Author of Book on Baseball and Civil Rights Joins Player Who Helped Integrate the Sport at UB Feb. 21
February 15, 2007
Contact: University Relations
Phone: 410.837.5739
Bruce Adelson, author of an acclaimed book on the integration of minor league baseball in the south, will join Baltimore Oriole Joe Durham, a player widely regarded as among the key figures in the integration of the sport, for a discussion on baseball and race on Wednesday, Feb. 21 at 5 p.m. in the Venable Baetjer Howard Moot Court Room in the School of Law, 1415 Maryland Ave. "Baseball and Civil Rights: A History of Swings, Misses and Homeruns" is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the Black Law Student Association in the University of Baltimore School of Law.
Adelson is a longtime commentator and writer who has focused on baseball throughout his career. He co-authored The Minor League Baseball Book, wrote four children's books on the sport, and has written about baseball for the Washington Post, USA Today's Baseball Weekly, Sport Magazine, and Baseball America. He also has been a featured commentator on NPR.
Brushing Back Jim Crow, Adelson's book on the integration of minor league teams in the American south, was published by the University of Virginia Press in 1999. It looks at the color barrier in this sector of the sport—a barrier that continued after Jackie Robinson broke it in the major leagues in 1947. In the minor leagues, Jim Crow lived on: interracial games were banned, players faced threats and taunts, and black fans were kept out of public stadiums. The barrier existed in circuits like the Carolina League, the Texas League and the South Atlantic League and many others for nearly 20 more years, until black players like Durham joined with fans to force the system to change.
Durham, a native of Newport News, Va., started his professional baseball career in 1952 with the Chicago American Giants of the Negro American League. He signed to the St. Louis Browns organization a year later, and was assigned to their farm team in York, Pa., which was affiliated with the Piedmont League. That year, he helped break the minor league color line in segregated Maryland and Virginia.
He also had one of his best season ever, which undoubtedly convinced the Orioles to sign him in 1954 as the second African American to play for the franchise. He made history on Sept. 12 of that year, when he became the first African American to hit a homerun for the Orioles.
Durham also worked for the St. Louis Cardinals, but he returned to the Orioles first as a scout and, in 1990, as coach of an Orioles minor league team. He retired from coaching in 1996 and now serves as an Orioles Baseball Club representative.
Brushing Back Jim Crow received a strong critical response, with Publisher's Weekly calling it "an outstanding survey" of the period, and Booklist declaring it "An important book that shows social ills alleviated by courageous individuals making small, often lonely sacrifices to no public acclaim."
Jules Tygiel, author of Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy, said, "Adelson knows these teams and their players, and he places his material, much of it new, in the context of other events taking place in the region, thereby capturing the dynamics and politics of the controversy. This is a valuable addition to the current literature not only for baseball fans but for anyone interested in American History."
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