Apparently, being a Dayton cop and beating up African Americans was a punchline in 1938- and the perception still remains that this is what cops do- all the way 70 years later.
The thing is- it was manufactured then- and now, it is still hinted at.
Read the entire story on the NYT site- it turns out, that Powell wasn’t a cop, and died a common criminal-but that his comments, helped start the integration of pro baseball.
No plaque or distinction will ever be accorded Jake Powell — nor should they — but his racist comment 70 years ago broke the conspiracy of silence that protected segregated baseball.
Jake Powell, claiming to be an off-season police officer, said he used a nightstick on blacks.
During a pregame interview at Comiskey Park in Chicago on July 29, 1938, the WGN Radio announcer Bob Elson asked Powell, a Yankees outfielder, what he did during the off-season. Powell replied that he was a policeman in Dayton, Ohio. When Elson asked him how he stayed in shape, Powell, using a common racial slur, replied that he cracked blacks over the head with his nightstick.
A Public Slur in ’38 Revealed Baseball’s Racism – NYTimes.com [1].
The real question is why, after all these years, we still have a public that believes that our department is full of racists who want to beat or shoot African Americans?
3 Comments To "A strange bit of Dayton history and race relations"
#1 Comment By Jeff On July 28, 2008 @ 7:29 pm @ 7:29 pm
David, you can’t be serious about discussing the history of race relations here by hanging your hat on the tale of this wierdo ballplayer.
I agree with your point that times have changed, but there is a history here, too, that isnt fabricated like this guys off-season job.
#2 Comment By David Esrati On July 28, 2008 @ 8:03 pm @ 8:03 pm
Jeff-
I just found it interesting- esp. since we’ve just had this recent event. Thought I’d share.
#3 Comment By J.R. Locke On August 4, 2008 @ 5:12 am @ 5:12 am
I had a class at WSU with a federal agent of some sort. Anyway he was a fairly conservative guy but he said that the vast majority of the people he had worked with had some type of predisposition to see a black male and think a higher level of threat than a white male.
Anyway, once we except that all of America is racist we can understand these things more. Racism exists everywhere and in everyone and it isn’t always a bad, evil grotesque thing.