Sam Lacy
Encyclopedia
Samuel Harold Lacy was a pioneering African-American and Native American
sportswriter, reporter, columnist, editor, and TV/radio commentator who worked in the sports journalism field for parts of nine decades. Credited as a persuasive figure in the movement to racially integrate sports, Lacy in 1948 became the first black member of the Baseball Writers Association of America
. In 1997, he received the J. G. Taylor Spink Award for outstanding baseball writing from by the BBWAA
, which placed him in the writers and broadcasters wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998.
, to Samuel Erskine Lacy, a law firm researcher, and Rose Lacy, a full-blooded Shinnecock
. The family moved to Washington, D.C.
, when Sam was a young boy. In his youth he developed a love for baseball
, and spent his spare time at Griffith Stadium
, home ballpark for the Washington Senators. His house at 13th and U streets was just five blocks from the stadium, and Sam would often run errands for players and chase down balls during batting practice.
In his youth Sam witnessed racist mistreatment of his family while they watched the annual Senators team parade through the streets of Washington to the stadium on opening day. Sam later recalled what happened after his elderly father cheered and waved an "I Saw Walter Johnson
Pitch" pennant:
As a teenager Sam worked for the Senators as a food vendor, selling popcorn and peanuts in the stadium's segregated Jim Crow section in right field. Lacy also caddied for British golfer Long Jim Barnes at the 1921 U.S. Open
, held at nearby Columbia Country Club
. When Barnes won the tournament, he gave Lacy a $200 tip.
Lacy graduated from Armstrong Technical High School in Washington, D.C., where he played football
, baseball, and basketball
. He enrolled at Howard University
, where in 1923 he earned a bachelor's degree in physical education, a field he thought might lead him to a coaching career.
Lacy played semi-pro baseball after college, pitching for the local Hillsdale club in Washington. He also refereed DC-area high school, college and recreational basketball games, while coaching and instructing youth sports teams.
He joined the Tribune full-time in 1926, and became sports editor shortly thereafter. In 1929 Lacy left the paper for the summer to play semi-pro baseball in Connecticut while his family remained back in Washington. He returned to the paper in 1930, and once again became sports editor in 1933.
During his tenure Lacy covered Jesse Owens
' medal-winning performances at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, the world heavyweight title fights of boxer Joe Louis
(including his victory over white fighter Max Schmeling
), and the rise of Negro League star ballplayers such as Satchel Paige
, Josh Gibson
and Cool Papa Bell.
In 1936 Lacy began lobbying Senators owner Clark Griffith
to consider adding star players from the Negro Leagues; in particular, those playing for the Homestead Grays team that leased Griffith Stadium for its home games. He finally gained a face-to-face meeting with Griffith on the subject in December 1937. Griffith listened but wasn't keen on the idea, as Lacy later told a Philadelphia reporter:
Lacy also wrote that Griffith voiced concern that the fall of the Negro Leagues would "put about 400 colored guys out of work." Lacy retorted in a column, "When Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, he put 400,000 black people out of jobs."
In October 1937, Lacy broke his first major story when he reported the true racial origins of multi-sport athlete Wilmeth Sidat-Singh
. Syracuse University
had claimed Sidat-Singh was of Hindu
and India
n heritage, when in truth his widowed mother had re-married an Indian doctor. But prior to a football game against the University of Maryland
, Lacy revealed Sidat-Singh's had been born to black parents in Washington, D.C., and trumpeted the news as a sign the color barrier at segregated Maryland was about to fall. When Maryland officials refused to play the game unless Sidat-Singh was barred from the field, Syracuse removed him from the team and lost the match 13-0. The controversy prompted an outcry against both schools' policies and actions, and Sidat-Singh was allowed to play against Maryland the following year as he led Syracuse to a decisive 53-0 win. Lacy drew criticism in some circles for divulging Sidat-Singh's ethnicity, but maintained his stance that racial progress demanded honesty.
to work for another black newspaper, the Chicago Defender
, where he served as its assistant national editor. While in the Midwest he made repeated attempts to engage Major League Baseball
commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis on the topic of desegregating the game, writing numerous letters, but his efforts went unanswered.
