Brushing Back Jim Crow The Integration of Minor-League Baseball in the American South by Bruce Adelson (Review)

Brushing Back Jim Crow The Integration of Minor-League Baseball in the American South by Bruce Adelson (University Press of Virginia, 1999)

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Brushing Back Jim Crow The Integration of Minor-League Baseball in the American South by Bruce Adelson (Review)

by Steven F. Lawson
Southern Cultures, Vol. 5, No. 4: Winter 1999

University Press of Virginia, 1999

For baseball fans and students of race relations, Jackie Robinson looms large in the history of sports and civil rights. This African American pioneer broke the color barrier in the major leagues and combined a distinguished baseball career for the Brooklyn Dodgers with a commitment to speaking out against racial injustice. Yet it took more than a decade after his arrival with the Dodgers for the Boston Red Sox to become the final team in the majors to field a black player, and it took even longer for minor-league baseball to become fully integrated, with southern teams the last holdout.

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