by Troy Soos
A couple of hours later, the train pulled into a way station in Effingham, Illinois. The conductor announced that passengers had eighteen minutes to stretch their legs or get something to eat. I needed to do both.
The rustic depot was nothing like the magnificent one we’d departed from in St. Louis. It was little more than an oversize shed housing a waiting area, a ticket booth, and a lunch counter. I first used the men’s toilet, then got in line for a sandwich. As I waited my turn, I looked around for Franklin Aubury, assuming he’d have gotten off the train, too, but I didn’t see him. In fact, I didn’t see a single colored person in the depot. As the line moved along, I finally noticed the sign on the cash register: Whites Only. There was no corresponding lunch counter for colored people.
I immediately left the line and went outside. I found the lawyer among a couple of dozen Negroes gathered near a stand of beech trees behind the depot. Some were snacking on food they’d brought with them, others were talking, and a few were using the shrubbery for toilets.
I caught Aubury’s eye, and he came over to me. “You want a sandwich or something?” I asked. “My treat.”
“Thank you, no. I’m not hungry.”
“A soda pop?”
He shook his head and glanced back at the Negroes he’d been speaking with. I had the impression he was eager for me to go away. I didn’t understand; was it against the rules for us even to talk to each other?
I gave up. “All right. See you later.”
I went back inside the station, but didn’t return to the line. My impulse was to protest, at least silently; if they wouldn’t serve everyone, then they wouldn’t get my business, either.
When the warning whistle from the train blew, I reconsidered. My refusing to eat wouldn’t do a thing to feed the people outside. I took a couple of steps toward the lunch counter, but then turned around and left because I found I no longer had an appetite anyway.
It wasn’t until we’d crossed into Indiana, and stopped again in Terre Haute, that everyone on the train was able to buy food and use indoor bathrooms. The two races weren’t allowed to use the same ones; but this station was larger than the last, and provided separate facilities for Negroes and whites.
Before we went inside, Franklin Aubury and I talked briefly, agreeing to eat quickly and meet again outdoors.
After wolfing down a ham-and-cheese sandwich that I suspected was older than I was, I went back outside, sipping a flat ginger ale. Aubury was seated alone on a bench, looking at a carefully folded newspaper.
“What time do we get into Indianapolis?” I asked, sitting down next to him.
“Five-twenty, according to the timetable.” He held the paper out to me. “Interesting advertisement.”
It was folded back to a quarter page ad that read:
Ku Klux Klan and Women’s Auxiliary
invite all 100% Americans to a
DECORATION DAY CELEBRATION
One Dazzling Day of Diversified Delights!
Parade—Barbeque—Rodeo
Brass Band—Fireworks—Patriotic Speeches
Imported Texas Cowboys—High Wire Walking
Bring the Kiddies!
Sponsored by Evansville Klan No. 1
“Jeez. They sure are open about it.”
“In Indiana, they can be,” Aubury said. “The Klan is well on its way to taking over this state.”
“ ‘Taking over’? You got to be exaggerating.”
“I wish I were. They’re as strong here as in any Southern state, and growing every day.”
I remembered that Evansville was where Buddy Vaughn had come from, and mentioned that fact to Aubury.
“Let’s hope that Vaughn doesn’t prove as successful in St. Louis as he has here.” He cleared his throat. “If you are willing, perhaps on the return trip, we can go back via Evansville—and you can go to this picnic.”
“I told you I won’t—”
He held up his hand. “I know: You won’t join the Klan. I am not asking you to do so. I only ask that you go to the picnic—it’s open to the public—and perhaps you’ll hear some things that might be helpful to know.”
Decoration Day was a week away, so it could fit into the schedule, I thought. As I considered the idea, I flipped the paper over and noticed it was an Evansville newspaper dated a week earlier. “You didn’t just find out about this, did you?” I said.
The lawyer looked guiltily down at the ground. “No, I’ve been aware of it for some time.”
“Is that the real reason you wanted to go on this trip—to talk me into going to a Klan picnic?”
“No, I do have people to meet with in Indianapolis. I simply thought the Evansville gathering would also be a useful means of acquiring information.”
“Why didn’t you ask me sooner?”
“I thought if I asked you to do something like this, you might change your mind about going to Indiana.”
“So you wait till I’m here, and then spring it on me.” I shook my head. “I don’t like being played.”
“I’m not twisting your arm,” Aubury replied. “I’m merely asking.”
“Then ask up front. Don’t play me.”
He nodded. “Understood. Sorry.”
“Okay.” I handed him back the newspaper. “Let me think about it.”
The whistle blew for us to board the train, bringing the conversation to an end.
I stared out at the flat farmland rolling past me. It was the same view as an hour ago, which was no different from the hour before that. This is crazy, I thought, to have to sit here by myself.
I suddenly decided I wasn’t going to participate in the craziness any longer. I bolted up from my seat and walked briskly toward the rear of the train.
Standing in the aisle at the back of the car was the black-bearded conductor. “You lose your way?” he asked.
“No.” I brushed past him.
