Racism and baseball cards

Exhibitman · #1 09-28-2023, 11:36 AM

Boxing provides a useful perspective on this because only boxing sets had cards of black athletes in decent numbers in the Jim Crow era.

There is a definite shortage of four 1910 T226 Red Sun boxing cards: Jack Johnson, Joe Gans, Joe Jeannette and Sam Langford. All were black fighters. No hard evidence as to whether they were short printed by the Louisiana company or simply thrown away when found, but there are very few of each in existence today. FWIW, I do not think it coincidental that every black man in the set is affected and given how few of these cards are out there, I think the intentional SP hypothesis is the more likely one. After all, those fighters were on numerous sets in the 1895-1912 period and those cards are not in such insanely short supply. They are found in the same approximate quantities as the other cards in the sets, which does not indicate a pervasive race-based trashing of cards.

There are numerous examples in boxing cards of black men being treated equal to white men with whom they competed. The most abundant boxing cards from 1921-1948 are Exhibit cards, and there were many black fighters in those sets. Although there was a form of gentleman's agreement after Jack Johnson's reign that kept the heavyweight title in a racial lockdown for 22 years, in 1937 Joe Louis won the title, a full 10 years and a world war before Jackie Robinson's debut. It seems to me that in boxing cards, with rare exceptions, if the man was given a chance to compete and did well, he was respected. Look at the back of the 1948 Leaf Louis card, which says Louis is "considered greatest heavyweight of all time."

G1911 · #2 09-28-2023, 11:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Boxing provides a useful perspective on this because only boxing sets had cards of black athletes in decent numbers in the Jim Crow era.

There is a definite shortage of four 1910 T226 Red Sun boxing cards: Jack Johnson, Joe Gans, Joe Jeannette and Sam Langford. All were black fighters. No hard evidence as to whether they were short printed by the Louisiana company or simply thrown away when found, but there are very few of each in existence today. FWIW, I do not think it coincidental that every black man in the set is affected and given how few of these cards are out there, I think the intentional SP hypothesis is the more likely one. After all, those fighters were on numerous sets in the 1895-1912 period and those cards are not in such insanely short supply. They are found in the same approximate quantities as the other cards in the sets, which does not indicate a pervasive race-based trashing of cards.

There are numerous examples in boxing cards of black men being treated equal to white men with whom they competed. The most abundant boxing cards from 1921-1948 are Exhibit cards, and there were many black fighters in those sets. Although there was a form of gentleman's agreement after Jack Johnson's reign that kept the heavyweight title in a racial lockdown for 22 years, in 1937 Joe Louis won the title, a full 10 years and a world war before Jackie Robinson's debut. It seems to me that in boxing cards, with rare exceptions, if the man was given a chance to compete and did well, he was respected. Look at the back of the 1948 Leaf Louis card, which says Louis is "considered greatest heavyweight of all time."

At about the same time, the same parent company super printed Jack Johnson for T218 as the sole superprint in the set.

jingram058 · #3 09-28-2023, 05:51 PM

Eracism

Fred · #4 09-29-2023, 04:36 PM

Does anybody know if there's a difference in population of the 1916 Zeenut Jimmy Claxton card with respect to any other common 1916 Zeenut card? My thought is that if there's a huge known difference, then it's very possible people discarded the Claxton card due to his heritage. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess there's a higher population of graded 1916 Claxton Zeenut cards (than other players from that year) due to the notoriety of the card.

What about the N172 George Treadway cards? I've found those come up for auction at about a normal pace as other common cards. The price has gone up a little and that's probably due to the information available to the collecting public about the discrimination he suffered. He had a heck of a season in the National League in 1894.

Republicaninmass · #5 09-30-2023, 11:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Boxing provides a useful perspective on this because only boxing sets had cards of black athletes in decent numbers in the Jim Crow era.

There is a definite shortage of four 1910 T226 Red Sun boxing cards: Jack Johnson, Joe Gans, Joe Jeannette and Sam Langford. All were black fighters. No hard evidence as to whether they were short printed by the Louisiana company or simply thrown away when found, but there are very few of each in existence today. FWIW, I do not think it coincidental that every black man in the set is affected and given how few of these cards are out there, I think the intentional SP hypothesis is the more likely one. After all, those fighters were on numerous sets in the 1895-1912 period and those cards are not in such insanely short supply. They are found in the same approximate quantities as the other cards in the sets, which does not indicate a pervasive race-based trashing of cards.

