Introduction
"Apolitical sport does not exist."--Youssef Fatès
In the first generation of integrated baseball, years before black players became common in the Major Leagues, African American players enjoyed a level of success that was disproportionate to their still limited numbers. Between 1947 and 1960, an African American player was voted the National League Rookie of the Year eight times and was voted the League's Most Valuable Player nine times. In the American League, where the top teams embraced integration far more tepidly, African American players did not enjoy a comparable level of success; no African American player was voted the League's Most Valuable Player until Elston Howard claimed the award in 1963 or Rookie of the Year until Tommy Agee in 1964.
It is striking how many of these players who integrated the Major Leagues were born in the South. Of the postseason awards cited above, six of the eight African American players voted Rookie of the Year were Southern born as were five of nine who were voted Most Valuable Player. Likewise, of the thirteen African American players who made their Major League debut during this era and were eventually elected to the Hall of Fame, only two, Bob Gibson and Roy Campanella were born outside of the South while six were born in Alabama alone.
While the actual number of African American players who were born in the South is roughly consistent with the population figures over all-77% of African Americans did live in the South as of the 1940 census-it does not account for the increased difficulty that Jim Crow presented for any manner of black achievement. Southern society was calculated to force African Americans into a subordinate role and to deprive them of the opportunity to excel. Considering the myriad obstacles that Southern society placed in the way of black achievement, it is remarkable that so many African American players from the South were able to develop their talents to the extent that they could not only make the Major Leagues but to excel.
The key to black baseball success in the South was the strength of the African American community. By closing off other avenues of opportunity and expression, segregationists forced African Americans to create parallel social and cultural institutions. At midcentury, baseball was something of an obsession in both the white and black communities. Deprived of access to the larger white baseball culture, African Americans created their own which was capable of meeting the entertainment needs of the community and developing this remarkable generation of talent. Therefore, by excluding African Americans and thereby forcing them to create an independent baseball culture, segregationists ironically enabled the creation of a generation of black players who are among the greatest to have ever played the game. Furthermore, baseball became, for African Americans, an important source of assertion and pride.
African American baseball success was furthermore not a reflection of the strength of a larger Southern baseball culture. While a number of white Major League players were born in the South, far more were from the Great Lakes and Ohio River Valley areas. By excluding African Americans, Southern segregationists ironically enabled the creation of a baseball culture stronger than their own.
In this map, the white dots represent the birthplace of a white player, the blue dots and African American player, and the red dots a player whose ethnicity could not be discerned. Please note also the limitations of this map as it is incapable of displaying multiple points that refer to the same location.
An average taken of the map coordinates of the birthplaces of each player further illustrates this point; the average white player ("w" on the map) was born in central Illinois while the average African American player ("b" on the map) was born in northern Mississippi. There remains a level of ambiguity however as the average player whose ethnicity could not be determined ("u" on the map) was born in central Ohio.
View Averages in a larger map
This project is a preliminary effort to understand the African American baseball culture that inculcated and developed this first generation of Major League players. Although it is not yet able to enter these communities, it is intended primarily to help identify where these communities existed and which players emerged. By better understanding the role of baseball in the individual African American communities, it is hoped that to better understand an important area of black achievement and assertion.
Epigram as quoted in Laurent DuBois, Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 7.
Black Diamonds: Mapping the Integration of Baseball by Charles Klinetobe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.