cc
I think we'll get started. >> Florencia Mallon: Well,
I'm Florencia Mallon, chair of the History Department.
I wanted to welcome you to the first Selig
Distinguished Lecture in the
I'd also like to point out History of Sport and Society.
for the reception immediately following in the Alumni Lounge.
As you will see in the brochure accompanying the lecture, this
is part of a broader initiative being carried out by the History
Department, with the generous support of the Commissioner of
Baseball, Bud Selig, who is here
It's great to see you, with us today, in the front row.
Thanks so much for coming. Commissioner.
The commissioner's generous support is going to help us to
develop the emerging and very exciting scholarly field of the
history of sport in the United
In addition to establishing the Allan H. Selig chair in the
History Department here at UW,
filling soon, Commissioner Selig which we're looking forward to
these Distinguished Lectures, hto help us educate ourselvesd
about this important and
So thank you so much emerging field.
generosity to the UW, and Coespecially to the Historying
Department. Thank you so much.
( applause )
I would also like to thank
on the UW campus: our Afro-American Studies,nts
Chican@ and Latin@ Studies, and Latin American, Caribbean
and Iberian Studies,
publicity and with organizing all of whithe events.ped us with
So thank you so much to all our colleagues.
Finally, I would like to call up
in the History Department, to the podium, my colleague
specialist in the 20th century Professor William Jones,
who will introduce our speaker, hProfessor Adrian Burgos, Jr.
( applause )
it's great to see a big crowd. >> William Jones: Thanks,
I can't imagine a better person to be giving this lecture, this
inaugural lecture than Adrian Burgos.
He's an associate professor of
studies, Latin-American and Caribbean studies and Latina and
Latino studies at the University
Burgos is the author and editor of of three books, includingign.
Playing America's Game, Baseball, Latinos and the Color
Line, Shades of Glory: The
of African American Baseball, and Beyond el Negro LeagBarrio: the Story
The Politics of Everyday Life in Latino/Latina America.
Playing America's Game was based on his dissertation
at the University of Michigan,
prestigious awards, including the Latina/Latino Book Award
from the Latin-American Studies Association, and Honorable
Mention for the best baseball book of 2007, and a Featured
Book on C-SPAN2, an award that
of ever getting. most of us will have no chance
research awards from the He's received prestigious
National Baseball Hall of Fame, and a number of other places.
Adrian has also published widely
including the Journal of in scholarly and popular press,
Social Text, CounterPunch, American Ethnic History,
It's an impressive list that and many others.
He was the consultant and talking head on several films
on the history of baseball, and seems to be a regular feature
on radio, often sports radio, but also more general radio.
Today's talk is based on
which is due out in May. Adrian's next book,
Cuban Star: How One Negro League Owner Transformed
Modern Baseball.
Adria( applause ) for coming.
Adrian Burgos: Thank you all
weather that's only baseball-- for coming in the midst of
baseball season in Florida and Well, a time of year it's only
Again, it's good to see some Arizona, perhaps.
It's good to see a number of familiar faces, once again.
while I'm here. I'd like to thank the History
Department for the invitation to
Commissioner Selig, for your share my work.
lecture series which represents an important advance in the
critical study of sport and society within the academy.
My aim here today is to illustrate the powerful
resonance that the history of sport and society has in our
contemporary society, as well as
of race relations, immigration, and ideas about American culture
are influenced by narratives
place on and about the playing that are woven from what takes
For me, the study of sport is always framed by critical
examination of the intersection of sport and society.
The matter sport at times is
society, I see it often as a more than a reflection of
society. social laboratory for our
who write sports histories do. This is what the best of those
invaluable work that the now Here I must acknowledge the
in his book, Baseball's de Great Experiment, el did
which set a standard for
race relations and the story of studying bintegration.nderstand
There are many others, Steven Reese, Amy Bass, Susan Cahn, who
are not merely interested in the
play, but in the social forces performance on the terrain of
that shape the performance and institutions and human actors
So what I want to do today is itstake you through a story.ety.
One which is of Alex Pompez, but
in reverse chronological order. I'm going to bring the familiar
of today and then move backward through time to reveal his
story.
incident that occurred last Tyear, a minor controversy, butn
one that has powerful meaning for many of us who follow the
game. In 2010, a controversy emerged
over the comments of Torii
Anaheim Angels. Part of a roundtable organized
by USA Today to discuss the current state and the future
baseball, his comments sought to of
participation of US-born blacks in baseball, and particularly
since its zenith in the 1970s.
angered some within the Latino The comments you see there
And it's noteworthy that now community.
over 25% of all Major Leaguers. When you add those Latinos tot
US-born Latinos, such as Alex Rodriguez, Eric Chavez, and
others, the number nears
players. one-third of all Major League
dark faces out there, and the Hunperception is that they'reee
African-American. They're not us.
