While Jackie Robinson is justly famous for breaking the color
line in major league baseball in 1947, other young African American
players, among them Hank Aaron, continued to struggle for
acceptance on southern farm teams well into the 1960s. As Bruce
Adelson writes, their presence in the South Atlantic, Carolina, and
other minor leagues represented not only a quest for individual
athletic achievement; simply by hitting, fielding, and signing
autographs alongside their white teammates, African-American
ballplayers helped to end segregation in the Jim Crow South.
In writing this book, Adelson interviewed dozens of athletes,
managers, and sportswriters who witnessed this important but
largely unrecognized front in the ongoing civil rights movement.
When nineteen-year-old Percy Miller took the field for the Danville
(Virginia) Leafs in 1951, his presence on the roster was not the
result of altruism: the team's white owners saw attendance flagging
and recognized the need for more African-American fans. Two years
later, Hank Aaron and his two black teammates for the Milwaukee
Braves' Jacksonville (Florida) farm team were regularly greeted by
racial invective, even bottles and stones, on the road. And Ed
Charles endured nine years of discrimination in the southern minor
leagues before breaking into the majors and finally winning the
World Series with the Mets in 1969.
Slowly, through the vehicle of baseball, these African Americans
shattered Jim Crow restrictions and met the backlash against Brown
v. Board of Education while simultaneously challenging long-held
perceptions of racial inadequacy by performing on the field.
Brushing Back Jim Crow weaves their firsthand accounts into a
narrative that spans the long season of racism in the United
States, gripping fans of history and baseball as surely as a
pennantor a home run--race.
General
Imprint: |
University of Virginia Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
February 2007 |
First published: |
February 2007 |
Dimensions: |
225 x 155 x 21mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
288 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8139-2645-2 |
Categories: |
Books >
Sport & Leisure >
Sports & outdoor recreation >
Ball games >
Baseball
|
LSN: |
0-8139-2645-9 |
Barcode: |
9780813926452 |
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