By Wayne Epps Jr.
USA TODAY Sports intern
Jackie Robinson is one of the greatest sports stories, and the man at the forefront in telling that story was sportswriter Wendell Smith. He played an integral part in the early part of Robinson’s career, and the two were intertwined for the rest of their lives.
For Smith’s trailblazing work, he was awarded the Red Smith Award on Friday, accepted by writer and historian Larry Lester.
During his time covering the Negro Leagues, Smith pushed for the inclusion of blacks in Major League Baseball. It was Smith who first brought Robinson to the attention of Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey and then chronicled Robinson's ascent from the minors to the majors for the Pittsburgh Courier.
According to Lester, Smith criticized blacks for supporting MLB more than the Negro Leagues and served as a central figure in the fight for integration. In 1948, Smith was the ghostwriter for Robinson’s autobiography “My Own Story.” That same year, Smith joined the Chicago Sun-American before becoming an anchor on WGN while writing columns for the Chicago Sun-Times, which he did until his death at 58 in 1972.
Smith passed away about a month after Robinson; his final column was Robinson's obituary, written from Smith's hospital bed.
Three takeaways:
1. In 1939, Smith met with then National League president Ford Frick. Frick’s disparaging comments about blacks in baseball motivated Smith’s integration campaign. After the meeting, Smith met with eight major league managers and 40 players to get their thoughts on integration. In a column that ran from July through September 1939, Smith presented the consensus that white players supported the integration of baseball.
2. During World War II, Smith argued that black soldiers could fight in the war but still weren’t granted the full rights of all citizens at home. Because of that campaign, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover threated to indict black publishers for treason. But Smith and others fought back, killing Hoover’s plan.
3. Lester: “Wendell Smith was to sports what Malcolm and King were to the civil-rights movement.”
