Another View
Second of two parts
Sam Lacy and Wendell Smith were two legendary Black sportswriters whose constant writings eventually led to American sports becoming desegregated. Wayne Dawkins discusses this in his latest book, “Sam Lacy and Wendell Smith—The Dynamic Duo That Desegregated American Sports” (Routledge) that was released in June.
Dawkins, a veteran Black journalist and college professor, was approached back in 2013 about writing a historical book when Smith was inducted into the NABJ Hall of Fame, he told Black journalists in Chicago during the NABJ annual convention.
Lacy (1903-2003) and Smith (1914-1972) both advocated for integration in sports as early as the 1930s in the Black Press. Both men covered the Negro Leagues in its heyday before MLB’s racial barrier was broken when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
Lacy in 1997 was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame for his baseball writing—he was one of the first Black members of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA). He wrote and filed his final column for the Baltimore Afro-American, where he spent nearly 60 years, from his hospital bed just days before his death at age 99 in 2003 from heart and kidney failure.
Smith also is in the Baseball Hall of Fame, but posthumously in 1993. He began his journalism career in 1937 with the Pittsburgh Courier and later worked in television in Chicago in the mid-1960s, writing a weekly column for the Chicago Sun-Times up until his death from pancreatic cancer at age 58 in 1972, a month after Jackie Robinson’s death.
During his first year in the majors, Smith was by Robinson’s side “and ghost writing his column and being his roommate, his driver and everything,” said Dawkins.
“They did more than just baseball,” said Dawkins to the MSR after his appearance on NABJ Book Spotlight. Both Lacy and Smith covered other sports. Lacy fought against segregation in pro football, and Smith covered both Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson during their championship runs.
“There’s a chapter that focuses on boxing,” said the author. “Smith often was at his best covering boxing,” and Lacy often criticized Robinson as a great fighter “but a despicable human being,” added Dawkins.
“They deserve their own story, their own biographies of who they are,” said Dawkins.
When he was approached to write about Lacy for a history journal, Dawkins said he would do it but not without Smith. “They were two Black sports writers of that era,” he recalled. “They were the two people who vetted Jackie Robinson to be the best person to desegregate Major League Baseball.”
Not enough is said or written on just how influential and impactful Lacy and Smith both were as journalists, Dawkins pointed out.
“We can’t say enough about the Black Press and its role in integrating so many institutions in this country. That is what this book is all about,” he added. “The fact that there were these two men [who worked] for the Black Press and made their views known on all sorts of issues.”
Smith also supported Black female athletes and worked hard to dispel the notion that their success wasn’t abnormal. Such as tennis pioneer Athena Gibson: “Smith went out of his way to say yes, she’s a great athlete in tennis, but she’s a girly girl,” surmised Dawkins on Smith’s writings about Gibson.