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- Title
Constructing Legends: Pumpsie Green, Race, and the Boston Red Sox.
- Authors
WEIR, ROBERT E.
- Abstract
In 2009, the Boston Red Sox held a Jackie Robinson Day celebration to honor African American and Latino players. Three years later, the Red Sox held a 100th birthday party for its iconic stadium, Fenway Park. Elijah "Pumpsie" Green played key roles in each event. In 1959, Green became the first African American to wear a Red Sox uniform. In so doing, he also took down Major League Baseball's final segregation barrier and became an important symbol of racial reconciliation for the city of baseball. Or so the story goes. Dr. Robert Weir argues that there is less to be celebrated than meets the eye and that Boston's ex postfacto embrace of Green involves a high degree of historical whitewashing. This article traces racial relations within Boston before, during, and after Green's time with the Red Sox and argues that Boston did not deserve its nineteenth-century reputation for being a beacon of racial tolerance and, more importantly, it was rightly known for being a hotbed of intolerance in the twentieth century. Pumpsie Green's time with the Red Sox parallels important ongoing shifts in city demography and geography. It took nearly a half century to transform Green from a token to a folk hero, but self-congratulatory ceremonies do little to disguise the fact that ethnic and racial tension remain part of the Commonwealth's landscape. This article explores Boston's urban transformations as well as Pumpsie Greens personal memory shifts. Dr. Weir has written extensively on labor and social history, including an article titled "'Take Me to the Brawl Game': Sports and Workers in Gilded Age Massachusetts" published in HJM's Spring 2009 issue.
- Subjects
BOSTON (Mass.); GREEN, Pumpsie, 1933-2019; PESKY, Johnny, 1919-2012; BOSTON Red Sox (Baseball team); RACE discrimination in sports; AFRICAN American baseball players; FENWAY Park (Boston, Mass.); 20TH century history of race relations in the United States; TWENTIETH century; AFRICAN American history; HISTORY; SOCIAL history
- Publication
Historical Journal of Massachusetts, 2014, Vol 42, Issue 2, p48
- ISSN
0276-8313
- Publication type
Article