I'm researching the 1942 Negro leagues baseball season, a time when The Daily Worker's campaign to integrate the white Major Leagues (or at least to allow tryouts for prominent black players) hit its first tentative victory; this was when Lester Rodney publicized a comment that Leo Durocher had made to Wendell Smith that he would happily hire Negro ballplayers if not for the owners and Commissioner. When that story hit, the Commissioner famously announced on 16 July 1942 that "there is no rule, formal or informal" barring black players.
Having read your CV (and having already read "Sickening Red Tinge", I wanted to ask whether you could identify two things: (1) precisely when was that article printed (I'm guessing 15 July, but I haven't found it yet), and (2) who was Nat Low? I find his name all over the DW sports page in '42, and see him quoted in black weeklies as the sports editor of DW, but I find no bio data on him anywhere. Was he a short-timer, or was that just a pseudonym for Mr. Rodney, whose name doesn't seem to show up on the pages I've examined?
Thanks. -- Couillaud 16:02, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
I just saw this message - I need to look through my thesis to get you the info for your first question, so give me a little time (maybe later today or tomorrow, depending on if I can locate it, a lot of things are in storage). As for Nat Low, he was another writer. While Lester did write under pseudonyms to make it look like they had more writers than they did, he assured me that Nat Low was an actual person. I'll have to look up more about him, too, in my thesis. But I wanted to let you know as soon as I could that I finally saw this, and will get this info to you, I hope it's not going to be too late for you. Kelelain ( talk) 18:10, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
I'm sorry it took a few extra days for me to hunt my thesis down.
As an aside, while I'm reading my thesis, just want to add this tidbit, in 1945, the sports editor for the New York black newspaper, Amsterdam News, Joe Bostic, teamed up with Nat Low to take two Negro League players to Dodger's spring training, unannounced. They weren't high quality players, though, just ones who were willing to go through with this. Rickey was furious at what he felt was a disrespectful blindside, and turned them away. He also didn't want to be associated with the Communists. Kelelain ( talk) 17:27, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
To answer your first question: The article in the Daily Worker that related Landis' comments to Durocher was printed 17 July 1942, p. 1 (that it was a first page article, and not a sports page article, means it was big news, because it was rare that the sports news made the first page of the Daily Worker). To answer your second question: Nat Low was a reporter with the Worker, but when Lester Rodney, who was the editor from the institution of the sports section in 1936, went to serve in the military during the war, Low became interim editor, until Rodney's return. Low was actually pretty active, though didn't have scoops like Lester did. Well, Lester reserved those for himself.
It wasn't Landis' statement to Durocher, however, that lead up to the desegregation of Major League Baseball. It was a double-whammy of legal decisions: first, in early-1945, Mayor LaGuardia commisioned a study on discriminatory hiring practices by the New York major league baseball clubs; completed in November 1945, it found them guilty of discrimination against blacks for no reason except color of skin, Then, the New York state legislature passed the Ives-Quinn Bill, that made it illegal to discriminate due to race, creed, or color, in hiring in all of New York. It was during the Ives-Quinn debate that Landis died, and Happy Chandler became baseball commissioner. So, Landis never had to deal with the legal implications of open discrimination, and Chandler said, either out of true emotions or legal requirements, that he would be very open to the integration of blacks in baseball, if clubs would start to hire them. The Dodgers, Giants, and Yankees had to start considering it by the end of 1945; Branch Rickey beat them to the punch by signing Jackie Robinson to a minor league contract in October 1945.
I hope this information helps, and if you need more information, please feel free to email me, [email protected], I'm sorry it took me a while to see your question, I read my email about 20 times a day (not exaggerating) so I would get that more quickly. Kelelain ( talk) 19:37, 1 March 2014 (UTC)