How politics played a major role in the signing of Jackie Robinson

How politics played a major role in the signing of Jackie Robinson
by Chris Lamb (Purdue University)

On October 23, 1945, the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson to their top minor league team, the Montreal Royals, ending the color line in professional baseball.

After the signing, an Associated Press reporter asked Brooklyn team president Branch Rickey if he’d been politically pressured to sign Robinson. Rickey said he had given thought only to Robinson’s ability and the needs of his organization. “No pressure groups had anything to do with it,” he said.

This is the account that was circulated in the days, weeks, years and decades after the signing of Robinson. It will likely be repeated on Jackie Robinson Day on April 15.

But it wasn’t true.

Rickey certainly deserves credit for confronting his fellow owners and their racist attitudes by signing Robinson and, in doing so, advancing the cause of civil rights.

However, there is more to this story than Rickey and Robinson. In fact, the desegregation of baseball came after a decade-long campaign by black and left wing journalists and activists, which I detail in my book “Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters and the Long Campaign to Desegregate Baseball.”

United around a cause

Beginning in the 1930s, black sportswriters, notably Wendell Smith and Sam Lacy, made baseball part of a larger crusade to confront Jim Crow laws.

Their columns galvanized support among their readers, and their interviews with white major leaguers demonstrated that many players had no objections to playing with blacks.

Black sportswriters, however, had little influence among white politicians and legislators.

This wasn’t the case for white political progressives.

The collapse of America’s economy during the Depression created a hunger for radical politics. The United States Communist Party sought to recruit blacks, in particular, because of the severity of racism in the United States. And communists believed they could win the hearts and minds of black Americans if they could desegregate professional baseball, which had prohibited blacks since the 19th century. ***

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