There are numerous examples in boxing cards of black men being treated equal to white men with whom they competed. The most abundant boxing cards from 1921-1948 are Exhibit cards, and there were many black fighters in those sets. Although there was a form of gentleman's agreement after Jack Johnson's reign that kept the heavyweight title in a racial lockdown for 22 years, in 1937 Joe Louis won the title, a full 10 years and a world war before Jackie Robinson's debut. It seems to me that in boxing cards, with rare exceptions, if the man was given a chance to compete and did well, he was respected. Look at the back of the 1948 Leaf Louis card, which says Louis is "considered greatest heavyweight of all time."

Hi Adam, I always lived the t9s. Sadly I sold before the prices went ballistic. Anyhow, they were a.premium and hand ordered , so is there any evidence the black boxers were ordered less frequently? I only remember hearing Johnny Marto was difficult. A short Italian who likely identified as Caucasian for those who don't know the set

G1911 · #6 09-30-2023, 03:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Republicaninmass

Hi Adam, I always lived the t9s. Sadly I sold before the prices went ballistic. Anyhow, they were a.premium and hand ordered , so is there any evidence the black boxers were ordered less frequently? I only remember hearing Johnny Marto was difficult. A short Italian who likely identified as Caucasian for those who don't know the set

T226 - the black fighters are short printed.

T218 - one of the 4 black fighters is the only superprint.

All other T card sets from the ATC - no evidence of super or short printing of black subjects. If anything Johnson, Langford and Jeanette appear to be more common than most but I don�t think anyone has been able prove the printing was uneven (the ability to request doesn�t necessitate different print runs or mixing sheet layouts; they reserved the right to substitute cards for what was on hand). Johnson appears to me to be the easiest subject in the entire set by a wide margin.

bk400 · #7 02-28-2025, 08:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Boxing provides a useful perspective on this because only boxing sets had cards of black athletes in decent numbers in the Jim Crow era.

There is a definite shortage of four 1910 T226 Red Sun boxing cards: Jack Johnson, Joe Gans, Joe Jeannette and Sam Langford. All were black fighters. No hard evidence as to whether they were short printed by the Louisiana company or simply thrown away when found, but there are very few of each in existence today. FWIW, I do not think it coincidental that every black man in the set is affected and given how few of these cards are out there, I think the intentional SP hypothesis is the more likely one. After all, those fighters were on numerous sets in the 1895-1912 period and those cards are not in such insanely short supply. They are found in the same approximate quantities as the other cards in the sets, which does not indicate a pervasive race-based trashing of cards.

There are numerous examples in boxing cards of black men being treated equal to white men with whom they competed. The most abundant boxing cards from 1921-1948 are Exhibit cards, and there were many black fighters in those sets. Although there was a form of gentleman's agreement after Jack Johnson's reign that kept the heavyweight title in a racial lockdown for 22 years, in 1937 Joe Louis won the title, a full 10 years and a world war before Jackie Robinson's debut. It seems to me that in boxing cards, with rare exceptions, if the man was given a chance to compete and did well, he was respected. Look at the back of the 1948 Leaf Louis card, which says Louis is "considered greatest heavyweight of all time."

This is an interesting historical observation.

Exhibitman · #8 02-28-2025, 10:03 PM

Thanks.

sbfinley · #9 02-28-2025, 11:14 PM

I'll preface this saying that I'm not explicitly saying this card is "racist", but my teenage son was sorting some cards a couple months ago and brought to attention the back of Hank Thompson's 1950 Bowman card. He said, in more words or less: "Was it okay to use the term 'Negro" that loosely?" 1950 was 30 so odd years before my time so without getting in too long of a lesson that night my best response was "well the cards were made for kids to sell bubble gum so yeah... that was pretty tame and kosher for the time." It also gave me a nice segway to start teaching him more about the Negro Leagues as we have since then.

commishbob · #10 02-28-2025, 11:43 PM

Lots to unpack in this thread. I missed it originally so I am glad it was revived.

For one thing that Stahl-Meyer Campy is awesome for sure.

The Larry Doby talk reminded me of my tour of the NLBM in KC a few years back. Was part of a small group lucky enough to be have the director, Bob Kendrick, lead us around. He had a lot to say about Doby and what he went through. It was quite the tour.

