Description
Primary source research for a book of history, a follow-up to "When to Stop the Cheering? The Black Press, the Black Community and the Integration of Baseball," part of the Studies in African American History and Culture series from Routledge. The purpose is to chronicle the black newspapers and the all-black baseball teams and leagues in the South Atlantic from 1920 into the 1950s, when integration in baseball took hold. The theme is to trace the black press's agency in achieving integration, which began in 1951 in Danville, Va., with the integration of the Carolina League. This emerging record shows that direct involvement in locally owned black businesses, including baseball teams, was a natural dimension of the black newspapers' role in the communities they served. To better understand the story of racial division in America, one needs to better understand the integration of sport, and to better understand how desegregation unfolded in the black community, including its terrific costs, one must look at how it was covered by the black editors and reporters writing the first drafts of history. The black press's involvement in these lesser-known leagues is utterly ignored in the literature. It is an under-appreciated fact that, along with funeral homes, insurance, and gambling, both baseball and newspapering were among the black community's biggest businesses. Summer 2011
