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Beyond the Shadow of the Senators : The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball

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Brad Snyder shows us that early 20th Century African-Americans weren't only progressing in academics at the nearby venerated Howard University; they were also making strides in professional sports by sharing Griffith Stadium, which was practically on Howard U's campus,with the beloved but hapless Washington Senators!

That a "negro" team was able to utilize the very same facilities as the Senators in the still very Southern and provincial Washington, DC of the 1930's - 1950's came as a shock to me.

DC was the last NFL team to integrate pro football with Bobby Mitchell in the late 1950's; George Preston Marshall was no civil rights activist, and had to be forced to integrate his Redskins.

It is, therefore, thrilling to see how Washington, DC played a part in the eventuality of pro sports integration, realized in Jackie Robinson's signing in 1947. Snyder tells an interesting tale that all who study the sociological development of a fully integrated Major League Baseball must read!

(Now Brad....send Selig a note to bring us back our team! :}

Beyond a doubt this is a well documented, interesting to read, important addition to the history of black baseball in America.
Snyder recreates the era of parallel universes for black and white Americans when contact between the races was rare. All baseball fans were cheated out of seeing the best players compete because some had darker skins than others. The frustations of ballplayers who knew that they could compete but where denied the opportunity is presented against the background of a segregated America.
As a public libray director and an individual baseball book collector I heartily recommend this title.

"Beyond the Shadow of the Senators'' is a must read for any serious student of baseball history. The author put a massive amount of research into this engaging account, of which I knew nothing even though I grew up in Washington not long after these events took place. This is an outstanding work in every regard. I have never met the author and I am not an African-American (not that anybody should care); I am just a fan of baseball and its history. If you are, too: Read this book.

This is a great, and true-to-life (i.e., "complex") story about the institution of 'Negro' League baseball and the various parties who profited and railed against it.

Key people that are introduced and brought to life are:
Buck Leonard, Satchel Paige, and Josh Gibson -- three of the greatest ballplayers who ever lived;
Clark Griffith -- the pioneering, penurious and controlling owner of the Washington Senators;
Sam Lacy -- the ahead-of-his-time, DC-native who tirelessly advocated for the integration of Major League Baseball; as well as
Cum(berland) Posey -- the shrewd owner of the Homestead Grays -- the dominant team of the loosely confederated Negro Leagues during the late 30's and 40's.

Tangential to this story are:
the decimation of the post 1933 Senators, mostly due to finances and an inadequate ballpark;
the relative prosperity of Washington DC during the years of the depression and WWII and the partial equality of African-American government workers that led to a vibrant culture and ability to spend on entertainment;
the move by Posey and his "partner" (many of the Negro League baseball teams were financed by numbers entreprenuers) to Washington from their Pittsburgh home and the welcome of their rental payments and gate pctgs. by Clark Griffith;
Judge Landis' death, the increasing awareness of America's incongruity in its fight for freedom and democracy in Europe while maintaining a virtual apartheid culture at home; and
the greed/opportunity of baseball owners to find the best talent at the lowest price which ultimately led to Rickey's "great experiment");

This book also fleshes out the background and conflict around Jackie Robinson, who was rightly judged to be a great man and the right vehicle for Rickey's efforst, and the shared opinions that he was a good, but not all-time great Negro baseball player. [Check out how well a 42-yr old Satchel Paige pitched for the World Championship Indians in 1948.]

The shifts in attitude between "separate but equal" and complete integration by the various parties reveal primarily self-interest. Judged by the standards of our time, I share many others' great respect for Sam Lacy and his tireless, moral advocacy and feel sorry for the Negro League baseball owners who were mostly left with nothing as they rarely had enforceable contracts that protected their relationship with their players.

Clark Griffith was an "innovator" in attracting inexpensive talent from Cuba. Many of these players represented themselves well on the ballfield but would only be acceptable if they were of "Spanish" descent.

Utterly inconceivable now, but the norm for over 60 years (since Cap Anson helped institute the "gentleman's agreement" against employment of African Americans in the early 1880's) was to allow a Major or Minor League ballclup to employ pretty much anyone (Swedes, Germans, Irish, Italians, Jews, etc.) anyone, except African-Americans.