Lacy also targeted blacks in management and ownership positions with the Negro Leagues, some of whom had a vested financial interest in keeping the game segregated. In a Defender editorial, he wrote:
In 1943 Lacy returned East, joining the Afro-American
in Baltimore
as sports editor and columnist. He continued to press his case for integrating baseball through his columns and editorials, and many other black newspapers followed suit. In one such piece in 1945, Lacy wrote:
However, Lacy did not make any headway on the issue until Landis died in late 1944. Lacy began a dialogue with Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey
, and Landis's successor in the commissioner's office, Happy Chandler
, lent his support to the effort. It ultimately led to Jackie Robinson
signing with the Dodgers' minor league team, the Montreal Royals
on October 23, 1945, which was Lacy's 42nd birthday.
Lacy spent the next three years covering Jackie's struggle for acceptance and a spot in the big leagues. He traveled with Robinson to the Royals' games at various International League cities throughout the Northeast, to the Dodgers' spring training site in Daytona Beach, Florida, to competing clubs' camps throughout the deep South, and to Cuba for winter baseball.
Like Robinson and the other black athletes he had covered, Lacy encountered racist indignities and hardships. He was barred from press boxes at certain ballparks, dined at the same segregated restaurants with Jackie, and stayed at the same "blacks only" boarding houses as Robinson. Robinson would eventually break MLB's color barrier in 1947 with the Dodgers, but Lacy never allowed their racial bond to cloud his journalistic objectivity. During spring training in 1948, Lacy chastised Robinson in print for arriving 15 pounds overweight, his "lackadaisical attitude" and for "laying down" on the job. He also plastered details of Robinson's personal life throughout his articles, including the dining, shopping, wardrobe and travel habits of Jackie and his wife, Rachel.
Lacy resisted having his own personal bouts with racism become part of the integration storyline, and kept the focus on the athletes he covered:
Lacy made sure to cover all angles of the race issue. In 1947, he reported on the interaction between white St. Louis Browns outfielder and rumored racist Paul Lehner, and his black teammate Willard Brown:
In 1948, he reacted to the death of Babe Ruth
not with adulation for the star but with spite toward Ruth's personal behavior:
Lacy covered the first interracial college football game ever played in the state of Maryland when all-black Maryland State College
faced all-white Trenton (N.J.) College in 1949:
to address the latter issue:
Over the ensuing decades, Lacy pushed for the Baseball Hall of Fame to induct deserving Negro League players, and later criticized the Hall for placing such players in a separate wing. He also pressured national TV networks over the lack of black broadcasters, criticized Major League Baseball for the absence of black umpires, targeted corporations for their lack of sponsorships of black athletes in certain white-dominated sports including golf
, and highlighted the National Football League
's dearth of black head coaches.
Stories covered extensively by Lacy included the grand slam
tennis
titles won by Althea Gibson
and Arthur Ashe
two decades apart, Wilma Rudolph
's three track & field gold medals at the 1960 Olympic Games
in Rome
, and Lee Elder
playing at Augusta National in 1975 as the first black golfer in The Masters tournament.
In 1954, Lacy questioned why the city of Milwaukee had chosen to honor Braves outfielder Hank Aaron with a day in his honor a mere two months into his playing career:
Lacy worked as a television sports commentator for WBAL-TV
from 1968 to 1976.
Lacy remained with the Baltimore Afro-American for nearly 60 years, and became widely known for his regular "A to Z" columns and his continued championing of racial equity. The onset of arthritis in his hands in his late 70s left him unable to type, so he wrote his columns out longhand. Even into his 80s he maintained his routine of waking at 3 A.M. three days a week, driving from his Washington home to his Baltimore office, working eight hours, and playing nine holes of golf in the afternoon. Lacy could no longer drive after a suffering a stroke in 1999, so he rode to the office with his son, Tim, who followed in his footsteps as a sportswriter for the Afro-American.
