Black Baseball and the New Negro

For my paper, I am writing on the creation of the Negro Leagues, and how the separate Black sporting league represented the agency and self-determination of the New Negro. Additionally, another major aspect of the New Negro phenomenon was present in the integration of professional baseball, famously initiated by Jackie Robinson in 1948. In his bold attempt to compete alongside white athletes, Robinson, and those who followed, faced discrimination and resistance from white players, managers, stadium workers and fans who were simply not open to the idea of a mixed Major League Baseball.

Black sportswriter, one of the few of his time, Sam Lacy describes the scene when the Brooklyn Dodgers were visiting Texas for a game in Robinson's second season in 1949. The Dodgers two Black players, Robinson and catcher Roy Campanella, were told to use the team's locker room facilities while the white players were told to dress at the hotel, which came as a surprise to everyone. However, once Robinson and Campanella arrived to the locker room, they found it was unfinished and a total disaster; covered with mud and dirt, and entirely devoid of windows.

Later, the two were subject of intense insults and dirt name-calling from angry fans. the public address man, known as "Tiny" referred to the two ballplayers not by their names, but simply as "the niggers." Lacy notes that the official scorekeeper spent more time heckling patrons in the colored section than he did paying attention to the game itself.

Despite these obstacles, Lacy writes that he witnessed lines in the colored ticket section "two blocks long and four, five and six deep," braving ankle deep mud and facilities "neither fit for man nor beast," not to mention incessant heckling from angry whites. AFter the game, hundreds of Black stood outside the locker room patiently awaiting autographs from two Robinson and Campenella.

The scene painted by Lacy, one where African-Americans rallied around two brace men who withstood immense abuse in order to break down the color barrier in baseball, is truly representative of the power of the New Negro. Despite their best attempts, racist, angry white fans and employees were unable to break the spirits of Robinson, Campanella and other Black ballplayers, not to mention the countless fans who found inspiration through men like these.

The New Negro according to Locke and Baldwin

Both Alain Locke and Davarian Baldwin's conceptualizations of the New Negro share the same basic themes, despite both scholars looking to different sections of the Black community as those who embody the New Negro spirit and ideology. Alain and Locke both viewed the cultural revolution taking place within the Black community as one of activism and self-determination, a movement that that was fueled entirely by African-Americans and helped to define a unique Black cultural and social identity as a source of pride among the Black community. The single biggest key in both their interpretations is that African-Americans were now actively controlling their own destiny and acting on their own, rather than being acted upon by the white hegemonic institutions of control.

However, the two differ in their emphasis on who in the Black community was leading this cultural revolution. On one hand, Locke had seen the Black intellectual and artistic community as the ones who would uplift the African-American race through their art and intellectual endeavors. Locke believed that poetry, music, art and other creative mediums would be the keys to bringing about respect and credibility to downtrodden Black communities.

In contrast, Baldwin saw Black entrepreneurs and businessmen as those who would be the ones to foster this revolutions. He believed in the consumer marketplace that was blossoming within Black Chicago as a source of empowerment. Baldwin argued that Locke's emphasis on artists and intellectuals ignored that contributions of the common man and woman and the contributions they make to Black culture and thought, and that the Black businessmen, entrepreneurs and workers are the ones fueling the awakening of Black self-conciousness that was occurring at that time.

Despite the differences, the spirit of both Baldwin and Locke's New Negro remain the same. Baldwin's entrepreneurial and Locke's intellectual New Negro were both actively defying white institutions of control and social oppression and developing a sense of pride among the Black community.

Like a Strong Tree...

While reading through the incredible saga of Ida Mae and her husband George, I was most strongly reminded of a poem entitled "Like a Strong Tree" by Claude McKay from Locke's anthology on The New Negro. After being wrongly accused of stealing a few turkeys, Ida Mae's cousin Joe Lee was horrifically beaten and left for dead, which prompted Ida Mae and her husband to finally escape the violence and injustice of the Jim Crow south. Although at first, the analogy between Ida Mae's courageous migration away from oppression and a stationary tree may seem counterintuitive, I feel that the relation between the point McKay is making in his poem and Ida Mae's personification of the New Negro is a strong one.

