Books: "Boston's Black Athletes: Identity, Performance, and Activism"

 

Boston's Black Athletes: Identity, Performance, and Activism

Edited by Robert Cvornyek and Douglas Stark

Lexington Books; 310 pages; hardback, $120.00; eBook, $50.00

Robert Cvornyek is professor emeritus of history at Rhode Island College, and Douglas Stark is sports museum consultant in Barrington, Rhode Island, and along with a team of contributors, they have created this engrossing history on prominent Black athletes' evolution in a city with a long and troubled racial history.

Some of the representative athletes, who negotiated Boston's racial boundaries at sequential moments during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries include Kittie Knox, a cyclist in the 1890s; Louise Stokes, a runner from Malden, Massachusetts who should be spoken of in the same class as Wilma Rudolph and Jackie Joyner-Kersee, but she did not compete in the 1932 and '36 Olympics, even though she qualified, as she was replaced by white runners; and Medina Dixon, a high school basketball player who burst on the scene in 1978, but was not given any press attention, even though she led her team to an AAU tournament, the first time a New England school earned such an honor.

Sports is a mirror onto whatever is going on in the world, in this case the racial climate of the time, and it is a force for equality on and off the field. The Black athlete historically represented a challenge to the city's liberal image, and these essays interpret Boston's contested racial history through the diverse experiences of the city's African American sports figures who put their talent toward the struggle for social justice. These biographies are grounded in stories that have remained memorable in Boston's Black community.

The essays on Boston's first Black baseball players reveal a lot of forgotten history, for one because there is not much discussion of the old Boston Braves.

While Pumpsie Green was the first Black player on the Red Sox - the last team to integrate - in 1959, it was the Boston Braves who welcomed their first nearly a decade earlier, as Sam Jethroe joined them in 1950.

Jethroe played six-and-a-half seasons in the Negro Leagues, and a year-and-a-half in the minors before joining the Braves, and he made his debut on April 18, 1950 at the Polo Grounds against the New York Giants. Jethroe won the Rookie of the Year award, the oldest Braves player to do so. as he was in the twilight of his career. 

Part of this was due to how long it took baseball to reintegrate, and despite him having many "tryouts," one of which was in April 1945, along with Jackie Robinson and Marvin Williams. Due to an aging body and vision issues, he only lasted a few years in the Majors, short of the minimum four years of service time required for a pension. He led the way to change that rule in the 1990s, as he was toward the end of his life, and he eventually earned his pension.

Green was far less heralded a player, as he was a utility infielder known for his speed, yet the Red Sox, in a nod to his role in their history, welcomed him back to Fenway Park in 2009, when they held a Jackie Robinson Day celebration which coincided with the 50th anniversary of when he integrated the team, and in 2012 for the 100th birthday of Fenway Park. There is a look at the reputation of Tom Yawkey, why they were the last to integrate, and a chart of every minority player who has played for the Red Sox, with an asterisk noting if he was near the end of his career, such as Elston Howard ending his career in Boston in 1967 after his long run with the Yankees.

Robert E. Weir, author of this chapter called Constructing Legends, writes, "Pumpsie Green fits the profile or what mythologist Joseph Campbell called the 'reluctant hero,' a humble individual with little desire to be special. It was a fluke that Green was the first Black Red Sox player. His debut came on July 21, 1959, just one week in advance of the debut of talented right-handed pitcher Earl Wilson (1934-2005). Had Wilson not served two years in the US Marines in 1957 and 1958, he would have surely been Boston's first Black player.

"Pumpsie Green never dreamt of integrating a major league team, much less the Boston Red Sox. In his words, 'I never thought of playing pro ball. To me, baseball was just a game to...have fun with. That was all. His aspiration was to ease into an ongoing integration effort, not to break new ground like Jackie Robinson. A local team, the Oakland Oaks, of the Pacific Coast League (PCL), stirred the California-born Green's racial profile. The Oaks integrated in 1948, eleven years before the Red Sox, and sported professional baseball's first interracial roommates, Black shortstop Artie Wilson and White second baseman Billy Martin. Green wanted to play for the Oaks, and AAA minor league team, but one that lacked affiliation with an MLB parent club and managed its affairs independently. This gave it and other PCL teams an ambiguous status somewhere between AAA and MLB ball, with some baseball scholars asserting that some of its teams were on par with MLB franchises.

"Pumpsie Green came close to attaining his more modest dream. He played his first minor league baseball for the Wenatchee Chiefs of the Western International League in 1953 and was with the Stockton Ports in 1955, both lower-level feeder clubs for the Oaks. He was scheduled to play for Oakland in 1955, but the case-strapped Oaks relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia. As a way of increasing team value, Green's contract was sold to the Red Sox. Overnight, the racial equation changed for Pumpsie Green. It was the difference between easy integration and becoming a racial pioneer for an organization with a reputation of being the most racist in all of professional sports."

Boston's Black Athletes is also a window into the overall history of sports, and what was popular at certain moments. The book opens with an essay by Edward H. Jones on Frenchy Johnson, a rower who there is a lot unknown about his origins before he settled in Boston, and he became America's first Black sports star.

"On a warm July afternoon in 1878, a crowd estimated by one account at forty thousand gathered along the banks of Boston's Charles River," Jones writes. "This crowd reported extended to the housetops and along the city's Mill Dam wall 'as far as the eye could reach.' They were there to witness some of the nation's best oarsmen of the day display their rowing prowess. Exactly 102 years after America celebrated its independence from Great Britain, Boston was celebrating its annual Fourth of July rowing regatta, as rowing competitions were called. The day was ideal for boat racing, with sunny weather and smooth water. And despite a breeze that provided relief from seven previous days of hot weather, at least some of the competitors likely rowed shirtless to keep cool. As one newspaper colorfully reported, the sun, 'because of his native modesty, felt hurt at the primitive attire of the brawny boatmen,' and this 'veiled his face behind a mantle of fleecy clouds.'...

"Boston's annual Fourth of July rowing regatta continued to look favorably on its adopted son. Johnson won the double-sculls in 1880 with boatmate and fellow Bostonian Frank Hill. In Johnson's day, amateur and professional rowing enjoyed a level of popularity among the public that hasn't been seen since. As sports entertainment, rowing events were exciting, accessible, easily understood, and most importantly, free. If a spectator could make their way to a river or lake, they did not have to worry about paying an admission fee as they might if entering a ballpark, racetrack, arena, or stadium. No other Black athlete enjoyed the acclaim that Johnson received during his short rowing career. The popularity of rowing meant that races were constantly in the news. And the telegraph helped race results to be quickly reported throughout the continental United States and beyond.

"Before there was the pioneering Black major league baseball player Moses Fleetwood Walker, before there was the Black world champion bicycle racer Marshall 'Major' Taylor, and before there was three-time Kentucky Derby-winning Black jockey Isaac Murphy, there was the celebrated Black professional oarsman from Boston, Frenchy Johnson. While other Black athletes may have achieved a degree of prominence during his era, none received the acclaim and adulation of Johnson."