They're impostors.
come up and say, 'Hey, what color is Vladimir Guerrero?
Is he a black player?'" And Hunter's response,
"Come on, he's Dominican. He's not black."
The story of what Hunter was
about race, identity. But the way I see it, fails to
capture a longer history of America's game.
One that was about the
the United States, but across participthe Americas.st within
I want to share with you a
the color line in baseball, and the place of Latinos within that
story.
So, 1947, April 15, to be exact,
history of the game. is an important moment in the
the color line, the first African American to play in the
Major Leagues since the 1880s.
the initial integration pioneer. Robinson did important work as
the participation of blacks in Over the next couple of decades,
You see the zenith occurred in 1975, where according
to Richard Lapchick's center, approximately 28% of the players
in Major League baseball
Note I said "black," were black.
Because here is one of those not African American.
the game, September 1, 1971. big moments in the history of
when they fielded It'san all-black lineup.tes
But if you note, half the players in the starting lineup
of the Pittsburgh Pirates were
Rennie Stennett from Panama, Latin American and/or Latino:
from Puerto Rico, Manny Sanguillen from Panama,
Jackie Hernandez from Cuba. Those gentleman were included in
that 28% that was cited in 1975.
occurred in how we as a society look at race is that there's a
bit of a disaggregation between how we count Afro-Latinos and
how we count African Americans. So where Torii Hunter was
seeking to shed light about race
couple of things that I think and the story of Alex Pompezed a
highlights.
The story and the history of
an ongoing one, in terms of capturing its essence, capturing
its importance. An individual that should
receive great credit for
the shadows is Ted Williams. illuminating, casting light onto
induction speech in 1966-- He took the moment of his
the journalists who were there And having interviewed some of
with amazement on how that he stunned them.speak
Among the words that Williams shared on the day of his
greatest glory in baseball was, "I hope some day Satchel Paige
and Josh Gibson will be voted into the Hall of Fame
as symbols of the great Negro players who are not here
only because they weren't given the chance."
So Williams took his grand
story of the Negro Leagues. His efforts began the first wave
of research into the story of black baseball.
Efforts to acknowledge organized
history of segregation was baseball's Jim Crow past and its
by the Hall of Fame, launched through one effort
examined who within the Negro Leagues merited inclusion
in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Additionally, the recovery of
the story of the Negro Leagues
the work of Robert Peterson was and his invaluable book, to
Only the Ball Was White.
formation of American baseball's In addition to that, the
committee did invaluable work, researchers Negro League
John Holloway, and John Coates, illuminated the stories of black
baseball. But there was another story
within that that had not yet
It's the story of Latinos and bethe color line.ed.
Oftentimes in these stories that
Negro Leagues, Latinos were cappresented, at minimum,he
not directly affected by the color line.
In my research for Playing
that was very much not the case. America's Game, I found that
performed in the US black Abaseball circuit between
1890 and 1946.
period, 54 Latinos appeared Mein the Major Leagues.ame
During that span of time, by a
playing in the Negro Leagues, raversus playing in the majorre
leagues.
bringing those Latinos into the Negro Leagues, and eventually
into the Major Leagues, was Alex-- Alejandro Pompez.
And mind you, this photograph here below is of the press
conference where the hall of
Bowie Kuhn, who's center seated, fame, along with Commissioner
of the blue ribbon panel. wTo Bowie Kuhn's right is the
person who I affectionately refer to sometimes as the
Forrest Gump of baseball
up everywhere. history, because he kept popping
Pompez embodied both the dreams deferred and the promise of
America's game with a twist.
American, who rose to reign as Someone who was an Afro-Cuban
remade himself strictly as a Harlem's numbers king, and then
evaluator or the highest order. I first became acutely aware oft
Pompez's contribution to
researching my first book on how baseball history while
baseball's color line. Latinos were affected by
have been typically described as Interestingly, his contributions
as if his story didn't bridge the era of Jim Crow segregation
and the onset of baseball integration.
In fact, his name kept popping
literatures, what we like to up in three distinct historical
The historiography of the Negro Leagues, the historiography of
Latinos in baseball, and the
renaissance. historiography of Harlem and its
is my effort to weave those Mydisparate historical threadsr,
together by taking an inside
and communities within which look at the sporting world,
eliminate the forces and actors Alewho shaped who he was, to
and how he became baseball's numbers king.
