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

From Booklist
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 Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Inside Flap
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. Chris Lamb is an associate professor of media studies at the College of Charleston.


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Lamb, a sports journalist turned academic (media studies, Coll. of Charleston), holds up a magnifying glass to Jackie Robinson folklore. By examining primary newspaper material regarding Robinson's first spring training with the Montreal Royals in Florida, Lamb lays bare the events of 1946, the year before his major league debut. The most honest accounts came from black journalists and the Daily Worker, the newspaper of the Communist Party. Baseball's unofficial press organ, the Sporting News, did less well, and baseball heroes like Rogers Hornsby end up with tarnished reputations. After reading this book, citizens in many Florida cities will have to reassess their myths regarding Robinson's treatment. This is not just a baseball biography but also a marvelous piece of history. As Lamb notes, "We do not give this story justice if we limit it to baseball." Valuable for historians and a highly readable account for general readers, it is heartily recommended for all libraries. Randall L. Schroeder, Wartburg Coll. Lib., Waverly, IA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.


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