Mojo book review
By Brown Burnett
Memphis Mojo editor
When I first got word of Memphis photographer Ernest C. Withers’ new book, Negro League Baseball, with an essay by Daniel Wolff, I jumped at the chance to get it. After all I had reviewed their previous collaboration, Ernest C. Withers: The Memphis Blues Again, Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs (2001) and was thrilled to hear about a book about a subject that’s fascinated me for a long time.
Long ago in a land called America, black athletes had to play baseball in a shadow league, for lack of a better term, because Major League Baseball, like most of American society, chose to exclude the Negro, thus the Negro Leagues were born. Their ‘Golden Age’ was in the 1930’s and of course, the leagues began fading away once Jackie Robinson broke the color line in Major League White Baseball shortly after World War II.
But one of the more successful franchises in the latter days of the Negro League and when they became charter members of the Negro American League in 1937, Memphis had a big time baseball team, but only half the population knew it.
Withers was their unofficial team photographer for those Red Sox, who weren’t prolific winners, but drew well at the gate and had a lot of fun.
And good grief, did Withers take pictures. More than 175 pages of expertly crafted black and white pictures of that world of baseball players, owners, games, fans that few people have ever actually seen, since the Negro Leagues were basically ignored by the so-called mainstream media.
Wolff has worked so long and successfully with Withers that the words flow like a clear stream in conjunction with the pictures. I particularly found the story of the Martin Brothers, who founded the team and kept them going until the league disappeared for good in 1962 after hanging on by its fingernails after the Negro National League disbanded in 1949.
You’ll see youngsters such as Elston Howard, Roy Campanella, Monte Irvin when they were just pups in that league and awaiting their chance at the Major Leagues. I also was drawn to the great players we’ll never see any films of, such as Verdell Mathis and Larry Brown. And I wish I could have seen Martin Park on Crump, which made Memphis one of the few teams in the league who had their own park.
One picture that particularly caught me eye was a 1948 shot of the Memphis Red Sox posing in front of their team bus – with their white driver and many of the players in that league weren’t black. Obviously, light skin or an Hispanic heritage kept you out of the Major Leagues also.
Wolff and Withers thankfully don’t dwell on the hardships these players endured at the time. We don’t have to be told that just like the Major Leagues reflected white society, so did the Negro Leagues reflect the Jim Crow Era. The book is not only a fine history but the pictures, the tone, are all about having a good time.
I found the book joyous at times. Particularly since it has a ‘happy’ ending, with the color line finally being broken. Imagine a world where we would have never known a Willie Mays (who penned the forward), Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Lou Brock or Frank Robinson. Major League baseball HAD to open its arms, and America its heart, to some of the most remarkable athletes ever.