McKay begins his poem: "Like a strong tree that in the virgin earth, Sends far its roots through rock and loam and clay, And proudly thrives in rain or time of dearth, When the dry waves scare rainy sprites away;"

Facing immense oppression from nearly every side during their time living in the South, Ida Mae and her husband had to fight through the "rock and loam and clay" of violence, segregation, restrictive laws and the unfair sharecropping system in order to provide basic necessities for themselves in order to survive and be as happy as one could be living in such horrific conditions. Ida Mae and George survived through the "dry waves (that) scares rainy sprites away," as the Jim Crow laws were the "dry waves" specifically designed to scare away any "rainy sprites," or means of independence and happiness, found by the Black population living in the South.

The poem continues: "Like a strong tree that reaches down, deep, deep, For Sunken water, fluid underground, Where the great-ringed unsightly blind worms creep, And queer things of the nether world abound:"

It is in these lines that I feel the tree metaphor does indeed relate to the migration of Ida Mae and the rest of the thousands of Blacks leaving the South. For many Blacks, the Southern way of life was all they had ever known, and thus, although desperate to leave the oppression of the South, migrating to an unknown land was a very intimidating thought. The "queer things of the nether world" represent the mystery of a new home and way of life outside the South, but in hopes of finding life-giving water underground, Blacks would have to, in a very real sense, spread their roots beyond the Jim Crow south into new and mysterious places. In Ida Mae's case, Chicago.

The poem ends: "So I would live rich in imperial growth, Touching the surface and the depth of things, Instinctively responsive unto both, Tasting the sweets of being and the stings, Sensing the subtle spell of changing forms, Like a strong tree against a thousand storms."

Ida Mae's experience in Chicago would not be perfect, as they still faced discrimination from whites, resentment from Black Chicago natives and competition from fellow Black migrants, yet the life she would find in the North was superior to that she had in the South. In tasting the "sweets of being and the stings," Ida Mae was able to effectively deal with the ups and downs of being an African-American in an oppressive American society. By branching out her roots, through the "rock and loam and clay," the oppressive institutions designed to hinder her progress, Ida Mae was finally able to build a life and find some semblance of happiness in her new life despite all that was stacked against her, "Like a strong tree against a thousand storms."

Self-Assesment

Like many of my fellow Black Studies majors, I came to UCSB with no idea that, four years later, I would be (hopefully) graduating with a degree in Black Studies. My first two years in college I studied Mathematics, not because I particularly liked it, but because it was something that had come relatively easy to me in high school.

During the winter quarter of my sophomore year, I took Black Studies 1 in order to fulfill the ethnicity requirement required to graduate. I was immediately drawn to Professor Otis Madison's theatric style, but the central themes and arguments he presented would change my perspective on race and the nature of American society forever. Professor Madison's main argument was that race was a social construction, one that has been historically used as an institution to control the American working class by dividing them into distinct racial categories. Whites were led to believe that they were inherently superior over the African-American population, who were exploited for their free/cheap labor, denied basic human rights, and relegated to a status as second-class citizens based on the fact that they were apparently inferior to the white population. Professor Madison's class helped to put the nature of racism in American society in perspective for me, while sparking an interest to continue studying the struggles and triumphs of the African people.

By my junior year, I was regularly finding myself dozing off during my math classes, while being absolutely riveted by what I was learning in my Black Studies courses. By the end of the year, it was a relatively easy decision to switch my major. Mathematics simply wasn't for me. The rigid, formulaic structure of math simply didn't excite me, while learning about the rich cultural and social history of the African people truly did. Turning in my petition to officially change my major has been one of the most exciting days in college for me.

I continued taking classes with Professor Madison, whether it be on the nature of Black stereotypes in the American media, the racist eugenic movement in science, or the struggles of African-Americans in sports. Although I have spent most of my time in Professor Madison's courses, every single Black Studies course I have taken has been absolutely enthralling and taught by someone who truly cares about his or her student's educations. Whether it be Professor Johnson, Professor McAuley, or even the notoriously demanding Professor Banks, every class I have taken has opened my eyes on a different aspect of the world we live in, and left me with a feeling with a sense that, despite the atrocities that have committed against the African people throughout history, oppression can be defeated and justice can be served through education and collective action.

The one thing that hasn't changed is the fact that I want to be a teacher. Initially, I had wanted to teach high schoolers about algebra, trigonometry, and calculus. Important concepts, absolutely. But now, I instead want to educate on issues far more important than derivatives and tangent lines. I hope to pass on to my students that same eye-opening perspectives that the faculty of the Black Studies department has instilled in me. It is my ultimate goal to educate and inspire my students to take action against the social injustices that have been committed against people of color all over the world. Through such education, we can, with hard work, eliminate the injustice and oppression that I have spent my last few years studying.