His story not only complicates
about race in America and the howworking of color line--tten
what African American intellectual W.E.B. du Bois
astutely predicted would be the problem of the 20th century,
but also what we think we know
of baseball's color line. Simply put, many did not know
quite what to do with the fact
a "mulatto," who was also that Pompezbilingual.ck Latino,
Attempts to place his story within traditional notions of
race and identity led to a
Was it a story of a Cuban, conundrum.
or some combination therein?
Before you, you see some of the faces of players that Alejandro
Pompez either signed or influenced their career as they
entered into professional baseball in the United States.
Among them, Martin Diego, Orestes "Minnie" Minosa,
Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal,
Historians have not fully explored the people, events, and
circumstances that shaped Pompez
So I endeavored to unravel some of that mystery today,
surrounding his time in Harlem's
sports entrepreneur, and numbers racket, his work as a
of organized baseball. involvement in the desegregation
who lived in between what others His story is of an individual
maintain, as well-defined viewed, and spaces.es sought to
Black and white, legal, illegal,
foreigner-- goHe was all of these,n,
often at the same time.
Pompez bridges baseball's two most important eras, I argue.
The era of the color line, and
was dismantled. And Negro League owner, briefly
a Negro League president, and a Major League scout who became
the first Latino director of
Major League organization. international scouting for any
arc of race, opportunity, and Pompez'sAmerica's game.ates the
As someone who was black and
nearly all of its complexities Latino, he encountered race in
Americas. whThat racial belief followedhe
wherever he traveled and
station in life is captured in persisted, regardless of his
owner, Emilio de Armas's former Cuban baseball team
journalist Bob Heuer. This is what de Armas responded
when Bob Heuer asked, "Well, do you have any reflections
on Alex Pompez?"
then I'll translate. I'll read it in Spanish,
"He was a mulatto, ( speaking Spanish )
a good person." he Such comments were oftenill
standard fare, not extraordinary
hatred. The words remind us that leaving
the United States for the Spanish-speaking Caribbean did
not mean Pompez entered into a
color blind, and everybody was race-free zone, lands were all
That place did not exist then, race-neutral.
This reality did not sour nor Pompez. now.
Most who knew him-- and here I refer to mostly the
ball players who I interviewed--
endearing personality, recall his warm smile,
qualities that convinced most prospects, and especially their
parents, to place their trust in
The story of Alex Pompez him when he was scouting them.
Jim Crow and baseball iintegration are incompletef
without a discussion of Latin America and of Latinos'
long participation in U.S.
Part of the argument I advance professional baseball.
framing of baseball history illuminates the broader terrain
of struggle against Jim Crow. And through that, we can gain a
better understanding of the participation and contribution
of Latinos, and particularly of Afro-Latinos.
Understanding the actors who
transnational circuit, outside created and participated in the
Jim Crow era, engages the connections between the Englishe
and Spanish-speaking baseball worlds.
In so doing, we can trace the movement of talent, baseball
players, capital, the money to
spend, and the information, newspapers, a vital source, that
unveiled a whole set of collaborators, and reveals that
the fight against segregation in
more than just a national story. U.S. professional baseball was
for talented players in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican
Republic, Mexico, and elsewhere in Latin America.
Alex Pompez's career in professional baseball spanned
seven decades, from his early Negro League days in the 1910s
through his Major League
Giants organization. scouting up to 1972 for the
Negro League team to tour Puerto His Cuban Stars were the first
which he did in 1960. He was also the first in either,
the Negro Leagues or the majors to diversify his team roster
by dipping into Panama in 1921, the Dominican Republic, in 1926,
and Puerto Rico, in 1928. Such diversity was also
characteristic of his numbers operation.
So now I'm going to take you
the more contemporary moment, or a more contemporary moment,
back to his beginnings. Integration was an uncharted
realm of experience for most
As it unfolded in minor league within organized baseball.
across the United States, ttalented African American ands
Latino players learned that lifelong lesson.
More than talent was required for them to secure a genuine
chance at a lasting professional
They had to persevere, despite career.
involved in pioneering the cultural adjustments
That was regardless of whether integration.
or a U.S.-born black prospect. they were a foreign-born Latino
well, at this point, they were Importantly, the San Francisco--
placed Alex Pompez in charge the New York Giants--
talent. of tAnd this was in 1955.atino
So each spring training, the
Florida, and Alex Pompez was the team would gather in Melbourne,
rooms, to determine where they one who was to assign their
about life in the U.S. south. woWhat Pompez understood, andons
Carl Hubbell Jack Schwartz, and Horace Stoneham came to
understand, that when it came to
to many African American Latino players, and when it came
from segregation into playerintegration, from austment
Spanish-speaking society into an
sometimes just as important to English-speaking society, was
player as learning how to hit a curve ball, or learning how to
move your pitches at just the right speed, at just the right
point.
owner served as a cultural The former Negro League team
Latino players. tAfter all, he himself was U.S.
