Breaking the Color Barrier...Again
Happy 50th Birthday to the Voting Rights Act!
President Lyndon Johnson and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shake hands after the signing of the Voting Rights Act in 1964.
Jackie Robinson
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August 12, 2015 - It’s easy to compare the Voting Rights Act (the 50th anniversary was on August 6, 2015) to Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier. After all, Robinson was the first African American to play in the major leagues (in his first game he went 0-3, but reached base on an error and scored the winning run) and the VRA was a major milestone in ensuring people of all races were able to vote. The only problem with the comparison is that the VRA wasn’t the first law to address race discrimination. Almost a century earlier, the 15th Amendment enshrined the right of all U.S. citizens to vote regardless of their “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” in the constitution. So, if that means the 15th Amendment is the Jackie Robinson of the U.S. Constitution, then what baseball player can we use to compare to the VRA? The answer: 26-year old Elijah “Pumpsie” Green of the Boston Red Sox. |
"Pumpsie" Green in 2012.
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If you’re not a fan of the Boston Red Sox, you’ve probably never heard of Pumpsie. He was a switch-hitting infielder called up from the minor leagues as a pinch runner during a 2-1 loss to the White Sox. He was also the first African American player to get on their major league roster. 12 years after Jackie broke the MLB color barrier for the Dodgers, Pumpsie did it for the last team in the league to officially sign a black player. It’s a dubious honor that meant Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey needed more than a decade to follow Branch Rickey’s example and agree that skin color does not affect base running skills.
Discrimination in the MLB didn’t end with Pumpsie’s call up (and it certainly didn’t transform Yawkey into an angel) but it did bring an end to a dark chapter in baseball. A time where some clubs existed in a world that predated Robinson’s trailblazing career. It’s not enough to have one team allow one African American player on the field. No team should remain in the segregated past. This was Pumpsie's contribution.
This is the triumph of the VRA, a law passed to redress the sly muddying of the 15th Amendment. When the Civil War came to an end, the powers-that-be used every loophole and dirty trick available to them to make sure that the 15th Amendment was too difficult to enforce.
One popular method to suppress turnout was the poll tax. A small tax was levied on anyone who wanted to vote. Proponents said that it was merely a way to raise state revenue, and that the tax was applied equally for everyone. How could such a tax be considered racially motivated? This argument was soon laid bare by the existence of “grandfather clauses.” Such policies allowed for the descendants of registered voters to avoid paying the tax. Sometimes, you would merely have to “explain the meaning of the constitution” to the satisfaction of a poll worker in order to vote.
When the U.S. Supreme Court shut down the grandfather clause in Oklahoma in 1915, the state went postal. They issued a new law saying that if you weren’t registered to vote in the 1914 election, you had 11 days to register or you would forever lose your right to vote. This new law lasted for over 20 years--until 1939!
Literacy tests were another common roadblock, and in South Carolina, the “eight box ballot” was a staple. Voters had to fill out separate ballots—one for governor, one for mayor, one for sheriff, etc. Each ballot had to be placed in its corresponding (labeled) ballot box, and the poll workers were in charge of mixing up the boxes to confuse voters. If a gubernatorial ballot wound up in a mayoral ballot box, it was thrown out. (Can you imagine if all government agencies worked like this? Your mailman would come to your door but would only deliver your mail if you can answer he these questions three.)
And if the “eight box ballot” doesn’t seem like a big deal, keep in mind that some of the craziest instances of literacy tests came before Election Day. Before you even got your chance to match wits with poll workers playing three-card monte with the ballot boxes, you still had to register to vote. In Louisiana, for example, you had to answer 30 written questions in 10 minutes, and these questions weren’t easy—just watch this video of Harvard students trying to answer them. Spoiler alert: they all fail. The questions are written in a confusing manner and are so subjective that the poll worker can choose to reject any answer they don’t like.
