Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson's First Spring Training

by Chris Lamb

In the spring of 1946, following the defeat of Hitler’s Germany, America found itself still struggling with the subtler but no less insidious tyrannies of racism and segregation at home. In the midst of it all, Jackie Robinson, a full year away from breaking major league baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers, was undergoing a harrowing dress rehearsal for integration—his first spring training as a minor league prospect with the Montreal Royals, Brooklyn’s AAA team. In Blackout , Chris Lamb tells what happened during these six weeks in segregated Florida—six weeks that would become a critical juncture for the national pastime and for an American society on the threshold of a civil rights revolution. Blackout chronicles Robinson’s tremendous ordeal during that crucial spring training—how he struggled on the field and off. The restaurants and hotels that welcomed his white teammates were closed to him, and in one city after another he was prohibited from taking the field. Steeping his story in its complex cultural context, Lamb describes Robinson’s determination and anxiety, the reaction of the black and white communities to his appearance, and the unique and influential role of the press—mainstream reporting, the alternative black weeklies, and the Communist Daily Worker —in the integration of baseball. Told here in detail for the first time, this story brilliantly encapsulates the larger history of a man, a sport, and a nation on the verge of great and enduring change.

Genres: Sports, Baseball

233 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Tom Leland · Rating 3 out of 5]

A worthy subject, Jackie Robinson's true first entry to white pro baseball: spring training in Florida with the Montreal Royals, 1946. Amazing how much he tolerated. The book reveals how the left and communist press were essential to the possibility of a black being signed by a major league team -- Branch Rickey, with plenty of credit due to him, really just seized the moment. As a city, Daytona Beach shines brightly in this story.

The writing is spotty -- typos, misspellings (e.g., "Stankey"), some redundancies, some contradictions, some unexplained threads that most readers would want to have followed through upon. But well worth a read nevertheless.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Fairly dry recounting of Jackie Robinson’s first spring training with the Dodgers organization, relying heavily on daily local, regional, and national news coverage. It does give credit where due to reporters and editors at black newspapers and the Communist Daily Worker for their efforts to end segregation in baseball.

[Kusaimamekirai · Rating 4 out of 5]

There have been a number of wonderful books about Jackie Robinson and his breaking of the color line in Major League Baseball seventy years ago. However, this book is unique in that rather than focus on his career, it limits itself to that first spring training Robinson attended for the Dodgers minor league club in Florida. Told mostly through the eyes of beat writers, baseball management and players, and various newspapers and magazines, we experience Robinson’s attempt at integration via the lens of a few black writers but primarily it is the reaction of white men that tells the story. And what a compelling and shocking story it is.
While reading this, I couldn’t help but feel like many white people who criticize outspoken black athletes today, would’ve been right at home in 1940’s America. While there was no shortage of outright hostile and racist opinion, much of it was subtle and shaded with a veneer of respectability. Many arguing against integration at that time would say that there had never been a problem with “our negroes” before the politically motivated Communists and NAACP starting stirring up trouble where it didn’t exist. How often today do we hear whites claiming that protests are simply a product of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, (calling out two guys most prominent in the 1980’s never seems to get old) or Black Lives Matter causing trouble. Sound familiar?
Today we often hear things like “I believe in protest/free speech but (insert forum) isn’t the proper forum for it”. Is it materially any different from those in the 1940’s arguing against the integration of baseball claiming that “we want the Negro race to succeed but let’s slow down and not do too much too soon”? Or the white man sponsoring Robinson telling him “you can’t fight back. You have to stay silent and go about your work without complaint.”?
In 2017, there are fewer people being forced to sleep in rat infested segregated hotels or sit at the back of the bus in dirty seats while inhaling exhaust fumes like Jackie Robinson had to. In 2017, legal racism has become a thing of the past but institutional racism sadly lingers in much the same way as it always has. This is a fantastic book not only because of the fascinating light it sheds on what Jackie Robinson’s America looked like, but also because it inadvertently shines the same light on our world today.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating, well-written and well-researched story about baseball legend Jackie Robinson's Spring Training experience with the Montreal Royals before he moved up to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Most of us think of Robinson only in terms of his performance with the Dodgers, but his start with Montreal laid the foundation for all to come. Particularly interesting is the role that once ubiquitous black newspapers and the U.S. Community Party's Daily Worker played in reporting on Robinson's rise when many white-owned papers almost ignored it.