Latino, born in Key West, raised
to Harlem in 1910 in Tampas a 20-year-old.ho came
He could interpret social norms in the U.S. for them,
and translate them, so that they could have a better
understanding of the field
they had to traverse. So Pompez introduced the young
prospects to the rules of social
Knowledge of such rules was immediately pertinent.
This was the first time, when they went to spring training
camp in Florida, for most of the
to Jim Crow segregation. Latinos to be exposed
culture shock that these players So his goal was to alleviate the
So as I mentioned, he supervised inevitably experienced.
roommate assignments, and he their living quarters, he made
remembered, almost every night, after practice were done, these
cultural lessons. And after several years, these
practices became
After the Giants moved their institutionalized.
league camp from Florida to spSurprise, Arizona, the newr
complex that the Giants had came with a classroom where
Pompez and his scout, Horacio Martinez, would often
lecture to the young
about how to speak English, how to engage with the press,
and how to behave in public.
on every hand. The Giants made accommodations
stride with discriminatory Some of the accommodations broke
at times, seemed to conform to the rules and dictates of
segregation.
dormitory that housed the prospects featured a verye
interesting form of integrated
Players slept in the same dormitory building, but there
are no mixed race room
White prospects enjoyed the rooms on the first floor, as
Julio Novastro, Orlando Cepeda, Felipe Alou reminded me
as I interviewed them.
were assigned a cluster of rooms The black and Latino recruits
But what was interesting about on the second floor.
the dictates of Jim Crow, is this, and what had gone against
building. In times past-- and this is what
Roberto Clemente and many other players encountered,
particularly the black American players--
they would have to reside in the
their fellow ball players. black community, and not with
was truly breaking stride with So what the Giants were doing
rules. what was dictated by many of the
because they had bought out, The Giants were able to do that
former military base, and as just like the Dodgers did, a
have integrated facilities in prithe segregated south.ould
If it had been public land, things would have been quite
different.
So initially, Pompez used to do these roommates assignments, and
he would house the Dominicans with Dominicans, Cubans with
Cubans, and Puerto Ricans would follow Puerto Ricans until they
became a bit more comfortable with one another, and then they
started to mix it up. The Giants were the most active
team in the era of integration
of Alex Pompez. in LIn 1957, the Giants had work
34 Latino and Latin American
at spring training. playerThis number includedem and
Panamanian Vibert Clarke, Virgin Islander Valmy Thomas,
African American Willie McCovey,
and Bahamian Andre Rogers. Leon Wagner,
the terrain that Alex Pompez That gives you an indication of
organization. Signed in November 1955,
Dominican Felipe Alou counted himself among those who
benefited from Pompez's spring
minor league camp. training rap sessions at the
group of Latinos would load up A nightly ritual emerged where a
would drive them to a local ice cream parlor, and then he
would drive them back once they finished.
And I asked Alou, you know, why was this?
And he said, racism was very
Melbourne, and he wouldn't let strong at that time in
Basically, the only way he would us walk.
training facility is by lshepherding them there.g
Part of that was because an incident occurred at the 1956
spring training camp where one
and again, I spoke with this of the players--
a friend of mine who with Julio Navarro--
before, a friend of mine had had done, actually I misspoke
And in both instances, in these interviews, they both remembered
this particular incident where a
high school girls who were player whistled at a group of
training facility. walking in front of the spring
year after Emmett Till. AnAnd Pompez and the other a
administrators, the scouts and
this had occurred. personnel, were enraged that
the Latino players and took them And so Pompez gathered up all
them. And he was like, I don't want to
know who did it.
of you did it. I don't want to even know if one
you are even going to look at But frthese young girls.ne of
This is the south.
the rules that are at play here. You need to understand what are
up in the interview I did with And Julio Navarro followed that
reflecting back on it, Pompez-- hhe doesn't know how he sleptn
that night. Because you know with so many
players, or young prospects-- these guys were teenagers,
17, 18, 19 years old. Their first time in the States.
Hormones raging.
they were doing, and to be And he had to look out for what
to go get one of the players, to make sure they stayed out of,
trouble.
it as the rules of the game, and So Alou said, he used to explain
It was very important to have a male like him who knew the
society so well, to explain to
You know, to protect us from us, the limitations we had.
sort. Those are Felipe Alou's words.
