First a little background. In 1988-1989, when I was a junior at Michigan State, I took a particular interest in the 1961 Detroit Tigers baseball team. The '61 Tigers were quite possibly the greatest 2nd place team in baseball history, winning 101 games but still finishing 8 games behind the pennant winning New York Yankees. '61 was also the first year that the Tigers had prominent black players who made significant contributions to the team. The Tigers were, unfortunately, tardy to the integration of baseball.
Almost every evening from autumn 1988 through almost all of 1989, I spent a minimum amount of time on my school work and trudged over to the MSU Library to study microfilm. I took voluminous notes on the '61 team, from infomation gleaned mainly from microfilmed back issues of the Detroit Free Press and a few other newspapers. I have over 1000 pages of notes, in four spiral bound notebooks, that I have yet to do anything with. For years, I've intended on writing either a book or article, but neither have ever gotten off the ground. So the notebooks sit in a drawer in my basement.
Well, tonight I brought them upstairs with the intention of finally doing something with them. The very first page I looked at was an article about baseball segregation taken from the African-American newspaper, the Michigan Chronicle. In my research, I found that the black press provided the most illuminating commentary and reported stories that mainstream (i.e. white) journalists wouldn't have touched. This article is about spring training segregation in Florida, which was still very much alive and well fourteen years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.
Although this story doesn't have anything to do specifically with the '61 Tigers, it is a fascinating look at the world of spring training segregation during that time period. I will present it verbatim from my notes. Along the way, I'll illustrate this article with photographs and images I find from the web:
"Report Tan Players In Bias Feud"
(Michigan Chronicle, Saturday, February 4, 1961; section two, page one, column two)
The New York Post reprinted a story in the Chicago American written by Wendell Smith. Smith wrote that black ballplayers resent not being allowed to stay in the same hotels with their teammates and not being able to eat in the same restaurants.
"The Negroes are accepted as first-class citizens in the north during the regular season but not in the south during training," Smith reported.
Minnie Minoso said segregation in spring training is well known to those who visit the camps.
"I don't know anything about any move to stop it," said Minoso as he dined at the Gotham Hotel. [The Gotham Hotel was a Detroit establishment that catered to the African-American community].
Gotham Hotel, Detroit, MI
Minnie Minoso
Larry Doby, former Cleveland outfielder, said, "Now is the time to make a move; organize; get someone to talk to the people in baseball. No one guy can do it alone, not even a Willie Mays or an Ernie Banks. We've got to do it together."
Doby cited one example of Jim Crow in Florida, "It was in Savannah. We couldn't get into a restaurant so we had someone go into a delicatessen to buy roast beef and bread. We ate it as we walked up the street."
Larry Doby
Smith quoted one black player as saying, "We think we should enjoy equality the year round and intend to get it. We are tired of staying in the flop houses and eating in second-rate restaurants during spring training.
"If we are good enough to play with a team, then we should be good enough to share the same facilities and accommodations as the other players both spring and summer."
Jackie Robinson told the Post, "I am surprised that this hasn't come up before. I took a lot of indignities in the early days, but they weren't important. The big thing then was to get the Negro into baseball. And then, in the early fifties, a good many of the guys didn't think it was a time to make a move. No, though, I think it is."
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