Mungo Hungo · #11 03-01-2025, 09:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sbfinley

I'll preface this saying that I'm not explicitly saying this card is "racist", but my teenage son was sorting some cards a couple months ago and brought to attention the back of Hank Thompson's 1950 Bowman card. He said, in more words or less: "Was it okay to use the term 'Negro" that loosely?" 1950 was 30 so odd years before my time so without getting in too long of a lesson that night my best response was "well the cards were made for kids to sell bubble gum so yeah... that was pretty tame and kosher for the time." It also gave me a nice segway to start teaching him more about the Negro Leagues as we have since then.

I'm not sure I understand what is meant by "loosely." To my knowledge, in 1950, the word 'Negro' was not offensive in any sense whatsoever. That didn't come until much later. The U.S. Supreme Court still routinely issued opinions, into the mid-1980s, using that term (not quoting from earlier sources but simply as a description of a person's race). Of course they were out of touch with what was standard in the '80s. But it's an indication for what was standard language when the then-elderly members of the Court were much younger.

oldjudge · #12 03-01-2025, 11:19 PM

Here is the back of the 1936 WWG DiMaggio

todeen · #13 03-02-2025, 02:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Thanks.

Love the boxing items you show about your cousin.

As for Jack Johnson, I know he dated white women and flaunted it. I saw a documentary on him that insinuated his love preferences affected his boxing career. Would that affect card sales and manufacturing?

Sent from my SM-S926U using Tapatalk

G1911 · #14 03-02-2025, 02:53 PM

Johnson is the only superprint in T218, his green card issued in two series, and I believe printed on its own sheet. He�s also the most common T9

Republicaninmass · #15 03-02-2025, 04:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by G1911

Johnson is the only superprint in T218, his green card issued in two series, and I believe printed on its own sheet. He’s also the most common T9

Exactly!

The argument can be made that he was the most popular boxer in the series...yet racism

SMH

BioCRN · #16 03-02-2025, 04:38 PM

Being popular at entertaining doesn't mean an absence of racism. It's constantly explored in media, books, and movies. "Do the Right Thing" has a rather straightforward examination of it.

When it comes to cards, especially given the eras being discussed when it comes to manufacturers and businesses, it is worth exploring the availability and distribution of cards of players of certain ethnicities. This is an era where even drilling down on whiteness was a thing, Jewish/Irish/Italian/etc.

The card industry has a hard enough time trying to figure out who actually put out sets, their history lost and only partially discovered by putting it's discussion out in the wild to try to piece together more clues about what was going on at the time.

It is absolutely on the table to discuss the availability, popularity, and distribution of cards during a racially weird era of being an American.

Ignoring discussing these things is a disservice to our history and how Americans decided to be a society during this era.

G1911 · #17 03-02-2025, 06:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Republicaninmass

Exactly!

The argument can be made that he was the most popular boxer in the series...yet racism

SMH

Jack Johnson definitely was the most popular subject in 1910-1911. They super-printed him when they got his contract signed (America Lithographic was the film distributor for the Johnson/Jeffries fight and I presume but have been unable to conclusively prove his contract rights were secured at or around the time of that contract - Johnson was not part of the first batch of image rights the lithographers secured, but another African-American, Joe Jeannette, was). They even redesigned the T3/T9 checklist late in the process just to squeeze Johnson in, and also added him late to T218-1, going to quite some effort to include him at all, and then even more to superprint him across 2 series.

It is also definitely true that T226 short-printed the black subjects to a very heavy degree, I would just say that is the exception to the rule rather than the rule. A black subject is the sole t218 superprint and black subjects are printed regularly in T9, T218, T219, C52, T118, T220-1, T220-2, T223, T225, T227, and probably others I'm not thinking of off the top. At the same C. 1910 time, black subjects are in E75, E76, E77, E78, E79 (Johnson is on 3 of the 21 cards) and E80, without any rarity or SP'ing either. T226 is the only example of T card short printing of black subjects. It's the odd one out, the exception to the pattern.

T226 is one of the sheets I would most like to discover or piece together because it's probably very unusual. Red Sun, despite what baseball collectors have said, was not a regional Louisiana brand (just as Mecca was not a New York regional brand because the factory was there), primary source documents make it clear and obvious it had broad distribution and availability. Regional brands really only existed in the ATC on a temporal basis, test markets for new launches - successful brands got distributed broadly. A lot of things could be the reason for the short-printing, but that the 46 white subjects are printed normally and the 4 blacks very abnormally are clear. Its a shame, because I realistically am only going to have a complete set of the white dudes for T226, would be great to uncover documents telling us or pointing to the answer for this sets SP'ing but my archival digging has not produced them.

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