In 1999, Lacy teamed with colleague Moses J. Newson, a former executive editor at the Afro-American, to write his autobiography, Fighting for Fairness: The Life Story of Hall of Fame Sportswriter Sam Lacy.
Sam Lacy wrote his final column for the paper just days before his death at age 99 in 2003, and filed the piece from his hospital bed. In 1999, he explained his rationale for staying with the Afro-American while spurning more lucrative offers:
As of December 2010, Tim Lacy remains a columnist at the Afro-American at the age of 72.
Lacy's paternal grandfather, Henry Erskine Lacy, was the first black detective in the Washington, D.C., police department.
in Washington, D.C. He had checked into the hospital a week earlier due to a loss of appetite. Besides his children, survivors included four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. His funeral was held on May 16, 2003, at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., with burial at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Suitland, Maryland.
.
In 1984, Lacy became the first black journalist to be enshrined in the Maryland Media Hall of Fame.
In 1985, Lacy was inducted into the Black Athletes Hall of Fame in Las Vegas
.
In 1991, Lacy received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Black Journalists
.
In 1994, Lacy was selected for the Society of Professional Journalists
Hall of Fame by the Washington chapter.
In 1995, Lacy was in the first group of writers to be honored with the A.J. Liebling Award by the Boxing Writers Association of America
.
In 1997, the 50th anniversary of Robinson's groundbreaking major league debut, Lacy received an honorary doctorate from Loyola University Maryland, and was honored by the Smithsonian Institute with a lecture series. Lacy also threw out the ceremonial first pitch prior to a Baltimore Orioles
home game at Camden Yards that season.
On October 22, 1997, Lacy received the J. G. Taylor Spink Award for outstanding baseball writing from the Baseball Writers Association of America. The award carries induction to the writers and broadcasters wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and Lacy was formally enshrined on July 26, 1998.
In 1998, Lacy received the Frederick Douglass
Award from the University System of Maryland on April 23; the United Negro College Fund
established a scholarship program in Lacy's name on April 25; and he received the Red Smith Award
from the Associated Press
on June 26.
In 2003, the Sports Task Force wing of the National Association of Black Journalists
instituted the Sam Lacy Pioneer Award, presented annually to multiple sports figures in the host city for the NABJ convention. Recipients are selected based on their "contributions to their respected careers, but more importantly, their direct impact on the communities they served."
Lacy also served on the President's Council on Physical Fitness and on the Baseball Hall of Fame's selection committee for the Negro leagues.
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
sportswriter, reporter, columnist, editor, and TV/radio commentator who worked in the sports journalism field for parts of nine decades. Credited as a persuasive figure in the movement to racially integrate sports, Lacy in 1948 became the first black member of the Baseball Writers Association of America
Baseball Writers Association of America
The Baseball Writers' Association of America is a professional association for baseball journalists writing for daily newspapers, magazines and qualifying Web sites. The BBWAA was founded on October 14, 1908, to improve working conditions for sportswriters in the early part of the 20th century...
. In 1997, he received the J. G. Taylor Spink Award for outstanding baseball writing from by the BBWAA
Baseball Writers Association of America
The Baseball Writers' Association of America is a professional association for baseball journalists writing for daily newspapers, magazines and qualifying Web sites. The BBWAA was founded on October 14, 1908, to improve working conditions for sportswriters in the early part of the 20th century...
, which placed him in the writers and broadcasters wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998.
Upbringing
Lacy was born on October 23, 1903, in Mystic, ConnecticutMystic, Connecticut
Mystic is a village and census-designated place in New London County, Connecticut, in the United States. The population was 4,001 at the 2000 census. A historic locality, Mystic has no independent government because it is not a legally recognized municipality in the state of Connecticut...
