Integration at What Cost?

American Decades | Date: 2001

INTEGRATION AT WHAT COST?

The Breakthrough

On 9 April 1947 the Brooklyn Dodgers became the first modern team in Major League Baseball to employ a black man as a player. When Branch Rickey hired Jackie Robinson, it was trumpeted as a major breakthrough in the integration of the "separate but equal" world of sports and as a signal that all of America was ready to move toward integration. Jackie Robinson would become a hero for black Americans even more important than Jesse Owens or Joe Louis. The National League teams seemed to see the direct impact of signing black stars. Roy Campanella won the 1951 NL MVP and a black won the MVP award every other year in the decade except 1952: Campanella won two more (1953 and 1955), Willie Mays won in 1954, Don Newcombe in 1955, Hank Aaron in 1957, and Ernie Banks won in 1958 and 1959.

Brother Against Brother

The decade of race relations in America was exemplified by what Jackie Robinson was called on to do in the name of patriotism. In 1950 the House Un-American Activities Committee was at the peak of its power, holding hearings to investigate the infiltration of communism into American institutions. Paul Robeson, a former black college football and track star for Rutgers and in 1950 an actor living in Europe, had denounced the racist society of America in 1949 and had defected to the Soviet Union. In 1950 Robinson, at the urging of Branch Rickey, appeared before the HUAC to repudiate Robeson. Robinson was placed in a no-win situation. Even if he supported Robeson's freedom of political expression, Robinson had to dissociate himself from Robeson's anti-Americanism.

The following are some important events in race relations in sports for the 1950s:

1950

Apr.-May:

The Boston Celtics of the NBA draft the league's first black player, Charles Cooper, and the American Bowling Congress ends its white-male-only policy.

29 Aug.:

Althea Gibson becomes the first black woman to compete in a national tennis tournament.

1951

12 Mar.:

Major League Baseball dismisses its second commissioner, A. B. "Happy" Chandler. In 1947 Chandler overrode the baseball owner's vote against signing Jackie Robinson. Chandler's role in the desegregation of baseball contributed to his dismissal.

1954

Male Athlete of the Year —Willie Mays (baseball)

1957

Female Athlete of the Year —Althea Gibson (tennis)

6 July:

Althea Gibson becomes the first black American to win a Wimbledon tennis championship. Gibson also wins the U.S. National in September.

10 Nov.:

Charles Sifford becomes the first black golfer to win a PGA-sponsored event at the Long Beach Open.

1958

Summer:

The ratio of black and white baseball players in the major leagues is the same as the ratio in the general population. Owners still maintain quotas

1959

Jan.:

The NBA adopts a policy to protect its black players (the league is now 25 percent minority) from discrimination at hotels. In May the Supreme Court rules that it is illegal to prohibit blacks and whites from participating in the same athletic contest.

Aug.:

The Boston Red Sox are the last Major League Baseball team to sign a black player.

1960

Oct.:

The Negro American League, now down to four baseball teams, disbands after the season. The decade of sports desegregation ends as contentiously as it began.

Sources:

Edwin Bancroft Henderson, The Black Athlete: Emergence and Arrival, revised edition (Cornwells Heights, Pa.: Publishers Agency, 1978);

Jules Tygiel, Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).

Copyright 2001, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.