Box Red," cited below and written by Irwin Silber, founder (with Pete
Seeger) and editor of Singout, and then The Guardian. Lester was
friends with many African-American baseball players and boxers, even
introducing Jackie Robinson to Joe Louis, a real mensch, per Lester.
The Dodgers sent a rep to the So. Cal Library event and Jackie's widow,
Rachel Robinson, attended the Pasadena event. Lester and Irwin were
great to be with, had wonderful senses of humor, loved sports, politics,
good conversation, and were genuine buddies. Lester's photo says it all.
I had to send this out. My warmest wishes to you. -Ed
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/sports/24rodney.html?ref=sports
Lester Rodney, Early Voice in Fight Against Racism in Sports, Dies at 98
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
NY Times Sports: December 23, 2009
Lester Rodney, who occupied an unlikely niche in journalism - sports editor
of the American Communist Party newspaper The Daily Worker - and used that
platform to wage an early battle against baseball's color barrier, died
Sunday in Walnut Creek, Calif. He was 98.
Atached photo of Lester Rodney by Byron LaGoy
His death was announced by his family.
Even in The Daily Worker's heyday, during the Depression, the working
classes the newspaper championed were hardly lining up at newsstands for its
box scores. But the paper, published in New York City, did have a sports
section, run by Mr. Rodney, who was a card-carrying member, in the parlance
of his day, of both the Communist Party USA and the Baseball Writers
Association of America.
In the 1930s and early '40s, 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.
Running a six-day-a-week Daily Worker sports section that he introduced in
1936, more than a decade before Jackie Robinson broke the major league color
barrier, Mr. Rodney pressured the baseball commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain
Landis, and the major league club owners to end baseball's racial barrier.
His columns cited the exploits of stars of the Negro leagues like Satchel
Paige and Josh Gibson, and he quoted major league players and managers
praising the talents of black players to buttress his argument that they
offered a vast talent pool. He publicized Communist-led petition drives
aimed at ending the majors' exclusion of blacks.
"Negro soldiers and sailors are among those beloved heroes of the American
people who have already died for the preservation of this country and
everything this country stands for - yes, including the great game of
baseball," Mr. Rodney wrote in an open letter to Landis published in The
Daily Worker in May 1942. "You, the self-proclaimed 'Czar' of baseball, are
the man responsible for keeping Jim Crow in our National Pastime. You are
the one refusing to say the word which would do more to justify baseball's
existence in this year of war than any other single thing."
In recounting the mounting pressures baseball faced to end its color
barrier, Arnold Rampersad wrote in his 1997 biography "Jackie Robinson" that
"the most vigorous efforts came from the Communist press."
Mr. Rampersad told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2005 that Mr. Rodney "was
forgotten because he was a Communist."
"But," he added, "if Robinson was perceived by civil rights workers - and
especially by Martin Luther King - as a historical turning point, anybody
who facilitated the emergence of Jackie Robinson should be seen as one of
the heroes of race integration."
In his 1983 book "Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His
Legacy," Jules Tygiel wrote that The Daily Worker and Mr. Rodney
"unrelentingly attacked the baseball establishment."
Mr. Tygiel said that "the success of the Communists in forcing the issue
before the American public far outweighed the negative ramifications of
their sponsorship."
Lester Rodney grew up in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, became a
Dodger fan, covered sports for the New Utrecht High School newspaper, and
played basketball and ran track. His father was a staunch Republican who had
owned a silk factory but was ruined financially by the 1929 stock market
crash.
While Mr. Rodney was attending night school at New York University in the
mid-1930s, a young Communist Party recruiter handed him a copy of The Daily
Worker. He found its limited sports coverage to be little more than a dull
representation of the Communist line, viewing athletic competition as a
means of appeasing the oppressed masses. So he wrote a letter to the paper's
editor telling him to lighten up.
The editor invited him in for a chat and asked him to contribute sports
articles. Mr. Rodney was soon hired as the paper's first sports editor, at a
time when the Communist Party was seeking to broaden its appeal in the
United States by reflecting the interests of working-class men and women.
Mr. Rodney joined the party because Daily Worker staff members were expected
to do so.
"I never thought of myself as a 'Communist sportswriter,' " Mr. Rodney told
Irwin Silber for his 2003 biography "Press Box Red." As he put it: "I was a
sportswriter who happened to be writing for a Communist newspaper. By the
time The Daily Worker was something the players might react to negatively,
they knew me as a sportswriter and a person."
After Army service in the Pacific during World War II, Mr. Rodney returned
to The Daily Worker. He resigned from the Communist Party in January 1958
when the paper suspended publication, its top editors having refused to
continue unwavering acceptance of the Soviet Communist Party line. (The
American party later resumed putting out a newspaper under different names,
the latest being The People's Weekly World.)
Mr. Rodney moved to California and, after several years in advertising work,
became the religion editor of The Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram. He
retired in 1975.
He is survived by his daughter, Amy Rodney, of Santa Rosa, Calif.; his son,
Ray, of Fairfax, Calif.; a granddaughter, Jessie Amanda Rodney LaGoy; and
his companion, Mary Harvey. His wife, Clare, died in 2004.
Mr. Rodney looked back with pride on his long campaign against racism in
sports. But he also displayed a wry side, as when he told Mr. Silber about
his first days as the Daily Worker sports editor, just before the 1936 World
Series between the Yankees and the New York Giants:
"I remember my first headline: 'Giant Power Threatens Yankees,' in 60-point
railroad Gothic caps. I also remember thinking what fun it would have been
if Cincinnati had won the National League pennant and the headline said,
'Reds Power Threatens Yankees.' "
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