[DOWNLOAD] "When Baseball Went White" by Ryan A. Swanson ~ Book PDF Kindle ePub Free

eBook details
- Title: When Baseball Went White
- Author : Ryan A. Swanson
- Release Date : January 01, 2014
- Genre: United States,Books,History,Nonfiction,Social Science,Sports & Outdoors,Baseball,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 2368 KB
Description
The story of Jackie Robinson valiantly breaking baseballās color barrier in 1947 is one that most Americans know. But less recognized is the fact that some seventy years earlier, following the Civil War, baseball was tenuously biracial and had the potential for a truly open game. How, then, did the game become so firmly segregated that it required a trailblazer like Robinson? The answer, Ryan A. Swanson suggests, has everything to do with the politics of āreconciliationā and a wish to avoid the issues of race that an integrated game necessarily raised.
The history of baseball during Reconstruction, as Swanson tells it, is a story of lost opportunities. Thomas Fitzgerald and Octavius Catto (a Philadelphia baseball tandem), for example, were poised to emerge as pioneers of integration in the 1860s. Instead, the desire to create a ānational gameāāprofessional and appealing to white Northerners and Southerners alikeātrumped any movement toward civil rights. Focusing on Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Richmondāthree cities with large African American populations and thriving baseball clubsāSwanson uncovers the origins of baseballās segregation and the mechanics of its implementation. An important piece of sports history, his work also offers a better understanding of Reconstruction, race, and segregation in America.