What Can the Greens Learn From the Reds? How a Communist Sportswriter Fought For Justice

When Lester Rodney died at the age of 98 in late 2009, I was reminded that comrades come in all flavors. As we seek to build and expand a green movement, it's useful to explore the role Rodney played in last century's effort to integrate major league baseball. As Arnold Rampersad, Jackie Robinson's biographer, wrote:

"In the campaign to end Jim Crow in baseball, the most vigorous efforts came from the Communist Press...notably from Lester Rodney."

In 1937, baseball was a segregated, primarily Eastern sport...but in the off-season, major leaguers often competed against Negro League teams in California. Against that backdrop, second-year phenom Joe DiMaggio was asked to name the toughest pitcher he had ever faced. Without hesitation, the Yankee Clipper told a group of reporters: "Satchel Paige."

Predictably, Joe D.'s honest appraisal went unmentioned in the next day's newspapers...with one exception. Lester Rodney not only reported DiMaggio's comment, he made it a huge headline in the sport pages of the Daily Worker —newspaper of the U.S. Communist Party. The Brooklyn-born Rodney waged a relentless and effective campaign to publicly excoriate and humiliate baseball's commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. "A blatant racist," Rodney called Landis. "He simply kept denying that there was a color barrier."

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"In the 1930s and early '40s," writes Richard Goldstein in The New York Times, "Mr. Rodney, a grandson of Jewish immigrants from Europe, became an outspoken voice among sportswriters, apart from the black press, in condemning racial discrimination in professional sports."

Teamwork to Admire and Emulate

Appropriately, Lester Rodney was in the press box when Jackie Robinson played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers and remained there to witness both the abuse Robinson took and his eventual acceptance as a teammate. When Robinson joined the Dodgers in 1947, outfielder Carl Furillo announced, "I ain't gonna play with no nigger." Fast-forward two years to an important game in a close race against the Braves. It's a scoreless tie in the top of the fifth with the Braves batting...Jim Russell on first, one out. Clint Conatser drives one in the right center gap. Furillo, owner of the best arm in baseball, catches up to the ball about 380 feet from home plate as Russell chugs around the bases.

"Freeze the action for a moment," Rodney suggested. "The long-legged Russell is in full cry, tearing through third in a wide turn. Conatser digs towards second. Robinson eases out some fifty feet into the outfield, half-facing Furillo. Shortstop (Pee Wee) Reese moves to cover second. First baseman Gil Hodges moves into position to possibly cut off the throw to the plate. Catcher Roy Campanella, the team's second black player, who came aboard in 1948, waits slightly up the third base line. (Pitcher Preacher) Roe ambles from the mound to back up the plate. It's the full panorama of baseball, a team game, in a moment that no television camera can encompass."

When we unfreeze, Furillo cuts loose with a throw "that bullets into Robinson's glove, head high, slightly to the right, making it unnecessary for him to pivot his feet before throwing." Robinson fires home to Campanella. Russell is out. The next batter pops up. The inning and the threat are history. Furillo jogs in from the outfield as Robinson, Roe, and Campanella wait for him at the lip of the dugout. The four men embrace. Rodney recalls leaning out of the press box "to watch them descend into the dugout together, then turn my gaze to the people in the stands, those raucous, salty, kidding, good-natured, integrated Ebbets Fields stands."

It took seven more years for the Brooklyn Dodgers to finally beat the hated Yankees in the World Series, but when they did, Furillo greeted Jackie and his wife Rachel at the celebratory party with an emotional cheek-to-cheek hug, crying, "We did it, we did it." They did it, all right...with more than a little help from Lester Rodney.