A sense of obligation motivated Pompez to share the lessons that
he himself had come to learn and
system, of understanding the accept of working within the
having to make the adjustment in ways that race mattered, and of
succeed. order to first survive, and then
had witnessed many talented Latino players who did not make
it in professional baseball due to their inability to handle the
cultural adjustment.
Pompez told journalist Robert Boyle in 1965, "When they first
come here, they don't like it.
go home. Some boys cry, and they want to
big money, they accept things as But after they stay and make the
My main thing is to help them. they are.
Which is an interesting dynamic for Pompez to say, as I'll get
to in a few slides. He had his own confrontation
with the law, which he also really had to learn to--
you know. That he couldn't change the
laws, that he would have to change himself.
Evidence of the wily baseball man's successful work was all
around the big leagues by the early 1960s.
Cepeda, Marichal, Alou, McCovey,
come through the Giants minor league camp to become stars.
That success inspired Robert
Latin Negroes, as he called them, in the big leagues, in a
lengthy 1960s Sports Illustrated
Through this study, Boyle came article.
as Felipe Alou would declare to understand why Latinos such
Or similarly, what Manny Mota had to say, which was, "Alex was
like a father to all of us. He took us under his wing, he
prepared us in what to expect in
different culture." San Francisco-based sportswriter
Bob Stevens concurred with the
than just a scout. assessment that Pompez was more
judge, advocate, and adviser to Aall Negroes and Latinos on thes
Giants. Stevens added, "He helped with
contracts, told them about where
neckties, and shoeshines. He instructed them in the use of
language in their place in
He explained to them wages and baseball.
So Stevens, who observed the rights."
'60s, had an inside look at what Giants throughout the '50s and
But the work that Pompez did for was the work of Alex Pompez.
Giants was not the first time he the New York San Francisco
work their way through, around collaborated and helped others
Here's a picture from 1954. And there's two individuals who
are particularly noteworthy in
Alex Pompez and Joe Cambria. this photograph, which are
Washington Senators from 1934 Joe Cthrough his death. the
Which was, I believe, don't quote me, I think was 1965.
I don't know if you can fully see the screen there.
But you might notice where
What the color of the faces all around them are.
They're at the front edge of
the, "colored section," at a what was, in Richmond, Virginia,
and, I think it was, game between the Syracuse Chiefs
Pompez and Joe Cambria had the Richmond Braves.
around the color line in the forged a collaboration to work
association, yet even 1friendship, beyond the era oft
baseball segregation. An article in August of 1932 in
the Washington Post illuminated a unique arrangement that Pompez
and Cambria had formed. The two agreed to allow
Ysmael "Mulo" Morales to
Cuban Stars for the 1932 season cso that Morales could travels
around a bit, and pick up a little better English.
So this arrangement allowed for a different kind of seasoning
than most players get in the
It was so that Morales could get minor leagues.
following year, sign with the more cWashington Senators.nd the
So here's a case where you have a Cuban player who starts in the
Negro Leagues, and whose access would be brokered into organized
baseball. This was more than a one-time
transaction between Pompez
After 1934, Cuban Tommy de la Cruz, who had
pitched with Pompez's Cuban Stars team, was
transferred over to Joe Cambria's Albany
minor league team.
minor leagues, in 1942, ATommy de la Cruz would playe
Major League baseball with
So Pompez and Cambria learned about how to work around
baseball color lines in the pre-Robinson days.
The story that captures the complexity of that terrain, and
how to work around the color
of Carlos Blanco. liSince its inception as thery
Cuban Stars, Pompez's team
lightest to the darkest in skin had welcomedtone.nos from the
In fact, the Negro Leagues never
Any Latino could play in the discriminated amongst Latinos.
Occasionally, the Caribbean players that Pompez signed drew
interest from Major League
Team executives like Clark organizations.
defend the signing before fellow Griffith had a simple mantra to
and the public. biAnd what Griffith and otherss,
would emphasize is, he's not
He's Cuban. So they would play on national
identity as to mitigate what
So at various moments when what peI label a racially ambiguousm.
Latino was presented to the public, Cambria and Griffith
would inform the press, No, no, no.
Roberto Estalella?
He's Cuban. Or another player was
Puerto Rican, or Venezuelan.
shepherding these players. And that's how they were
ambiguity, but it nonetheless provided the main means throughl
which Latin American players of different gradations of skin
color were ushered into organized baseball at a time
when all African Americans were excluded, and the majority of
Latinos who were deemed to have,
were likewise excluded. So towards the end of the 1942
season, the Washington Senators had begun to express interest in
an infielder on Pompez's team.
