Week 9: Wiggins - Blacks in Organized Baseball & Lamb - Democracy on the Field

Casey Yoos

Sports Journalism Blog

Week 9: Wiggins - Blacks in Organized Baseball & Lamb - Democracy on the Field

In Wiggins article, he wrote that Jackie Robinson wrote in his autobiography that he feels that he “would be forever indebted to Wendell Smith”.  Wendell Smith recommended Robinson to Branch Rickey, a man who stood to break the color barrier in baseball. Wendell Smith told Rickey that, “Robinson was one black player who had major league potential”. Wendell Smith was a sports editor for the Pittsburgh Courier-Journal. The Pittsburgh Courier-Journal was the largest radical Black newspaper. This newspaper fought again the exclusion of black players in baseball for nearly twelve years. When Robinson signed his contract for the Dodgers, the Pittsburgh Courier-Journal put out nearly 100,000 newspapers then their competitors because it called for equality in baseball.

Wendell Smith was such an advocate for equality in baseball because he had faced discrimination himself. When he was on road trips he experienced first hand segregated living accommodations. The Pittsburgh Courier-Journal was more conservative on the issue before he was hired and he wrote columns describing similarities between discrimination against black players to the way Nazi’s treated minorities to get white Americans to stop discriminating on black athletes. Wendell Smith had a lasting impact on equality for black players and the efforts to persuade people through the Pittsburgh Courier-Journal.

In Lamb’s article, he writes that Jackie was the first black player to play baseball in the twentieth century. Baseball was one of the first sports’ organizations to become desegregated. However many people feared integration because they felt that it could lead to violence and leave people hurt or even dead. The first spring training sessions of the integrated baseball teams proved to be nothing but drama and many black that on the lack of coverage or how the integrated and segregated sports were covered by both black and white journalists. White journalists often refused to cover the integrated sport because they feared they would lose their newspapers and audience. However black reporters shared their stories and inspired others of the same race to follow their hopes and dreams.