Two cars farther back, I came to one occupied entirely by colored people. I stopped at the door and looked for Franklin Aubury among the packed seats. When I spotted his pince-nez glittering behind a newspaper, I waved my boater to get his attention. Others in the car noticed my gestures first, and there were some surprised murmurs that caused Aubury to look up. When he did, I beckoned with my hat. He came to the front of the car, a bewildered expression on his face.
I stood in the doorway of the white car, and he stopped a couple of feet from me, just inside the colored car.
“Speaking of the ABCs,” I said, picking up our conversation from Union Station, “I saw them play the Cincinnati Cuban Stars last year in Redland Field.”
A smile slowly spread over Aubury’s face as he caught on to what I was doing. “You remember who pitched?” he asked.
“Dizzy Dismukes. Threw a two–nothing shutout.”
“He’s one of the best.”
“I believe it. I’ve been to some other Negro League games, too. I went to Stars Park in Detroit a few times, and saw Rube Foster once.”
We were interrupted by the conductor. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
“Talking,” I answered. “Something wrong with that?”
His face flushed a deeper red. “I thought I explained it to you before.”
“You did. And we’re sticking to the rules. I’m not in the colored car.” I nodded at Aubury. “And he ain’t in the white car.” I leaned against the edge of the doorway and crossed my arms, making it clear that I intended to stay.
The conductor tugged at his beard, obviously at a loss. He finally walked off, muttering, “What the hell do I care what kind of company you keep.”
Aubury and I both grinned broadly, but we had sense enough not to let our smiles turn to laughter—no point provoking the conductor into coming back.
“I read in the Argus,” I said, “that there’s plans for an Eastern Colored League. What’s Rube Foster gonna think of that?”
“He won’t like it,” Aubury answered, “but he won’t be able to stop
it. Foster has limited the Negro National League to the Midwest for now. The East has some well-established teams that want to be part of a league, too. They also have some independent-minded owners who won’t relinquish any of their authority to Rube Foster—he maintains tight control of league affairs. They won’t submit to him, and he doesn’t much care for them.”
“Why not?”
“Some of the Eastern owners are white promoters out to profit from colored labor. Others are affiliated with enterprises that are not entirely legal.”
“What do you think about them?” I asked.
“I believe having two leagues would be good for colored baseball. We could have our own World Series.”
I thought about the names of the leagues, one “Negro” and the other “colored,” and asked Aubury a question I’d wondered about for some time, “What do you prefer to be called: colored or Negro?”
“It’s not what I’m called that matters.” He looked me in the eyes. “I know when I’m being spoken to with respect. That’s what I want—to be respected as a man.”
As the train rumbled on, the conversation turned to ballplayers. Aubury talked at length about his favorite stars, not mentioning a single white one.
“Which of the Negro Leaguers do you think would make it on a major league club?” I asked.
“Dozens of them. But why would they want to?”
“Because it’s the big leagues!” Wasn’t it the dream of every ballplayer, of any race, age, or gender, to play on a big-league diamond?
“We have our own big league now,” Aubury said proudly.
“And, truth be told, playing in yours isn’t all that appealing. We’ve had experience in white leagues, and it wasn’t a positive one.”
“You have?”
“Do you know who invented shin guards?” he asked.
If this was going to be another quiz like the one he’d given me in his law office, I was happy that at least he was starting with an easy question. “Roger Bresnahan,” I answered confidently. “Around the turn of the century.”
“Wrong. Bud Fowler and Frank Grant both wore them twenty years earlier. But they weren’t catchers. They were colored infielders who played on white minor-league teams. White opponents made a sport of driving their cleats into the ‘darkies’ legs—so Fowler and Grant fashioned wooden shin guards to protect themselves.”
“I had no idea,” I said.
“Colored players weren’t treated any better by their own teammates. Fleet Walker and his brother Weldy both played major-league baseball with Toledo in the 1880s. Weldy was the catcher, but kept getting crossed up by pitchers who refused to take signs from a colored man. You know, there aren’t even many photographs of mixed teams because whites wouldn’t sit with colored teammates to have their pictures taken.”
“I didn’t know there were ever Negroes in pro ball,” I said. “I thought it was always separate.”
Aubury shook his head. “No, the color line in baseball is largely the doing of Cap Anson. When he saw Fleet Walker take the field against his White Stockings, he told the other team to ‘get that nigger off the field.’ Anson refused to let his team play until Walker was gone. And we’ve been off the field ever since.”
“Damn.” I recalled Anson’s death at the start of the season. It was too bad that the practice he’d instituted hadn’t died with him.
“I know there are some whites who don’t agree with segregation in baseball,” Aubury said. “John McGraw, for example, sometimes tries to pass Negroes off as Cuban or Indian to get them in. And Fred Tenney tried to sign a Negro for the Boston Braves in 1905—almost succeeded, too.”
“Who was the player?”
