Color Blind

January 7, 2013
A decade before Jackie Robinson broke the Major League Baseball color line in 1947, an integrated team captured the imagination of Bismarck, N.Dak. by winning the national, semiprofessional baseball title. Bismarck was a town where “Norman Rockwell would have found plenty of... inspiration,” even though “Dakotans groped their way along the racial divide.” Bismarck’s integrated team was the brainchild of Neil Churchill, a failed dry goods clerk–cum–car salesman and inveterate gambler who subsidized the team’s existence with his winnings. Churchill looked to the Negro Leagues, “cherry-picking players” who were prohibited from playing in the Major Leagues to reinforce his roster, with his prize being the great Satchel Paige. Freelance journalist Dunkel (the Washington Post) delves into the history of players, towns, and baseball itself in constructing this portrait of a harmonious team rising above a segregated society. The tangential history lessons render the triumph of racial harmony a subtext within the larger context of sports, but it’s a story that transcends championships, and an inspirational reflection on an otherwise dismal human rights history.

April 15, 2013

Freelance journalist Dunkel provides a captivating recollection of the Bismarck, ND, Churchills, an integrated baseball team that won the 1935 semi-pro national championship held in Wichita, KS. While organized baseball remained segregated, Bismarck owner Neil Churchill refused to give in to prevailing racial sensibilities, whether they involved his ballplayers dining together or performing on the diamond. He put together a potent, integrated ball club, attracting some of the Negro League's finest, including legendary pitchers Satchel Paige and Hilton Smith and catcher Quincy Trouppe. Paige's brilliance, exemplified by his rising fastball and pinpoint control, drew thousands to the games he pitched and enabled Bismarck to carve out a spot in baseball history. The team proved unable to repeat the next year, falling in the semifinal round, because in his typically peripatetic fashion, Paige failed to return to the team. VERDICT This work delivers an important rendering of a too-little-remembered challenge to American society's segregated practices. Strongly recommended.--Robert C. Cottrell, California State Univ., Chico

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