Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson's First Spring Training
Jackie Robinson's integration of major-league baseball in 1947 has been well chronicled, but often overlooked in the Robinson hagiographies is the fact that he had done it all once before, in 1946, prior to playing minor-league ball with the Montreal Expos. Montreal was relatively free of the institutionalized bigotry Robinson would later face, but Florida, where he spent spring training in '46, certainly was not. Crowds were often verbally abusive, and Robinson and three other black men trying out for Montreal were forced to live in a rooming house while their teammates lived in an all-white hotel. Unlike Robinson's first year with Brooklyn, which played on a national stage in the established press, the indignities of his first spring training had to be endured in relative isolation, covered only by black journalists. Lamb's detailed and annotated research provides an in-depth examination of an important step in the integration of baseball, a step that, up until now, has not received the coverage it deserves. Of interest both to baseball fans and social historians.Wes LukowskyCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.