Premier Team in the Negro Baseball Leagues, 121.
[12] See Albert Dennis Mathewson, "Major league baseball's monopoly power and the Negro Leagues," American Business Law Journal 35, no. 2 (1998): 291-318; Walter Leavy, "50 Years of Blacks in Baseball," Ebony (June 1995): 38; Jules Tygiel, Baseball's great experiment: Jackie Robinson and his legacy (New York: Vintage, 1997), 14; Mark Ribowsky, A Complete History of the Negro Leagues, 1884-1955; Donn Rogosin, Invisible Men; Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970).
[13] Janet Bruce, The Kansas City Monarchs, Champions of Black Baseball. (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1985): She estimated that during the boom years of the early and mid-1940s, the Negro leagues took in $2 million annually (p. 127).
[14] Dixon and Hannigan, The Negro Baseball Leagues: A Photographic History, 307
[15] See David Wiggins, "Wendell Smith, The Pittsburgh Courier-Journal and the Campaign to Include Blacks in Organized Baseball, 1933-1945." Journal of Sport History 10, no. 2 (1989): 5-29; Wiggins, Glory bound: black athletes in a white America. Syracuse, (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1997): 80-103; Chris Lamb and Glen Bleske, "Covering the integration of baseball - a look back," Editor & Publisher, 27 (January 1996): 48-50; Chris Lamb and Glen Bleske, "Democracy on the field," Journalism History 24, no. 2 (1998): 51-59; Bill L. Weaver, "The Black Press and the Assault on Professional Baseball's `Color Line,' October 1945-April 1947," Phylon XL, No. 4 (1979): 303-317); Brian Carroll, "Wendell Smith's Last Crusade: The Desegregation of Spring Training," submitted to and accepted by The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture. ed. by William Simons, due out in first quarter 2002.
[16] Neil J. Sullivan, "Baseball and Race: The Limits of Competition," Journal of Negro History. v. 83, no. 3, (1998): 168. Five years after Robinson broke the color barrier, most major league teams had yet to sign up their first black player. The integration of the National League required 11 seasons, with Philadelphia signing John Kennedy in 1957. Boston's Red Sox were the last to integrate, promoting Elijah Green in July 1959. See also Laura Randolph, "Bill White: National League President," Ebony v. 47, no 10 (August 1992): 52. White became the first black to head a major sports league in 1989 when he became the highest -ranking official in the history of baseball, 42 years after Robinson's big break.
[17] Lillian Scott, "Effa Manley Hotter Than Horse Radish," Chicago Defender, 18 September 1948, 12. For more on Manley, a colorful and courageous team owner, activist, and philanthropist, see James Overmyer, Queen of the Negro Leagues: Effa Manley and the Newark Eagles, (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Trade, 1998), 243.
[18] Mark Ribowsky, A Complete History of the Negro Leagues, 1884-1955 (New York: Carol Publishing, 1995): 7.
[19] Fay Young, "Through the Years," Chicago Defender, 22 May 1948, 12; Lillian Scott, "Effa Manley 'Hotter Than Horse Radish,'" Chicago Defender, 18 September 1948, 12; Fay Young, "Fay Says," Chicago Defender, 18 September 1948, 12; Wendell Smith, "The Sports Beat," Pittsburgh Courier, 14 June 1947, 14. Also see the Baltimore Afro-American's Ric Roberts describing the Negro leagues as "horse and buggy leagues" in Ribowsky, p. 250.
[20] Brian Carroll, "Wendell Smith's Last Crusade: The Desegregation of Spring Training," (in The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture [Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland Press, (expected) February 2002]).
[21] Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism (New York: Macmillan Co., 1962), 795. Both the Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier published editions covering many parts of the country, thus "achieving more or less national distribution," according to Mott.
[22] Ribowsky, 23. See also John B. Holway, Blackball Stars: Negro League Pioneers, (Westport, Conn.: Meckler Books, 1988).
