{"id":40840,"date":"2015-04-12T01:55:35","date_gmt":"2015-04-12T01:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=40840"},"modified":"2015-04-12T02:02:14","modified_gmt":"2015-04-12T02:02:14","slug":"was-pro-baseballs-first-african-american-player-passing-for-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=40840","title":{"rendered":"Was pro baseball’s first African-American player passing for white?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Was pro baseball’s first African-American player passing for white?<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Vox<\/a>
\n2015-04-11<\/p>\n

Jen\u00e9e Desmond-Harris<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
\nWilliam Edward White on the 1879 Brown baseball team. White is in the second row, seated and wearing a hat. (Source: Brown University Archives via Slate<\/em>)<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

A story about professional baseball’s little-known first black player (well, possible first black player) raises as many questions about racial identity as it does about the official list of African-American sports pioneers.<\/p>\n

In a fascinating February 2014 piece for Slate<\/em><\/a>, Peter Morris<\/a> and Stefan Fatsis<\/a> explain that William Edward White, who played one game for the National League’s Providence Grays<\/a> in 1879, publicly identified as white but was actually born to a white Georgia<\/a> man and an enslaved biracial woman.<\/p>\n

William Edward White was born in 1860 to a Georgia businessman and one of his slaves, who herself was of mixed race. That made White, legally, black and a slave. But his death certificate and other information indicate that White spent his adult life passing<\/a> as a white man. Since the 1879 game was unearthed a decade ago, questions about White’s race have clouded his legacy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The laws in most states at the time would have categorized someone like White \u2014 who had one black-identified parent and roughly one-quarter African ancestry \u2014 black. But he was identified as “white” on his death certificate and several census forms, and according to Slate’s<\/em> reporting, it’s unlikely that even his wife knew he was the child of a mixed-race mother.<\/p>\n

So should he be considered the first African-American baseball player? Should we start celebrating him among other black trailblazers every February, right along with Jackie Robinson<\/a>?…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Was pro baseball’s first African-American player passing for white? Vox 2015-04-11 Jen\u00e9e Desmond-Harris William Edward White on the 1879 Brown baseball team. White is in the second row, seated and wearing a hat. (Source: Brown University Archives via Slate) A story about professional baseball’s little-known first black player (well, possible first black player) raises as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,459,8,6462,20],"tags":[7947,4760,16977,7222,16978,18116,16976],"class_list":["post-40840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-history","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-baseball","tag-jenee-desmond-harris","tag-peter-morris","tag-sports","tag-stefan-fatsis","tag-vox","tag-william-edward-white"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40840\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}