When Baseball Went White: Reconstruction, Reconciliation, and Dreams of a National Pastime

Ryan A. Swanson

iyn, 2014 · U of Nebraska Press

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The story of Jackie Robinson valiantly breaking baseballês color barrier in 1947 is one that most Americans know. But less recognized is the fact that some seventy years earlier, following the Civil War, baseball was tenuously biracial and had the potential for a truly open game. How, then, did the game become so firmly segregated that it required a trailblazer like Robinson? The answer, Ryan A. Swanson suggests, has everything to do with the politics of –reconciliation” and a wish to avoid the issues of race that an integrated game necessarily raised.
¾ The history of baseball during Reconstruction, as¾Swanson¾tells it, is a story of lost opportunities. Thomas Fitzgerald and Octavius Catto (a Philadelphia baseball tandem), for example, were poised to emerge as pioneers of integration in the 1860s. Instead, the desire to create a –national game”ãprofessional and appealing to white Northerners and Southerners alikeãtrumped any movement toward civil rights. Focusing on Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Richmondãthree cities with large African American populations and thriving baseball clubsãSwanson uncovers the origins of baseballês segregation and the mechanics of its implementation. An important piece of sports history, his work also offers a better understanding of Reconstruction, race, and segregation in America.¾¾¾¾
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Ryan A. Swanson is an assistant professor and the director of the Lobo Scholars Program in the Honors College at the University of New Mexico.