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

Abstract

Reviewed by: Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Spring Training Lisa Doris Alexander Chris Lamb. Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Spring Training. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. 226 pp. Cloth, $24.95. According to Jules Tygiel, "The Jackie Robinson story is to Americans what the Passover story is to Jews: it must be told to every generation so that we never [End Page 147] forget." Chris Lamb's work is the latest iteration of Robinson's story and the process of reintegrating Major League Baseball. While Blackout does not contain that much more historical information about Robinson's struggles than Arnold Rampersad's Jackie Robinson or Tygiel's Baseball's Great Experiment, Lamb does provide illuminating historical context to the events he discusses. For Lamb, "The story of Jackie Robinson's first spring training captures America as it moved, or staggered, toward its promise of equal rights for all" (7). Blackout includes all of the events baseball historians and enthusiasts expect from a Robinson story: Jackie and Rachel's turbulent journey to Florida; background information on Branch Rickey's process to sign Robinson; as well as the ways in which Jim Crow laws, and the people who upheld them, hindered the reintegration process. In addition to these events, Lamb discusses concurrent racial events, focusing specifically on lynching, race riots, and general racial unrest—all of which strengthen Lamb's claim that America staggered toward equality as opposed to willingly and purposefully moving toward it in a straight line. In a far more innocuous fashion, Lamb's narrative does not flow in a straight line either. The historical context often takes the reader into interesting tangents, such as comparing Robinson's journey to that of Kerry Washington, who helped reintegrate the NFL, and the oft-forgotten Eddie Klep, a white player who signed with the Cleveland Buckeyes. Throughout, Lamb contrasts the mainstream white press' indifference to Robinson's signing with the work of alternative press reporters such as Sam Lacy, Wendell Smith, and Lester Rodney, among others, who called for Major League Baseball's reintegration long before Branch Rickey and Robinson became involved. By weaving discussions about the roles alternative press outlets played in Robinson's story, Lamb presents one of the most interesting concepts of this text: the ways in which the mainstream media was complicit, not only in keeping professional baseball segregated but also by downplaying racial conflicts that occurred within the game at any given time. Lamb asks the poignant question: "if we are to give the journalists and particularly the sportswriters of the 1930s and 1940s a free pass on their coverage of race, at what point—if ever—do we make them accountable?" (181). As Major League Baseball continues to become more multicultural and multinational, and as issues of race, ethnicity, and nationality affect the game, this question will undoubtedly be asked repeatedly. In the end, regardless of how familiar Robinson's story is to readers, Lamb's account is a worthwhile and illuminating read. Copyright © 2007 the University of Nebraska Press