Out of the Shadows: A Biographical History of African American Athletes

II. Fashioning a World of Sport behind Segregated Walls and on the International Stage

II Fashioning a World of Sport behind Segregated Walls and on the International Stage The lives of African Americans during the first half of the twentieth century were characterized by many changes and filled with both important successes and bitter disappointments. The northern migration of southern blacks, depression of the 1930s, world conflict, and a host of other societal factors would dramatically alter the economic position and status of African Americans in a society still beset with stifling racial discrimination and prejudice. In regards to sport, African Americans were still largely excluded from intercollegiate athletics on predominantly white university campuses, denied the opportunity to participate in Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) sponsored events in the south, and not allowed to engage in white organized professional baseball, football, and basketball, among others. In spite of these constraints and racially discriminatory practices, a number of African American athletes during this period realized enormous success and much notoriety in sport, both in selected white organized competitions and in separate black organizations established behind segregated walls. Two athletes who achieved enormous success behind segregated walls were Ora Washington and Satchel Paige. Pamela Grundy explains in her essay “Ora Washington: The First Black Female Athletic Star” that Washington came from a working-class background and took advantage of the opportunity created by the northern migration of southern blacks to fashion an outstanding athletic career. Through force of will and extraordinary physical talent, Washington realized great success in both tennis and basketball. She was the American Tennis Association’s national singles champion eight times and was a standout player on the famous Philadelphia Tribune girls’ basketball team which dominated the sport during the early 1930s. Unfortunately, notes Grundy, Washington’s career ended at about the 1WIGGINS_pages_i-132.qxd 9/12/06 11:46 AM Page 73 same time that many racial barriers were being shattered in American sport. The result was that the African American community focused on such racial pioneers as Jackie Robinson while at once losing sight of the accomplishments of Washington and other black athletes who competed in relative obscurity during the Jim Crow era. The relative obscurity of Washington was in direct contrast to Satchel Paige, the extremely talented and flamboyant pitcher who was Negro League baseball’s most famous showman and biggest gate attraction. Combining great pitching talent with extreme confidence and a gift for bravado, Paige was, according to Donald Spivey in his essay “Satchel Paige’s Struggle for Selfhood in the Era of Jim Crow,” an enormous drawing card who parlayed “his celebrity status for a fee at every opportunity.” He sold his services to the highest bidders, playing for more than forty different teams, including “squads of Negro League stars in well-attended matches with major league All-Star teams led by Dizzy Dean and Bob Feller.” When not playing in the United States, Paige was plying his trade for teams in Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. In 1948, Paige broke into major league baseball with Bill Veeck’s Cleveland Indians, registering a 6–1 record for that year’s American League and World Series champion. He garnered the American League Rookie of the Year Award for his performance, and attendance at Indian games tripled because of his presence. In 1965, he became, at the age of fifty-nine, the oldest player in major league history when he pitched three innings for the Kansas City A’s. In 1971, Paige became the first Negro League player elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The athletic career of Jesse Owens was decidedly shorter than that of either Ora Washington or Satchel Paige. His name still resonates, however , with people around the world, even those with a limited knowledge of sport or the history of African American athletes. This name recognition stems largely from Owens’s four gold medal winning performance in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Immortalized in Leni Riefenstahl’s documentary , Olympia, Owens’s victories in Berlin were of symbolic importance in that they were accomplished by an African American on the world’s largest sporting stage and in a country whose government espoused the belief in Aryan racial superiority. Although not changing the course of events and preventing world conflict, Owens’s victories on the track served as examples of possibility for the African American community 74 FASHIONING A WORLD OF SPORT 1WIGGINS_pages_i-132.qxd 9/12/06 11:46 AM Page 74 while...