September 1, 1926 edition of The Washington Post:
Posted on 10/09/2013 8:08:46 AM PDT by rface
It also turns out that the September, 1926 game between the Hebrews and the Klan wasn't the only time Abe Povich played against an anti-Semitic group. Larry Povich, one of Abe's sons, reports that he was often told about a game against a group of racists that the Hebrews actually won. ..... "They felt that they were in trouble because he said [the racists] had picked up their bats at, what they thought was, an inappropriate time. And they were coming after them," Larry said. Turns out the white supremacists were sore losers.
"It's very vivid in my mind in terms of how I imagine Vinney getting in this old truck, firing it up as they had to do in those days, and driving across a field on the mall, not too far from the Lincoln Memorial," "The story that stuck in my mind was dad running across the infield towards the outfield and Vinney sweeping through the field picking up the Jewish guys -- dad and the other players on their team -- who were being chased by the racists."
EXCERPT
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
September 1, 1926 edition of The Washington Post:
Another example of the Klan attempting outreach!
/s
ping
who won?
Was Senator Byrd pitching or catching for ther klan?
Robert Carlyle Byrd (born Cornelius Calvin Sale, Jr.; Born November 20, 1917
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Interesting, never heard of this.
This would be the second incarnation of the KKK, put down by President Grant. A maturing of the Mary Phagan League, established around the time of the Leo Frank lynching (1915) in Georgia to persecute Jews and Catholics. The soon learned persecuting blacks was more popular and went to the Klan identification, which was popular with America's Chief Executive.
Still, lynching Jews, a new Klan with the support of a President (probably a Republican, wasn't he) and playing baseball only a decade later.
Who knows, do the al Qaida guys like baseball? Perhaps a summit is in the future, but they don't drink beer.
Interesting that the short WaPo story advising the public of the game doesn't even mention any possible ill feelings between the competing teams, as if KKK vs. Hebrews in sports was an everyday occurrence. So was this a unique event or were there other such games?
Note the discrepancy in the location of the game between the WaPo story, which places the game in Arlington, Va., and the recollections of one of the participant's sons, which places the game on the Mall near the Lincoln Memorial, which would be in DC. So we really don't know if the story passed down from father to son is about the particular game mentioned in the WaPo or about some other game.
BTW, the late Shirley Povich (father of Maury), mentioned in the story as the brother of one of the participants in the game, was a very well known Washington sportswriter for over fifty years. Too bad we don't seem to have a story from him about this.
Still, lynching Jews, a new Klan with the support of a President (probably a Republican, wasn't he) and playing baseball only a decade later.
I don't know if you're being facetious here, SJackson, but about the only President with whom you might say the Klan was popular was the one in office in 1915, Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who was born and raised in Georgia. During Wilson's term, there was a screening of the newly released silent film Birth of a Nation - which featured the Klan in a positive light - at the White House.
The Republican president in office in 1926 at the time of the baseball game mentioned in this thread was Calvin Coolidge, who was most definitely not an anti-Semite nor racist, nor a KKK supporter. (You might want to read the biography "Coolidge," by Amity Shlaes, released last year.)
As far as "lynchings" of Jews are concerned, the only one known in American history was Leo Frank in 1915.
Please see my post # 9.
Yes. The new incarnation of the KKK was birthed by the Mary Phagan League/Knights of Mary Phagan. Mary was the girl Leo Frank was accused of murdering. They were a small group, in the dozens, but when they adapted the KKK moniker and added blacks to their hate list along with Jews and Catholics, their membership expanded. Wilson was President through their genesis and early growth. Though the Klan probably reached their peak in the 20s, their were birthed and growing rapidly throughout the Wilson years. His reaction, give them a boost.
This game isn't as strange as it seems today. The Klan of the 1920's was not a back-alley organization but a very mainstream one. Even President Warren G. Harding was initiated into it in the White House.
There are three distinct periods in KKK history. The original KKK (the one during Reconstruction) was not anti-Semitic or anti-Catholic (it had Catholic and Jewish members, such as Dr. Simon Baruch, Jefferson Davis' personal physician) and did not burn crosses. It served as a kind of "underground government" during Reconstruction and was used to counteract the Republican "carpetbag" governments. Its targets were Blacks, Republicans, and US soldiers(!!!!!).
The second Klan is the one founded by Col. Simmons in Georgia and which reached its peak in the Twenties. It was a mainstream organization whose target was primarily Catholics. It also supported such traditionally progressive positions as prohibition and women's suffrage. Ironically, Thomas Dixon (author of the books that became the inspiration for Birth of a Nation), though he hated Blacks, had no use whatsoever for this revived Klan. The reason? Because they were anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish! (Dixon was neither.)
The Third Klan began to evolve during the Thirties but came into its own in the post-WWII civil rights era (this is the Klan most people think of and incorrectly retroject into the previous two eras). It is primarily anti-Semitic, though of course strongly anti-Black as well.
Hope this clears some stuff up. My ancestors, as pro-Union "scalawags," sort of learned all this stuff firsthand.
BTW, the late Shirley Povich (father of Maury), mentioned in the story as the brother of one of the participants in the game, was a very well known Washington sportswriter for over fifty years. Too bad we don't seem to have a story from him about this.Povich probably wouldn't have been allowed to write such a story at the time it happened, if it happened and if his brother was part of that game. (The game supposedly happened two years after Povich joined the Post, by the way.) When I was a newspaper reporter in the late 80s-early 90s, we had it hammered into us that you couldn't cover events involving your relations. Conflict of interest.
I haven't read Povich's memoir, All These Mornings, but I'd hazard a guess he could write about such a game if it happened in that book.
I do have a wonderful posthumous collection of Povich's columns assembled on his 100th birthday, All Those Mornings . . . at the Post. It sits on the same most prominent sports book shelf in my home as To Absent Friends from Red Smith, Red Smith on Baseball, The Sporting World of Jim Murray, How Life Imitates the World Series (Thomas Boswell), Guys, Dolls and Curveballs (Damon Runyon), all of Roger Angell's collections, Lardner on Baseball, The Best of Sport, Impossible Dreams: A Red Sox Collection, and Bunts (George F. Will) . . .
BTW, the late Shirley Povich (father of Maury), mentioned in the story as the brother of one of the participants in the game, was a very well known Washington sportswriter for over fifty years. Too bad we don't seem to have a story from him about this.Povich probably wouldn't have been allowed to write such a story at the time it happened, if it happened and if his brother was part of that game. (The game supposedly happened two years after Povich joined the Post, by the way.) When I was a newspaper reporter in the late 80s-early 90s, we had it hammered into us that you couldn't cover events involving your relations. Conflict of interest.
I haven't read Povich's memoir, All These Mornings, but I'd hazard a guess he could write about such a game if it happened in that book.
I do have a wonderful posthumous collection of Povich's columns assembled on his 100th birthday, All Those Mornings . . . at the Post. It sits on the same most prominent sports book shelf in my home as To Absent Friends from Red Smith, Red Smith on Baseball, The Sporting World of Jim Murray, How Life Imitates the World Series (Thomas Boswell), Guys, Dolls and Curveballs (Damon Runyon), all of Roger Angell's collections, Lardner on Baseball, The Best of Sport, Impossible Dreams: A Red Sox Collection, and Bunts (George F. Will) . . .
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