ABSTRACT
Historian C. Vann Woodward wrote of a "twilight zone that lies between living memory and written history," a zone that is one of the "favorite breeding places of mythology." 1 He might have been thinking of popular perceptions of race relations in major league baseball following Jackie Robinson's wildly successful first season with the Dodgers, a campaign that produced a World Series appearance for the team, rookie-of-the-year honors for Robinson, and a pivot point on which the integration of the sport turned. But that tantalizing and in many ways terrific 1947 season did not put an end to systematic discrimination in baseball. In fact, into the 1960s, the start of each new season brought with it daily reminders that integrated play had failed to deliver equality for all or even many. Forgotten in the swirl of attention given to Rickey and Robinson, and therefore lost in one of Woodward's twilight zones, is just how long black ball players and black sportswriters continued to be unfairly treated during spring training in the Jim Crow South.