[23] Sol White, History of Colored Base Ball, (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 74. In 1907, White wrote perhaps the first history of black baseball, Sol White's Official Base Ball Guide. A black ballplayer himself, as well as a successful manager and, later, author, White wrote his slim volume and had it published by H. Walter Schlichter, a white sportswriter with the Philadelphia Item, who also served as president of the National Association of Colored Base Ball Clubs of the United States and Cuba. Schlichter also was president and manager of the Philadelphia Giants, a black baseball team in the early 1900s.
[24] Ribowsky, xiv.
[25] Pittsburgh Courier, July 26, 1947, 14. Robinson and Horne were part of the East-West all-star game gala at Comiskey Park, Chicago, the home of the Chicago White Sox.
[26] Quoted in Janet Bruce's The Kansas City Monarchs, 3.
[27] Rogosin, 22-23.
[28] Rogosin, 34-35.
[29] Debono, 44.
[30] Jerry Malloy, "The Pittsburgh Keystones and the 1887 Colored League, Baseball in Pittsburgh," in Baseball in Pittsburgh, (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 1995): 49. Brown also owned the Pittsburgh Keystones, one of the more successful early black teams.
[31] Jerry Malloy, in White, xxxviii.
[32] Black teams frequently named themselves "Giants," and until extinction. It is believed to be a tribute to the New York Giants, the National League's perennial powerhouse managed by John McGraw, whose public support of integration and sometimes subversive attempts to put a black player on his roster won him a great deal of support in the black community. Black teams included Chicago American Giants, New York Cuban Giants, New York X-Giants, Baltimore Giants, and Philadelphia Giants.
[33] Malloy in White, xlvi.
[34] Ibid., Malloy in White, xvi.
[35] Dixon and Hannigan, 123. Present at the Feb. 14, 1920, organizational meeting of the Negro National League were David Wyatt and A.D. Williams of the Ledger, Elwood C. Knox of the Freeman, Gary Lewis of the Defender, and C.A. Franklin of the Call.
[36] Pittsburgh Courier, 13 December 1924; "Baseball Men End 2-Day Meeting, 14 Player Limit Is Put Into Effect," Chicago Defender, 14 January 1928, Part 2, Page 9, city edition.
[37] Bruce, 19.
[38] Bruce, 21, quoting the Kansas City Call, 27 July 1928.
[39] Bruce, 22, and Kansas City Call, 28 October 1932.
[40] Pittsburgh Courier, 6 April 1930.
[41] Debono, 45.
[42] Dixon and Hannigan, 121.
[43] Pittsburgh Courier, 6 April 1947, 17.
[44] Pittsburgh Courier, 2 February 1946, 12.
[45] Pittsburgh Courier, March 1946, 14.
[46] Chicago Defender, March-October 1945.
[47] Ribowsky, 8.
[48] Jim Reisler, Black writers/black baseball: An anthology of articles from black sportswriters who covered the negro leagues (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1994): 2.
[49] Frank Young, Chicago Defender, 9 September 1939, 20.
[50] Bruce, 45.
[51] Bruce, 123, quoting Kansas City Call, 27 February 1953.
[52] Bruce, 100, quoting the Call's editor, Chester A. Franklin. See also Wendell Smith, Pittsburgh Courier, 24 March 1945, 12. Smith used Roosevelt's public statements of support of the national pastime as opportunities to call on F.D.R. also to force baseball to adopt the same fair employment practices the president demanded in government. See also Bruce, p. 100. As Bruce points out, big league teams could switch from their own buses to public transportation in most cases. Negro league teams, which often played on vastly inferior fields inconvenient to a subway stop, were not so fortunate. Their buses were their lifeblood.
[53] Pittsburgh Courier. 7 July 26 1947, 14.
[54] Pittsburgh Courier, 21 July 1945, 12.