It has often been discussed that without Jackie Robinson (& the parts played by Branch Rickey, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Ben Chapman, etc.) the 1954 "Brown vs. Board of Education" decision would not have happened as quickly.

This book provides a wonderful companion story to the integration of major league baseball which, in my opinion, is one of the most significant stories of 20th Century United States.

After reading "Beyond the Shadow of the Senators", I'm ready for season's tickets and let's play ball! While having only heard the names Monarchs, Homestead Grays, Stars and a few other teams, I really knew very little about them. While not a Washingtonian, I have lived in this area for thirty years and missed seeing the Senators by just this much. However, I think the team I really and truely missed seeing was the Homestead Grays. And as I read through the book, one particular player became my favorite, Mr. Buck Leonard. Mr Synder has provided an exceptional and thoroughly well researched book. Yes, it is about the Grays, the Senators, Griffith, Posey, economics, statistics and the integration of baseball, all made wonderfully readable, but Mr. Leonard stands out above them all. He and his teammates are a living, breathing part of the history of Washington, DC. And thank you to Mr Synder for giving them life once again.

A new book has hit the bookshelves that will be of interest to baseball fans, and to students of the history of baseball and history of black-white relations in urban America. Brad Snyder is author of Beyond the Shadow of the Senators: The Untold History of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball (2003, Contemporary Books: Chicago, 418 pp.). The book develops several themes in exacting detail (125 pages of footnotes!). First, Snyder explains why the Clark Griffith was not the first baseball club owner to hire black players...missing a huge opportunity as Washington became a black majority city in the 1950s. Clark Griffith and Sam Posey, owner of the Grays, both had a vested interest in maintaining segregated baseball. Critical income to support for his Washington Senators was provided by renting Griffith Stadium to the Homesteads (100% of concessions plus large percent of the gate receipts). Posey did not have the financial means to construct another ballpark in or near D.C., and he knew the Negro leagues would disappear if the major leagues were integrated. Second, the book follows the career of Sam Lacy, an aggressive advocate of integration in the major leagues, writing for the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper. Having grown-up in segregated Washington, and failing to make it as a player in the Negro Leagues, Lacy had plenty of motivation to lead the campaign to integrate the major leagues. Lacy had to live with the irony of having contributed to integration, but at the price of losing the Negro Leagues, the blame for which was not Lacy's alone, but for which he was attacked by some. Lacy is quoted as saying: "While I didn't like to attack an institution [the Negro Leagues], I certainly didn't want to support or stand by idly and see a symbol for frustration." The third theme developed in Snyder's book is the rich baseball legacy of the Homestead Grays, led by Buck Leonard and Josh Gibson. The team was a dynasty during the early and late 1930s in the Negro Leagues. The Grays were able to turn a profit in Washington, which is why they played the majority of their home game in D.C. rather than remain in Pittsburgh. One chapter is devoted to how "Satchel Paige Saves the Grays," by attracting a large attendance to games in which he pitched for the Kansas City Monarchs against the Grays in a number of classic games. Clark Griffith, Sam Lacy, and Buck Leonard are all in Baseball's Hall of Fame. Snyder does an excellent job of describing their intertwined lives while documenting an important era in the history of baseball and the nation. Griffith Stadium was situated in the heart of a thriving black neighborhood in the 1930s and 1940s. One cannot help but wonder how the sad performance of the Washington Senators in the late 1940s through the 1950s might have been altered if Calvin Griffith had hired Buck Leonard, Josh Gibson, and other members of the Homestead Grays who were playing in his ballpark under his watchful eye. The Griffith family is partly to blame for why Washington has not enjoyed major league baseball for over 30 years. By not leading the move to hire black players, Griffith and his adopted son, Calvin, alienated a generation of baseball fans in the nation's capitol, and true to his segregationist attitude, missed a chance at making history.