“William Clarence Matthews, shortstop at Harvard University. He was a damned fine ballplayer, and he almost became the first colored man to play major-league baseball this century. But the National League owners wouldn’t let Tenney sign him. After college, Matthews played for a while in a Vermont league, then he gave up the game. He went to law school, passed the bar, and became such an outstanding lawyer that President Taft appointed him an Assistant United States Attorney. I met him when I was in law school. William Matthews has climbed about as high as a colored man can go in the legal profession, but he told me he still would have rather been a baseball player. Now that we have our own leagues, Negroes can make baseball their profession.”
Aubury removed his glasses and began polishing the lenses. “I have a question for you,” he said. “Why would a ballplayer struggling to remain in the major leagues risk his job by playing a semipro game against a colored team? You knew you were risking suspension. What made it worth the risk?”
I thought for a moment. “Well, I always figured making the big leagues meant I was one of the best. But then I went to a few Negro League games and saw some players who were better than the average major leaguer. I got to thinking that maybe I wasn’t among the best ballplayers in the country, just the best white ones. So I wanted to play against a colored team to see how I’d do.” Over Aubury’s shoulder, I spotted a couple of boys running in the aisle of the colored car. “Picking teams sure was simpler when I was a kid,” I said. “The captains tossed a bat in the air, worked their hands up the handle, and whoever grabbed the knob got first pick. Then they chose up sides, taking the best players first. Nothing mattered except how good a kid played ball, ‘cause all you wanted was to field the best team.”
“It was the same way when I was a boy,” Aubury said. “Things sure change when adults get involved.”
The conductor came back to us, lugging several bulky suitcases. He put them down between Aubury and me. “We need the space,” he said.
This sap must have spent the last twenty minutes trying to come up with a way to separate us, I thought. When he left promising to return with more bags, I asked Aubury, “Any chance of getting the law changed about riding in separate cars?”
“The changes are going in the other direction,” he answered sadly. “It only recently became law in Indiana, and it hasn’t passed yet in Missouri or Illinois—separate travel statutes are only pending in those states.”
“If it’s not the law in Missouri, why didn’t you argue about it in St. Louis?”
“Because it’s considered accepted practice—and opposing it can result in worse punishment than breaking any law. If I fought over every indignity, or every time somebody called me nigger, I wouldn’t survive a year. I will not leave a widow and two fatherless children over a seat on a train.” He clipped the glasses back on his nose. “I intend to remain alive, choose my battles carefully, and perhaps someday my daughters will get to sit up front.”
When the conductor came back with more luggage, Aubury and I went back to sitting in separate cars. “Someday” hadn’t come yet.
CHAPTER 19
For one season, in 1914, Indianapolis was home to a pennant-winning major-league baseball club. That team was the Hoosiers, champions of the upstart Federal League, and its roster included such first-rate ballplayers as Edd Roush, Benny Kauff, and Bill McKechnie. Unfortunately for the city, the franchise moved to Newark the following season, a year before the entire league folded.
Washington Park remained, however, now serving as home to both the American Association Indians, one of the best minor-league clubs in the country, and the Negro League ABCs, who were allowed use of the field when the Indians were out of town. The ballpark was on the west side of Indianapolis, near the White River. A slaughterhouse between the river and the ballpark contributed an interesting aroma to the warm summer air, and beyond the outfield fence was a railroad roundhouse where heavy machinery clanged and thundered.
Franklin Aubury and I were among the first to arrive for the game. He was my kind of baseball fan; not only did we have to be at the park for the start of batting practice, it was preferable that we be there early enough to watch the groundskeepers groom the field.
When we entered the park, I briefly wondered if I would have to sit in the right-fiel
d bleachers, the same way Negroes were limited to that section of Sportsman’s Park. It turned out we were both able to get box seats, but not exactly together: Ropes were strung between seating sections, and fans of different races were not permitted on the same side of a rope. Aubury, though, had arranged to get us seats on one of the borderlines. If we could ignore the rope railing between us, it was the same as sitting next to each other.
Once the two of us started talking baseball, I found it fairly easy to ignore the seating arrangement—at least we were able to sit, unlike on the train. What I couldn’t ignore was that I was one of only a handful of whites in the park, and I felt uncomfortably conspicuous. As the crowd kept filing in, growing to several thousand, I remained part of a tiny minority.
“Gonna be a pretty good crowd,” I said to Aubury. The Browns had played quite a few games before smaller ones this season.
“This is nothing compared to what they draw on weekends.” Aubury pointed toward the railroad sidings behind the right-field fence. “Switchmen will park freight cars out there so even kids who can’t afford tickets can watch from the roofs.”
When the Stars and ABCs trotted out for warm-ups, I asked, “Which team you gonna root for?”
“I have no particular allegiance,” he said. “I generally root for whichever team is losing to make a comeback.”
Aubury must share Karl Landfors’s fondness for underdogs and hopeless causes, I thought.
After the teams had completed practice, a two-man umpiring crew came onto the field. To my surprise, they were both white, and I commented on it to Aubury.
“We don’t have many qualified Negro umpires yet. Whites have the training and the professional experience. And Rube Foster is giving higher priority to having good umpires than colored ones.”
From his tone, I got the impression that the lawyer objected to Foster’s policy. “You don’t agree with that?”