As the Senators and Pompez His name was Carlos Blanco.
transaction, Pompez pushing for more money, the Senators said,
well, you know, we have to look at him first.
They went to a game that was
to scout out Blanco. played in Connecticut
the Chicago Defender. "Pompez was more concerned inn
getting Blanco into big time
Griffith, he could have Blanco. However, the Washington Senators
interest in Blanco dissipated after the Senator scout observed
the Cubans' playing exhibition
The issue that arose was not in Waterbury, Connecticut.
It was about how he looked. The Washington club's
representative was disappointed in two things about Blanco,"
Young noted.
the wavy Spanish type, "One was his hair, which was not
Second was that Blanco was too but was more Negroid.
He had hoped to find Blanco of a decided Spanish type,"
close quote of Young. The Blanco episode reiterated
the fickle nature of racial perceptions.
Blanco continued with the Cubans
of his former teammates, would in the Negro Leagues, while some
baseball. And all this was taking place
before the era of the color line
So how did Alex Pompez get the being dismantled.
League baseball team? And what does that tell us about
the story of race and opportunity in baseball?
Well, Alex Pompez financed his
1916 to 1937 in particular black baseball operations from
the numbers racket. throHe was a numbers king.ough
And how the numbers operated
on the number anywhere between were by individuals placing bets
Bets ranged between a penny tand five dollars..
Most numbers bankers would not
Most won't even take a dollar bet, because it paid off at a
rate of 600 to one. So even a nickel bet
would yield $30.
And this is in 1920s, 1930s money, so it's a lot more today.
Nevertheless, the numbers were
In 1932, Pompez's bank grossed lucrative.
and $7 million. be1932 dollars.ion
Not today.
So the numbers were one of 1932 dollars.
Dutch Schultz found that out as well when the Volstead Act was
about to be repealed, prohibition was about to come to
an end. Schultz had to find somewhere
else to make his money. He set his sights on Harlem's
numbers.
way into Harlem. And Schultz began to muscle his
many of the lower level numbers bankers into his fold, creating
his syndicate.
particularly Madame St. Clair, But Pompez and a few others,
entreaties of Dutch Schultz. were able to withhold the
Wednesday, November 21 That all ended on Black
That was when the lucky number through 23, 1931.
I was explaining earlier today. 5-2-7, one of the stories I
encountered in doing some of the
literature, was lucky because five letters, the name of Jesus,
after the second day he arose,
And so Thanksgiving being a moment in which we would be
thankful, many people placed
And it hit. thePompez lost--2-7.
well, he had a shortage.
Again, 1931 money. He couldn't cover $68,000.
$115 had been bet on the Which means that at least
who bet at his bank. number 5-2-7 among the people
Black Wednesday, being Which also, the catastrophe of
all the banks are closed on WeThursday, if they open onng,
Friday, they open briefly,
Where are you going to get the they were closed on Saturday.
to pay back the $68,000? liquid cash, the capital,
for you. And all these people are waiting
$0.25, you have over 500 people If who are waiting for theirged
winnings. And it was a moment like this
which separated the trustworthy numbers kings from the
untrustworthy.
that he was going to pay his And so Pompez set it to mind
He been involved in the numbers since 1910..
He had worked all the way up to being a numbers king.
He did not want to lose his reputation.
But it was moments such as these
Schultz went all around Harlem that Dutch Schultz craved.
to partner up. to the numbers kings, offering
I'm coming, but not doing so. So he was brought to multiple
sit downs with Schultz's men. And finally, in 1932, shortly
after New Year's, he had a
And here is when Schultz sit down with Schultz himself.
weapon from his belt, places it on the table between, and usings
a series of expletives says,
You are going to be the first n-word I make an example of in
all of Harlem.
thereafter. The agreement to partner up was
that Pompez would be put on a $250 salary, which he ended up
being paid really about $75 a week, and that Pompez would
receive 40% of the bank's profits.
Somehow the accountant for the
Schultz's accountant took the bank never shbooks. profit once
Where did the money go? Well, what Thomas Dewey heard,
and others eventually learned,
to Democratic clubs operated by waTammany Hall political fixered
Jimmy Hines.
arrange to have legal cases against those in Schultz's
syndicate dismissed in exchange for the regular contribution to
the Democratic party campaigns. In particular, in 1933, when
there was a district attorney race, what eventually came out
in testimony was, Schultz's men drew $10,000 from the bank
reserves to direct that toward
candidate for mayor, and another a campaign of a Democratic
district attorney. Democratic candidate for
are always kept, you know, The bank reserves, where monies
there was a big hit that the behind for those cases where
later learned that over the-- banhe was supposed to havelso
$120,000 in reserves. All that money had been used by
Schultz in his case when he was fighting tax evasion charges.