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. Looking at the display window of the Stall and Dean store in Seattle, Washington, my eye was drawn by the magnificent photo of the Homestead Grays on the dust jacket of Brad Snyder's book, Beyond the Shadow of the Senators. I cannot honestly say that I recognized any of the players in the photo but the picture evoked a time when baseball, in both its black and white versions, was played exclusively on diamonds of grass and dirt in ballparks that did not shut out the sky. I went into the store and purchased the book.
Brad Snyder's book focuses on black baseball in Washington D.C. from the arrival of the Homestead Grays from Pittsburgh in 1940 through and beyond the integration of the major leagues by Jackie Robinson in 1947. The push and shove to integrate baseball-- and a mighty push and shove it was-- is the main theme of the book. Black journalist Sam Lacy and others pushed to integrate the game and were met by the desperate shove of the baseball establishment to keep the major leagues white. Sadly when integration came to baseball, the Grays and the black newspapers that covered the team fell into eclipse.
Brad Snyder's main strength as a writer is his ability to portray three dimensional characters. The best description of Branch Rickey I have ever read is on page 217 of Snyder's book: "Wesley Branch Rickey talked like a preacher and ran his baseball team like a card shark." The main characters in the book, Clark Griffith, Sam Lacy, and Buck Leonard, all emerge as complex human beings rather than stick figure heroes or villians.
No one in his right mind would want to go back to the days of the Grays. That being said, something has been lost from a time when black people--- and for that matter even white people like Clark Griffith-- owned and ran baseball teams. That lost time, with its warts as well as its beauty, is splendidly recreated in Brad Snyder's Beyond the Shadow of the Senators. I recommend that anyone, baseball fan or not, read his book.

Brad is an excellent researcher and writer. This book is not only enjoyable but educational. I met Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe and Lester Lockett, two former Negro League players, a few years ago and their stories started my interest. Brad fed that interest beautifully. I look forward to Brad's next book on Curt Flood and the reserve clause. His attention to detail is consistent with his legal background.

Tim Moreland, PhD
Salisbury, NC

This is one the best books that I have ever read. It is thoroughly researched and I learned things that I had no idea ever happened even though I grew up in the Washington, DC area. This book could easily be included in a high school history ciriculum about segregation in fact it is far more inclusive than any high school history text that I have ever seen. I would love to sit down with the author and discuss the stadium and the general atmosphere at the time. If the author ever considers writing a history of Griffith Stadium I would love to give him some personal insights. I can be reached at JT, PO Box 231 Poolesville, MD 20837. Again.....great job by a great author!

Let me be clear, this is a great book, rather than just a very good one. In nine chapters, plus an introduction and conclusion, Washington, D.C., based attorney turned writer has told the powerful and sometimes provocative story of how the Homestead Grays moved to Washington, D.C., and set the stage for the breaking down of the color line in Major League Baseball (MLB). In this important book Brad Snyder moves beyond the singular actions of Branch Rickey's Brooklyn Dodgers and Jackie Robinson, which most people are familiar with, to explore the broader implications of race relations in baseball during the 1940s.

In telling this story, "Beyond the Shadow of the Senators" is filled with heroes and villains. The most significant hero is unquestionably Sam Lacy, a black writer with the "Washington Tribune," a weekly oriented toward D.C.'s large African American community, who consistently called for the desegregation of MLB. Also heroic are the great stars of the Negro Leagues, especially Buck Leonard, Satchel Paige, and Josh Gibson, all of whom came to Washington to play before large crowds in the nation's capital. They demonstrated through their exploits the quality of talent in the Negro leagues, especially when juxtaposed against the hapless play of the Washington Senators of the American League. The villains include Clark Griffith, the financially strapped owner of the Senators whose willingness to rent Griffith Stadium to the Grays proved lucrative, and Grays owner Cumberland Posey who shifted his team from the Pittsburgh area to Washington to cater to the large middle-class African American community in Washington. Both Griffith and Posey had every reason to keep the segregated system intact because of the money they made. Moreover, Griffith was a blatant racist who integrated reluctantly and eventually moved the Senators from Washington to Minneapolis-St. Paul because, as he said in 1978, "you've got good, hardworking white people here" (p. 289).

Ranging broadly from social history to baseball and back, Snyder captures the essence of the history of the Senators, the Grays, and wartime Washington's racial situation. It is a story of love and hate at the same time, as well as the quest for dignity of the minority population in a divided city. "Beyond the Shadow of the Senators" is a powerful book. Enjoy.