Thesis

Thesis

(Wheat's Landscape, Athletic Field Maintenance)

Wendell Smith was an African American journalist who worked as a sportswriter for multiple newspapers both black and white. He had connections to powerful people in the world of baseball, and used these relationships to benefit any and all African American players he could. Wendell’s work helped to shatter the barrier that prevented black players from ever making it to the big leagues, and this in turn helped to further desegregate America during the 1950s-1970s by showing white Americans that their black peers could do more than they were given credit for.

Wendell Smith

Source: The Tifton Gazette, 1975.

"More importantly to me, it was Smith, who in 1964 became a local sports anchor with WGN-TV in Chicago – the first person of color in a position of authority ever seen on television by yours truly, who at the time was an impressionable sports-minded teenager on the south side of the city. Given my limited skill set, I knew back then that while I couldn’t be a Jackie Robinson, I could become a Wendell Smith. Of such small occasions are big dream born, and memories made, some of which still linger."

-Bryant Gumbel, HBO's Real Sports