Segregation Games
Boston, Busing, and the Making of Red Sox Nation
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- $31.99
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- $31.99
Publisher Description
A cultural history of race, resistance, and representation in a city divided by politics and play
When outfielder Bernie Carbo joined the Red Sox in 1974, he brought with him a toy gorilla named Mighty Joe Young that became the team’s unofficial mascot for several players and many in the local press. This seemingly innocent stuffed animal was introduced within a baseball team notorious for its stubborn discrimination, and during a particularly fraught era of racial discord in Boston. That June, after years of activism from the city’s Black community, Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. ruled that Boston must address the segregation of its schools through redistricting and busing. The ensuing racial animus to these policies led some of the city’s white residents to throw bananas and chant monkey sounds at African American students as they integrated the predominantly white South Boston High School. In this agitated atmosphere, cultural symbols like the Red Sox’s Mighty Joe Young mirrored and amplified the heightened racial tensions of Boston’s busing crisis.
Situated at the intersection of US cultural and social history, Segregation Games examines the surprising ties in 1970s Boston between the racial segregation of the city’s schools and the racial controversies expressed on and off the field of “Red Sox Nation.” “I found out in the black community why they don’t come out [to Fenway Park],” explained Black player Reggie Smith of his experiences with the Red Sox and the city during this period. “The team was the last to get Black players, and some of the things I hear out in the stands make me sick.” To understand these connections, Faflik erases the lines between politics and sport, which routinely blurred in a city suffused with an anti-Black racism that was both deceptively subtle and fiercely overt.
Drawing upon deep archival research from sources that have largely been ignored, such as the Black press of the time, Faflik offers a carefully nuanced portrait of Boston’s cultural life at a pivotal moment in the city’s history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Faflik (Transcendental Heresies), an English professor at the University of Rhode Island, overreaches in this unique study of the intertwined racial histories of the Boston Red Sox and the city's 1970s school desegregation crisis. Antibusing protests in the city, he argues, mirrored the Red Sox's handling of race. The team went to great lengths to deny that race entered its hiring decisions (though it was the last MLB team to field a Black player), just as opponents of state orders to desegregate public schools were quick to dismiss the perception that they were against Black people, instead claiming they wanted to preserve the "integrity" of their communities. Faflik traces the Red Sox's racially coded fan culture, most notably through pitcher Bill Lee, who was booed at games for his support of desegregation efforts. Elsewhere, he shows how antibusing protests took on the look and feel of sports, drawing connections between pep rallies and the movement's marches. Unfortunately, frequent instances in which ordinary objects are freighted with heavy racial symbolism—most notably the Red Sox's official hot dog, the Fenway Frank, which the author says "became as deeply implicated in Boston's contest over racial equality as any other aspect of the club"—feel like a stretch. The result is more of a lofty thought experiment than a successful argument.