[55] Wendell Smith, "Americans Too Good for Spiritless East; 31,714 See Classic," Pittsburgh Courier, 4 August 1945, 12.
[56] Fay Young, Chicago Defender, 17 August 1946, 1 and 9.
[57] Reisler, 13.
[58] Sam Lacy, Baltimore Afro-American, 12 August 1939. Harris was right. A total of 56 players moved from Negro leagues to major league teams. Many more played in the minor leagues, but of 500 on Negro league rosters, only about 10% found work in the big leagues (Dixon and Hannigan, The Negro Baseball Leagues: A Photographic History, 307).
[59] Dixon and Hannigan, 297.
[60] Brian Carroll, "The Black Press and the Integration of Baseball: What to do with the Negro Leagues?," paper submitted to 14th Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture (December 2001): 9.
[61] Dixon and Hannigan, 325.
[62] Pittsburgh Courier, 31 May 1947, 15.
[63] Pittsburgh Courier, 3 May 1947, 14.
[64] Fay Young, "Through the Years," Chicago Defender, 8 May 1948, 11. The column was prefaced with an anonymous poem, "The Purpose of Life," which reads: If you never made another have a happier time in life; If you've never helped a brother (emphasis added) through the struggle and his strife; If you've never been a comfort to the weary and the worn - Will you tell us what you're here for in this lovely land of morn?"
[65] Quoted in Ruck, 23.
[66] Pittsburgh Courier, 11 May 1946, 12.
[67] Pittsburgh Courier, 9 April 1948, 10.
[68] Pittsburgh Courier, 7 June 1947, 12.
[69] William G. Nunn, Pittsburgh Courier, 27 April 1946, 1.
[70] Pittsburgh Courier, 26 July 1947, 14.
[71] Pittsburgh Courier, 26 January 1946, 16.
[72] Wendell Smith, Pittsburgh Courier, 17 November 1946, 10. According to Smith, the Negro leagues called on Chandler to major league baseball from raiding the black teams. In a letter drafted at New York's Theresa Hotel, the officials said they were "protesting the way" Robinson was signed, explaining that black teams had "gone to so much expense to develop players and establish teams and leagues."
[73] Pittsburgh Courier, 3 August 1946, 14; Frank A. Young, "Robinson Not The First Negro Signed To Play in White Organized Baseball," Chicago Defender, 27 October 1945, p. 9.
[74] Wendell Smith, "Sports Beat," Pittsburgh Courier, 14 May 1948, 14.
[75] Fay Young, "Fay Says," Chicago Defender, 18 September 1948, 12.
[76] Wendell Smith, "Sports Beat," Pittsburgh Courier, 3 August 1946, 14. The Eagles were playing the Cleveland Buckeyes. After an official's call against them, the Eagles left the field in dispute, ending the game.
[77] Wendell Smith, Pittsburgh Courier, 26 January 1946, 16.
[78] Wendell Smith, Pittsburgh Courier, 14 June 1947, 14.
[79] Chicago Defender, 22 May 1948, 12.
[80] Wilson, Pittsburgh Courier, 4 October 1947, 14.
[81] Pittsburgh Courier, 22 December 1945, 16, and 16 February 1946, 12.
[82] Pittsburgh Courier, 12 July 1947, 1 and 14.
[83] Pittsburgh Courier, 6 September 1947, 14. See also 20 September 1947, 14, and 4 October 1947, 12.
[84] Fay Young, 9 Oct. 1948, Chicago Defender, 1 and 12.
[85] Fay Young, 4 October 1947, Chicago Defender, 1 and 10.
[86] Fay Young, "Robinson Plays Flawless Ball With Brooklyn Dodgers Club," 19 April 1947, Chicago Defender, 1; Fay Young, "Fate of Jackie Robinson in Hands of Fans," 17 May 1947, 1; Fay Young, "Cleveland Seeks 2nd Negro Player," 5 July 1947, 1; "St. Louis Browns Sign 2 Negro Players," 12 July 1947, 1; Fay Young, "Big Leagues Scout 8 Negro Players," 2 August 1947, 1; Fay Young, "Toughest Spot in Baseball History," 30 August 1947, 1.