So Pompez worked for Schultz
he's able to get himself out of between 1the syndicate.34, when
Part of the way that Pompez was able to do this was by basically
asking for his money back.
with Thomas Dewey, who actually was not yet the DA, but had been
recently appointed special
He was more concerned about being thrown in prison than he
was about Pompez. And he informs a number of his
underlings, just let Pompez go. We'll get him back later.
Well, later never arrived for Schultz, as was murdered in
October 1935.
1935 was a very interesting year
figures who had so shaped the world of black baseball and the
world of Harlem would be
Shortly after New Year's, Nat Strong, who had been the biggest
booking agent in all of black baseball on the eastern
corridor, particularly
affecting bookings in New Jersey in New York City, but also
died of a heart attack. And then that October, Dutch
Schultz would also be dead. So Pompez actually enjoys a
revival.
bank flourished once again. His New York Cubans were back on
the field, enjoying greater success than his Cuban Stars
had ever enjoyed. And all this money, this
revival, caught the attention of
And so Dewey was able to get a Tom Dewey.
Pompez, and in January 1937, couple of indictments against
apartment, which was right atop Sugar Hill, and Pompez flees to
Mexico. Pompez is ultimately arrested in
March, and he's able to fight extradition for six months.
He had a very crafty set of lawyers, who understood how the
Mexican federal court system
basically, they kept staying the worked at that time, and
to each state court. execution for 72 hours by going
a stay of the extradition into a So as soon as one stated denied
had a lawyer in the next state permanent injunction, he already
out of the clutches of Dewey and to file, and so was able to keep
Ultimately, he agreed to testify his men for six months.
as stateof Jimmy Hines.the trial
Pompez pleads down to a misdemeanor, a policy violation.
He's given probation and a
Questioned by the press after testifying at the 1938 Hines
trials, Pompez declared to
the numbers rackets for good." reporters, "I'm through with
energy to baseball, understanding that, "The money
may not be as fast, but it's
in the end." much less troublesome
baseball business did come with its own set of managerialk
challenges, none of his fellow
him off for failure to comply owwith their demands or forump
enjoying too much success with
So where did Pompez get this his team.
Where does his interest in the love of baseball?
Well that baseball, the numbers, numbers come from?
the life of Alex Pompez is and cigars would largely impact
Cuban emigre communities little surprise, considering the
he grew up. oIn these communities, Cubansh
forged a culture that was an
exchange and the flow of workers amalgam created through economic
practices from different and entrepreneurs who adopted
the Americas. lThe result was a culture theyn
claimed that was distinct from
ruler, Spain. tA young Alex Pompez witnessedl
the migrations of Cubans between
mobilizations around nationalist Cuba in Florida, driven by
sugar work at factories, and the insurgency, the rise and fall of
own national game, which was emergence of baseball as Cuba's
colonias and beyond. played on the sand lots in their
world view of him and others, as did the possibilities for
individual and collective remaking, of participating in
the making of something new,
fighting for one's own nation, of becoming a Cuban, and
Those were lessons that would be wherever one resided.
father, and those of his part of the inheritance from his
And here's a photograph of the father's generation.
Revolucionario Cubano, founders of the Partido
in 1892. the Cuban Revolutionary Party,
was formed in Key West. ThSeated center is Jose Marti.ty
Directly behind Marti, standing tall, of course, most of them
are mustachioed men,
father of Alex Pompez. is Jose Gonzales Pompez,
in September of 1879, Jose Gonzales Pompez had arrived
in Philadelphia shortly following Cuba's Ten Years War.
A lawyer by training, he owned a
in Key West, Florida. cigaA founding member of thetle
Key West chapter of the Cuban Revolutionary Party that was
formed on January 3, 1892,
the key individuals on the Jose Gonzales Pompez was one of
very first visit of Jose Marti committee that organized the
Key West was a very important to place.st.
In fact, more important than
at this moment. Because Key West was where the
money was at. It was where the cigar factories
were. And so Marti understood, to get
the funds to get his movement liquid, he had to go to
Key West, and he had to rally their support.
