Why did Black sportswriters Wendell Smith and Sam Lacy campaign against baseball’s color line?

Black sportswriters Wendell Smith of the Pittsburgh Courier and Sam Lacy of the Baltimore Afro-American campaigned against baseball’s color line because they recognized that the exclusion of Black players from Organized Baseball was increasingly indefensible, particularly during World War II.1

As African American men fought alongside white soldiers overseas to combat fascism, the hypocrisy of maintaining segregation within the national pastime became impossible for many to ignore. Smith and Lacy utilized their platforms in the Black weekly press to maintain a steady, persistent pressure against the color barrier throughout the late 1930s and the war years. Their advocacy was part of a broader shift in American attitudes toward race, fueled by the rising economic and political influence of urban Black communities and the demonstrated success of Black athletes in exhibition games against major leaguers. By highlighting this injustice, these journalists helped create the public pressure necessary to challenge the status quo, eventually contributing to the environment that allowed Branch Rickey to initiate the integration of the Brooklyn Dodgers with Jackie Robinson.21