Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox were the last major league team to integrate, due to the steadfast resistance provided by owner Tom Yawkey. The segregation policy was enforced by Yawkey's general managers: Eddie Collins (through 1947), Joe Cronin (1948–58), and Mike "Pinky" Higgins (field manager 1955–59 and 1960–62, special assistant to the owner 1960, and general manager 1963–65). For example The Red Sox had refused to consider signing Jackie Robinson after a brief tryout at Fenway Park in April 1945. Boston city councilor Isadore Muchnick spurred that tryout by threatening to revoke the team's exemption from Sunday blue laws. A strong team in the late 1940s, the Red Sox finished perpetually in the second division during the early and mid-1960s, the implication being that Boston shut itself off from the expanded talent pool the inclusion of blacks caused due to its segregation policy.
When integration did come, it may have been half-hearted. The new General Manager Bucky Harris promoted Pumpsie Green from Boston's AAA farm club in July 1959, but Green did not become a regular player, though Green's minor league record suggests he probably was no better than a fourth outfielder. Earl Wilson began a nearly five year run as a regular in the Red Sox' rotation beginning 1962. Felix Mantilla was slowly promoted from utility infielder to regular second baseman from '63-'65. By 1966, semi-dark skinned Jose Santiago had joined Wilson in the rotation and Boston had very dark skinned George Scott, George Smith, and Joe Foy in their regular line-up.
After a dismal ninth-place finish in 1966 and ninth straight losing season, General Manager Dick O'Connell promoted Dick Williams, manager of the club's Triple-A Toronto affiliate, to lead the major league team. Williams brought along many of his minor league players, some of whom were black. The Red Sox went on to win the "Impossible Dream" pennant and battle the fully integrated St. Louis Cardinals for seven games in the 1967 World Series. African-American Reggie Smith finished second for the "Rookie of the Year"; George Scott had been third in 1966.
After Williams was fired in 1969, any commitment to a fielding a color-blind team began to slip. Perennially in need of pitching, the Red Sox made a habit of trading away its top black players: Scott went to the Milwaukee Brewers, where he became a home run champion; Smith was peddled to the Cardinals and later became a top star with the Los Angeles Dodgers. In the mid-1970s, future home run champion Ben Oglivie was traded to Detroit (he became a star in Milwaukee); future star first-baseman Cecil Cooper was traded directly to Milwaukee to bring back an aging Scott.
Tom Yawkey died in 1976 and Dick O'Connell failed in his efforts to acquire the team. Tom's widow Jean Yawkey eventually sold to Haywood Sullivan and former team trainer Edward "Buddy" LeRoux, even though they did not have enough funds to run a top franchise in the dawning era of free agency. By the early 1980s, the Red Sox were almost bereft of African Americans not only on the field, but even in the minor leagues. In 1983, the first losing season since 1966, only one player on the major league roster was black, the perennial star Jim Rice. As George Scott noted in a Boston Globe article on the team's apparent racism, not having many black players on the team meant that there was a dearth of social as well as psychological help for a black player, particularly in a city racked by racial turmoil. Other professional sports teams in Boston were integration leaders, however.
The institutional racism of the Red Sox had become a public scandal in New England. Most journalists laid the blame on owner Sullivan, a Southerner. Yawkey has frequently been labeled a Southerner in spirit. In fact, he was a Michigan-born, New York-bred timber baron who had been friends with the overt racist Ty Cobb as a young man and maintained an estate in South Carolina. Sullivan hailed from Alabama and seemed an unreconstructed Southerner despite all his years in New England. He had made his career with the Red Sox by good relations with Mrs. Yawkey, becoming something akin to an adopted son to the childless couple.
As chief executive, Haywood Sullivan found himself in another racial wrangle that ended in a courtroom. The Elks Club of Winter Haven, Florida, the Red Sox spring training home, did not permit black members or guests. Yet the Red Sox allowed the Elks into their clubhouse to distribute dinner invitations to the team's white players, coaches, and business management. When the African-American Tommy Harper, a popular former player and coach for Boston, then working as a minor league instructor, protested the policy and a story appeared in the Boston Globe, he was promptly fired. Harper sued the Red Sox for racial discrimination and his complaint was upheld on July 1, 1986. Sullivan sold his share of the Red Sox in November 1993. In 2000 Harper rejoined the Boston organization as a coach and in 2007 he was listed as a player development consultant for the team.
Read more about this topic: Baseball Color Line
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