"This is IT!"

Timeline: The Black Press and the Integration of Baseball

Brian Carroll
for JoMC 112

Setup:

Themes of uplift, integration, equality, and full participation in the democratic experiment
Wendell Smith and Ida B. Wells
Partnership: businessmen, newspaper men, baseball, and the black community (Negro National League in 1920)
Why baseball?

Trivial Pursuit :
Who is the only player to have ever hit the ball OUT of Yankee Stadium?
Who came in 2d to Jesse Owens in the 200m at the 1936 Berlin Olympics?
When did Jackie Robinson break the color barrier?

courier coverage

Timeline

1869: Cincinnati Red Stockings the first salaried team; first professional team

1871: First professional baseball league formed, National Association of Professional Base Ball Players

1876: First major league formed, the National League

1884: Moses Fleetwood Walker becomes first black ballplayer in "major leagues," joining American Association

1885: Argyle Hotel, N.Y., Athletics of Babylon, first professional all-black team

1887: First attempt at a Negro league (Walter Brown, Cleveland Gazette)

1889: Walker becomes the last black in professional baseball, Toledo Blue Stockings

1905: Chicago Defender

1910: Pittsburgh Courier

Roaring 1920s:
Columnists
Negro National League
Rube Foster

Jazz
Numbers games
Speakeasies

1930s:
Wendell Smith in the hotel lobby

Campaign begins

1940s: WWII, Double V campaign, tryouts, F2F meetings, columns

     April 1945 -- tryouts in Boston (could've been first)
     October 1945 -- signed (audio)
     April 1946 -- Montreal (irony of Canada)
     April 1947 -- Brooklyn ("This is IT!")

death threats

1947: Branch Rickey and Happy Chandler, Bill Veeck and Larry Doby, Wendell Smith and Jackie Robinson
1948: Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe, Satchel Paige and J.L. Wilkinson
1949: Negro National League folds again (the de-flowering of black baseball)


Branch Rickey	Happy Chandler	Bill Veeck	Larry Doby

1950s: Integration (Boston last in 1959)

1960s: Spring training and minor league baseball

1981: Foster inducted into HOF

2002: Milwaukee hires ML baseball's first black team president (still no owners)

Online Resources
Afro-American: From the Baltimore Afro-American, this section is devoted to Jackie Robinson
BlackBaseball.com: Site from TK Publishing on the Negro leagues
Negro League Baseball: Online publication devoted to the Negro leagues
The Sporting News: The venerable sports pub's archive section dedicated to Jackie Robinson
Library of Congress: Also an archive section dedicated to Jackie Robinson; includes a more robust timeline
Negro League Players Assn.: History section of the NLPA

jackie's slide

2002 CarrollinaWorks
Last modified: October 2002
Send comments and questions to bc@unc.edu

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