Baseball and Maintaining the Racial Status Quo in the '40s and '50s

In John Klima's book, "Willie's Boys: The 1948 Birmingham Black Barons, the Last Negro League World Series, and the Making of a Baseball Legend," the author does a good job of chronicling the origins, successes, and ultimately the demise of the Negro Leagues. Successes of Black ball players being signed by Major League clubs, without any compensation, by the way, ultimately led to the Black ball player system shutting down. It would come much later, up into the 1960s, but during the late '40s, it was "on the ropes," to use a boxing metaphor. The dominant subtext of the book is the making of Willie Mays, HOFer, from the hills of Alabama to the fields of the Negro Leagues, even as a high school kid. Apparently, everyone knew that he would get out of "the box," a term Black ball players used, and make it to the bigs.

Here is a curious quote that reminds me of what I've heard overtly and covertly over the years of interviewing and advocating for Black farmers. See if you see the parallels:

"Yet deceit abounded on both sides. Black players felt they were better than ordinary players. They thought they weren't getting a fair look. Every full-time major league scout in 1948 was white and the majority of them were former major league ballplayers, which meant they were white southerners. The old battle lines of the South were drawn again. The right to determine the value of property and who it belonged to, the right of one man to choose the fate of another, and the belief inherent in generations of white southerners that black southerners were there to serve them, and if not, to be ignored, permeated the players and the scouts." --- page 143.

The "planter class" mindset was ruling major league baseball. If you owned a plantation and had 15 or more enslaved persons, you fell into this class, and you were a millionaire. Check out "Marse: A Psychological Portrait of the Southern Slave Master and His Legacy of White Supremacy," a heavy read by Dr. De. Kirkpatrick. The white owners of the major league clubs, and sometimes even clubs in the Negro Leagues, were comparable to the plantation owners. The scouts were supposed to keep the owners' clubs white. All of that broke with Jackie Robinson, but there is more to the story including stories of those clubs that feigned interest in Black ball players, such as the Boston Red Sox or the New York Yankess, but they were really not interested. It was sort of ok to have Black players in the minor leagues, but not up with the bigs.

Willie made it out. His team and coaches helped him out. We know the rest of the story.