African American Sports Journalists and Athletes as Foreign Correspondents for the Black Press, 1930-1950

Abstract

ABSTRACT Sports journalists and athletes acted as foreign correspondents for the U.S. black press in the early to mid-twentieth century. During this period, hundreds of African American baseball players left the United States to participate in Latin American leagues. Inspired by their journeys, sportswriters used the ballplayers’ transnational movement to explore sport and society in other parts of the Americas. From their correspondences with the athletes combined with their journeys abroad, sports journalists observed and documented the ballplayers’ international experiences for audiences at home. Additionally, some athletes, including Jackie Robinson, wrote featured stories for news publications, serving as de-facto correspondents in the process. This article suggests that by looking to the sports pages, scholars can locate alternative ways that black Americans learned about global conceptions of race and the color line in print media during the first half of the twentieth century.