blackout
Reviewed by Richard Crepeau, History Department, University of Central Florida
APRIL 3, 2006 archive
It is now sixty years since Jackie Robinson's first spring training in Florida. It has been a decade since the Fiftieth Anniversary celebration of that event at a conference held at Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach. I must say that having attended that conference and heard a raft of presentations on the first spring training by scholars, participants, and witnesses I doubted whether this new book could add much to what was already known about that fateful spring.
After making my way through this well written and extensively researched little volume I came away with my doubts laid to rest. What Chris Lamb, a Professor Media Studies at the College of Charleston, has done here is flesh out a well-known story by looking at the contemporary record in the press and in memory.
Lamb has gone to the sources, both primary and secondary, and the richest contribution of his work is the presentation of the reactions to Robinson's ordeal in the black press, the white press, and among many of those who were part of the story within the Dodger family and the Robinson family. Indeed, one of the most interesting facets of this study is the startlingly different ways in which this spring training was reported in the African-American press, the mainstream American press, and at times, the Montreal press.
In the case of the mainstream American press, even among those who were Dodger beat writers, most instructive is how little of this historic spring training was seen as a story worth reporting. The significance of what was happening in Florida was seldom explored by any of the writers, the humiliations faced by the Robinsons went basically unreported, and the incidents of blatant racism were seldom considered newsworthy. Indeed, reading these newspapers one would have been hard pressed to realize that Baseball's Great Experiment was underway and that the Brooklyn Dodgers were at the center of the storm.
The contrast found within the African-American press is sharp, even though considerable restraint was practiced by many of the black sportswriters following this story. At times it seems as if African-American papers and the mainstream press were operating on entirely different planets. This will not surprise anyone who has done research in the African-American press, but nonetheless when Lamb draws the comparisons of reporting they remain startling and disturbing. Also, as Lamb shows, even the African-American press was restrained, as it did not want to report anything that might endanger the experiment.
Most noteworthy is Lamb's substantiated claim that the best reporting on the Robinson saga is to be found in the Communist Party publication, The Daily Worker. Lester Rodney's columns and Bill Mardo's reporting are particularly worth examination.
Lamb's press analysis set within the context of the story of Robinson's spring ordeal is done with considerable skill. The digressions into local color and the historical backdrop are well executed. Lamb takes us back into the racist climate of America and Florida and revisits the humiliations endured by the Robinsons and the dignity with which they played their assigned role in this national drama.
There is a detailed account of the horrendous trip made by the Robinsons as they traveled from Los Angeles to Daytona Beach to start that first spring training. Lamb revisits the transparently racist decisions to cancel games in Jacksonville, Deland, and Sanford as Robinson tried to participate in spring training games. On the flip side was the reaction of African-Americans in Daytona as seemingly everyone in that community understood the significance of what Jackie Robinson was doing and wanted to show their support for him.
The only quarrel I have with Lamb's interpretation is his tendency to downgrade the role of Branch Rickey. I understand that this is done as a corrective to the myths created and generated by Mr. Rickey himself, but in my view Lamb overdoes the corrective and ends up with a distorted view of Rickey's role. Like most human beings, Branch Rickey operated out of a set of multiple motives, and the presence of one motive does not of necessity negate another, even if one is altruistic while the other is self-aggrandizing.
Blackout is the most complete analysis of Robinson's first spring training available as Lamb has probed the press reports to new depths and in the process revealed another facet of the two America's divided along racial lines. Blackout is also a volume that is essential to any understanding of the events of sixty years ago in Florida and their significance for baseball, for Florida, and for America.
Chris Lamb. Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson's First Spring
Training. Lincoln and London: The University of Nebraska Press, Bison Books,
2004. Notes, bibliography, and index. 226 pages. (paperback). $15.
Copyright © 2006 by Richard Crepeau.