It was into this world that the VRA was called up from the minors. After 100 years of poll taxes and literacy tests, the Voting Rights Act specifically forbids these kinds of dirty tricks. The VRA also put many states (widely considered to be the worst offenders) on a watch list—the list includes California, Alaska, and New York, so this was clearly not only a problem in the Jim Crow south. These states had to clear any changes in their voting laws with the U.S. Justice Department.
While banning the “eight-box ballot” and Louisiana’s Harvard-stumping literacy test are no-brainers to modern voters, other key parts of the VRA are still hot button issues. States currently on the watch list consider it a matter of pride to get off, but civil rights advocates consider the VRA to be a crucial bulwark against racially-based voter disenfranchisement.
Whatever happens to the VRA in the future, both Jackie Robinson and Pumpsie Green had already retired by the time it passed in 1965. Baseball, and America, were left in the hands of the next generation.
Discrimination in the MLB didn’t end with Pumpsie’s call up (and it certainly didn’t transform Yawkey into an angel) but it did bring an end to a dark chapter in baseball. A time where some clubs existed in a world that predated Robinson’s trailblazing career. It’s not enough to have one team allow one African American player on the field. No team should remain in the segregated past. This was Pumpsie's contribution.
This is the triumph of the VRA, a law passed to redress the sly muddying of the 15th Amendment. When the Civil War came to an end, the powers-that-be used every loophole and dirty trick available to them to make sure that the 15th Amendment was too difficult to enforce.
One popular method to suppress turnout was the poll tax. A small tax was levied on anyone who wanted to vote. Proponents said that it was merely a way to raise state revenue, and that the tax was applied equally for everyone. How could such a tax be considered racially motivated? This argument was soon laid bare by the existence of “grandfather clauses.” Such policies allowed for the descendants of registered voters to avoid paying the tax. Sometimes, you would merely have to “explain the meaning of the constitution” to the satisfaction of a poll worker in order to vote.
When the U.S. Supreme Court shut down the grandfather clause in Oklahoma in 1915, the state went postal. They issued a new law saying that if you weren’t registered to vote in the 1914 election, you had 11 days to register or you would forever lose your right to vote. This new law lasted for over 20 years--until 1939!
Literacy tests were another common roadblock, and in South Carolina, the “eight box ballot” was a staple. Voters had to fill out separate ballots—one for governor, one for mayor, one for sheriff, etc. Each ballot had to be placed in its corresponding (labeled) ballot box, and the poll workers were in charge of mixing up the boxes to confuse voters. If a gubernatorial ballot wound up in a mayoral ballot box, it was thrown out. (Can you imagine if all government agencies worked like this? Your mailman would come to your door but would only deliver your mail if you can answer he these questions three.)
And if the “eight box ballot” doesn’t seem like a big deal, keep in mind that some of the craziest instances of literacy tests came before Election Day. Before you even got your chance to match wits with poll workers playing three-card monte with the ballot boxes, you still had to register to vote. In Louisiana, for example, you had to answer 30 written questions in 10 minutes, and these questions weren’t easy—just watch this video of Harvard students trying to answer them. Spoiler alert: they all fail. The questions are written in a confusing manner and are so subjective that the poll worker can choose to reject any answer they don’t like.
It was into this world that the VRA was called up from the minors. After 100 years of poll taxes and literacy tests, the Voting Rights Act specifically forbids these kinds of dirty tricks. The VRA also put many states (widely considered to be the worst offenders) on a watch list—the list includes California, Alaska, and New York, so this was clearly not only a problem in the Jim Crow south. These states had to clear any changes in their voting laws with the U.S. Justice Department.
While banning the “eight-box ballot” and Louisiana’s Harvard-stumping literacy test are no-brainers to modern voters, other key parts of the VRA are still hot button issues. States currently on the watch list consider it a matter of pride to get off, but civil rights advocates consider the VRA to be a crucial bulwark against racially-based voter disenfranchisement.
Whatever happens to the VRA in the future, both Jackie Robinson and Pumpsie Green had already retired by the time it passed in 1965. Baseball, and America, were left in the hands of the next generation.