Introduction
Note: In keeping with the news reporting and other naming conventions of the era, the terms “negro”, “colored” and perhaps even “black” will be used instead of African American when applicable to the reporting of the day. African American media will often use “sepia” or “tan” in their headlines and stories.
This next series will cover a number of stories surrounding racial integration on the field and the off-the-field impacts it had on society. The integration of players didn’t necessarily happen seamlessly, but it did so with likely less than expected conflict. Most players wanted the best team possible in order to have an opportunity to win. Only two teams received playoff money in those days: the two pennant winners that opposed each other in the World Series. The money was a significant percentage of the players’ salaries for the season. In fact, the Yankees would use the likelihood of getting playoff money as part of their contract negotiations through the ‘50’s and into the 60’s.
While many locker rooms integrated peacefully and players soon grew friendships across racial lines, for many years and most teams those relationships changed when the players left the ballpark. In the South, it was called Jim Crow. In major league cities such as St. Louis, Chicago, Baltimore and Anaheim there were also segregation and red-lining issues. Both visiting and home team African American players continued to suffer housing issues for many years.
Team owners and executives were generally passive when it came to helping the situation outside of the ballpark until the pressures from the outside forced actions. Even Branch Rickey and Bill Veeck who brought negro (African American) players into the National and American leagues respectively were not as forceful when it came to issues off the field for those same players.
The press played a role in improving the off-field situations for negro players, particularly the national press. The communities also eventually made tremendous contributions towards these players and their plight. African American writers with national prominence such as Wendell Smith and Sam Lacy, brought issues to light nationally as did “white” AP writer Joe Reichler. E. H. McLin of the “News of the Negro Community” section of the St. Petersburg Times highlighted local player stories as one of the only local coverage of negro players in Florida during spring training.
The teams had an obligation to house players during spring training. We will try to highlight the people, the locations and the conditions where this occurred before accommodations were integrated. And, what about the visiting team that stayed overnight in a town, both during the spring and regular season? It’s tougher to find information about those accommodations’, but those findings will be shared.
Finally, there are many perspectives to interpret and a number of social as well as economic factors at play. Those will be investigated also. We will begin by examining the stories of Branch Rickey and Bill Veeck as they brought negroes to the major league scene in 1947.
The intent of this series is to take an in-depth look at how baseball affected integration in society and how various parties reacted to it. We will cover players, managers, owners, sportswriters as well as the society outside baseball that baseball was attempting to thrust upon them. This is not just a “Southern” issue, and we will examine that also.
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