Wendell Smith helped Baseball open doors
By Joshua Hargrove. N.C. A&T
Wendell Smith championed Jackie Robinson’s Major League Baseball breakthrough and earned induction into the writers’ wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Smith grew up in Detroit, born to a father who was a personal chef for American industrialist Henry Ford. In 1933, Smith was approached by a professional scout after pitching a shutout in a state championship game for an integrated American Legion team. However, because of the ban against Black players, Smith was rejected.
Upon graduation from West Virginia State College in 1937, Smith was hired by the Pittsburgh Courier, a Black weekly. He interviewed 50 white National League players and managers, asking if they could play with and against Black baseball players: 75 % told Smith they were indifferent to having a Black player on their team. Result: MLB club owners hosted tryouts for Black baseball players in 1945. That fall, Robinson of the Negro League Kansas City Monarchs was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers. Smith served as Robinson’s roommate and traveling companion while reporting on baseball’s breakthrough.
In 1948, Smith joined the Chicago Herald-American, a daily newspaper. Years later, he moved to WGN-TV Chicago.
Joshua Hargrove is a junior multimedia journalism student from Fayetteville, N.C.