Key West was also where many of the leaders of the Ten Years
War, and who had participated in la guerra chiquita, resided,
outside of the surveillance of
who were still in Cuba. thJose Gonzales Pompez wass
a mover and a shaker himself. In November of 1892, he was
elected to the Florida State
So he served in the Florida State Assembly, he actually
introduced one of the first pieces of legislation against
child labor, ensuring that
to work in Florida. you had tIt passed. than 14
And he moved his family to
He would die in November of 1895 West Tampa in April of 1894.
for the city of West Tampa. afI hold the documents in theerk
special collections in Tampa, Florida, where you can see the
founding papers for West Tampa, and has Jose Gonzales Pompez's
signature.
This is Ruth Seldon.
of Alex Pompez's life. She would be the love
she was 34, he was 44. Married on July 8, 1934,
Alex Pompez. This was the second marriage for
of Edward Brook, who was the Ruth Seldon was the blood aunt
to the U.S. Senate since first African American elected
Seldon's family was well aware reconstruction, in 1966.
Harlem's numbers. This Senator Brook attested to
in his 2007 memoir, Bridging the Divide.
And one of the things that
his memoir, "Everyone liked Uncle Alex.
He was a funny, good-natured, kind man who controlled the
numbers racket in Harlem. My father liked him, despite his
occupation."
summers with Aunt Ruth He also remembered spending
And one of the his memories is, "Sometimes I watched in
fascination as Uncle Alex and Aunt Ruth counted thousands of
dollars in small bills on their dining room table.
If I ran an errand for my uncle,
with a $20 bill, he would sometimes reward me
So here we have this very interesting dynamic, where we
had Ruth Seldon, who was from a northern Virginia family
who also operated within
A very respectable black family. D.C. circles.
was doing, his role as a Harlem numbers king, and still allowed
for him to become part of that
The story of Alex Pompez allows for us to witness the broader
terrain of struggle against racial segregation in baseball.
And if the manner, Latinos were also active participants within
that long struggle. His story challenges us to see
baseball integration not as a moment, but as a process,
initiated by Jackie Robinson's
Dodgers. 1947 debut with the Brooklyn
as a process, we acknowledge Indeed, when we see integration
involved, and the series of localized struggles that took
place, that transformed the culture of segregation within
baseball. Black players who followed
Jackie Robinson's stead still had to persevere to ensure
integration was not just a
locations. successful experiment in a few
that Larry Doby, Orestes Minnie TMinoso, Monty Irving, Orlandot
Cepeda, Felipe Alou, and Elijah Pumpsie Green, among others,
confronted as part of that
players, was no less real because they came afterg
Robinson. The beanballs kept coming.
The epithets kept flying. Threatening letters were still
mailed, and team management sometimes still found reasons to
defer the big league dreams of
Yet integration was also about black players.
playing field. what went on to beyond the
operated, and I would say, the And it's here where Alex Pompez
own unique space. What the New York Giants, later
San Francisco Giants, did was to
Jackie Robinson's success. internationalize the impact of
States and into the Americas. And they did this by hiringd
a U.S. Latino in Alex Pompez. The once-excluded Negro League
executive made the smoothest
League owners to baseball's transiintegrated era.e Negro
As discussed here today, he was more than a talent evaluator who
scouted Latin America and the black baseball circuit for the
Giants. A witness to the rise and fall
of the Negro Leagues, the hardening of racial fault lines
in the American South, the
among Cubans in their own nation-building project, and the
harsh realities above northern
segregation, Pompez drew on his vast experience to counsel
African American and Latino prospects about the social rules
of engagement.
part of baseball's integration This represents an under-studied
The unique expertise honed story.
Leagues and Caribbean baseball through involvement in the Negro
development of black and Latino bplayers in organized baseball.d
Indeed, over his 25 years for the Giants, his scouting and
recommendations would spur that organization to acquire Negro
League stars Monty Irving,
participating in the signing of Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda,
Juan Marichal, among others.
what we can label a Latino Pompez may not have invented
within the baseball world, approach, but he perfected it
at a distinct advantage. where it placed him
of growing up in the U.S. south Lawithin an exiled community,nce
he envisioned the Americas
cultural terrain, where others had seen hard and
fast lines of separation. Thus, he went beyond strict
allegiance to his Cuban nationality to reach out to
others from throughout the
multicultural background and his Americas, as he used his
talent throughout the English and Spanish-speaking Americas.
He was not a foreigner in a strange land.
He was native to the United States, familiar with its
ever-evolving set of rules when it came to race and place.
This, I can attest, was the key to his longevity in professional
baseball, and why he was able to
several times, to have multiple rises and falls, and ultimately,
redemption. Thank you for your attention.
(applause)