[87] Joe Bostic, The People's Voice, 11 July 1942.
[88] Ibid, Joe Bostic, The People's Voice, April 14, 1945.
[89] Robinson's first first-person column began in the 5 April 1947 issue of the Pittsburgh Courier (p. 14) and continued weekly throughout that first season with the Dodgers. In the 24 May issue, "The Robinson Box Score," a weekly feature, was added to present Robinson's weekly statistics and season-to-date totals. In the 31 May issue, two more weekly features were added: "Dodger Dust," a collection of notes about the Dodgers' season, such as, "the train was two hours late getting into New York from St. Louis;" and "Diamond Confetti," game notes from the previous week, such as Robinson hitting his first home run at the Polo Grounds.
[90] Smith, "Sports Beat," Pittsburgh Courier, 17 June 1950, 14; Smith, "Sports Beat," Pittsburgh Courier, 26 August 1950, 14; Smith, "Sports Beat," Pittsburgh Courier, 1 June 1951, 12.
[91] Smith, "Sports Beat," Pittsburgh Courier, 18 February 1950, 22. See also columns of 16 December 1950 (p. 24) and 11 August 1951 (p. 14).
[92] Roberts, Ric, "Homestead Grays Still `Example,'" Pittsburgh Courier, 22 July 1950, 24.
[93] Smith, "Sports Beat," Pittsburgh Courier, 17 June 1950, 14.
[94] Smith, "Sports Beat," Pittsburgh Courier, 26 August 1950, 14.
[95] Smith, "Sports Beat," Pittsburgh Courier, 1 June 1951, 12.
[96] "Flaws in the Diamonds," The Economist v. 342, No. 8000 (18 January 1997): 81.
[97] Ribowsky, 316. The author credits Joe Williams of the New York World-Telegram & Sun for launching this campaign, which ultimately resulted in inductions into the Hall beginning in 1971 with Satchel Paige, a unanimous choice. After the August 2001 induction, 18 Negro leaguers and two black sportswriters - Wendell Smith and Sam Lacy - could be found in the Hall (National Baseball Hall of Fame Web site, accessed (8 December 2001) at http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers%5Fand%5Fhonorees/spink%5Fbios/index.htm.)
[98] Pittsburgh Courier, 11 August 1945, 7.
[99] Effa Manley and Leon Hardwick, Negro Baseball Before Integration, (New York: Adams, 1976): 72.
[100] According to more than one account, Gibson became the only player to hit a ball out of Yankee Stadium in the 1931 championship series between Gibson's Homestead Grays and the Lincoln Giants of New York. Ruth hit many and he hit them hard, but never out of Yankee Stadium (see Ribowsky, p. 152).
[101] "Baseball School Welcomes Negroes," Chicago Defender, 10 April 1948, 10; "Defender School Will Train Boys For Baseball," Chicago Defender, 18 September 1948, 1; Wendell Smith, "Courier Unleashes Talent Hunt," Pittsburgh Courier, 15 May 1948, 13, in which Smith calls it the "Greatest Baseball Talent Hunt in History to Be Sponsored by the Courier Sports Department With Thousands of Readers Serving as Scouts;" Smith, "Find a New Star And Win $100!," Pittsburgh Courier, 22 May 1948, 15; "N.C. Coach Joins Big 'Talent Hunt,'" Pittsburgh Courier, 29 May 1948, 15; Smith, "Find a New Star! You'll Win $100," Pittsburgh Courier, 5 June 1948, 13; Smith, "The Sports Beat," Pittsburgh Courier, 2 October 1948, 10.
[102] Murray Chass, New York Times, 15 November 2001, S-4.