, to Samuel Erskine Lacy, a law firm researcher, and Rose Lacy, a full-blooded Shinnecock
Shinnecock Indian Nation
The Shinnecock Indian Nation is a federally recognized tribe, headquartered in Suffolk County, New York, on the south shore of Long Island. Shinnecock are an Algonquian people from Long Island...
. The family moved to Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, when Sam was a young boy. In his youth he developed a love for baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
, and spent his spare time at Griffith Stadium
Griffith Stadium
Griffith Stadium was a sports stadium that stood in Washington, D.C. from 1911 to 1965, between Georgia Avenue and 5th Street, and between W Street and Florida Avenue, NW. An earlier wooden baseball park had been built on the same site in 1891...
, home ballpark for the Washington Senators. His house at 13th and U streets was just five blocks from the stadium, and Sam would often run errands for players and chase down balls during batting practice.
In his youth Sam witnessed racist mistreatment of his family while they watched the annual Senators team parade through the streets of Washington to the stadium on opening day. Sam later recalled what happened after his elderly father cheered and waved an "I Saw Walter Johnson
Walter Johnson
Walter Perry Johnson , nicknamed "Barney" and "The Big Train", was a Major League Baseball right-handed pitcher. He played his entire 21-year baseball career for the Washington Senators...
Pitch" pennant:
As a teenager Sam worked for the Senators as a food vendor, selling popcorn and peanuts in the stadium's segregated Jim Crow section in right field. Lacy also caddied for British golfer Long Jim Barnes at the 1921 U.S. Open
U.S. Open (golf)
The United States Open Championship, commonly known as the U.S. Open, is the annual open golf tournament of the United States. It is the second of the four major championships in golf, and is on the official schedule of both the PGA Tour and the European Tour...
, held at nearby Columbia Country Club
Columbia Country Club
The Columbia Country Club, located in Chevy Chase, Maryland, is the successor of the Columbia Golf Club, which was organized on September 29, 1898 by nine men. Originally there were twenty members. The first location of the Club was on the east side of Brightwood Avenue, afterwards known as Georgia...
. When Barnes won the tournament, he gave Lacy a $200 tip.
Lacy graduated from Armstrong Technical High School in Washington, D.C., where he played football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
, baseball, and basketball
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...
. He enrolled at Howard University
Howard University
Howard University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...
, where in 1923 he earned a bachelor's degree in physical education, a field he thought might lead him to a coaching career.
Lacy played semi-pro baseball after college, pitching for the local Hillsdale club in Washington. He also refereed DC-area high school, college and recreational basketball games, while coaching and instructing youth sports teams.
Early career
While in college, Lacy began covering sports part-time for the Washington Tribune, a local African-American newspaper. He continued writing for the paper following his graduation, and also worked as a sports commentator for radio stations WOL and WINX in the early 1930s.He joined the Tribune full-time in 1926, and became sports editor shortly thereafter. In 1929 Lacy left the paper for the summer to play semi-pro baseball in Connecticut while his family remained back in Washington. He returned to the paper in 1930, and once again became sports editor in 1933.
During his tenure Lacy covered Jesse Owens
Jesse Owens
James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens was an American track and field athlete who specialized in the sprints and the long jump. He participated in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, where he achieved international fame by winning four gold medals: one each in the 100 meters, the 200 meters, the...
' medal-winning performances at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, the world heavyweight title fights of boxer Joe Louis
Joe Louis
Joseph Louis Barrow , better known as Joe Louis, was the world heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 to 1949. He is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweights of all time...
(including his victory over white fighter Max Schmeling
Max Schmeling
Maximillian Adolph Otto Siegfried Schmeling was a German boxer who was heavyweight champion of the world between 1930 and 1932. His two fights with Joe Louis in the late 1930s transcended boxing, and became worldwide social events because of their national associations...
), and the rise of Negro League star ballplayers such as Satchel Paige
Satchel Paige
Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige was an American baseball player whose pitching in the Negro leagues and in Major League Baseball made him a legend in his own lifetime...
, Josh Gibson
Josh Gibson
Joshua Gibson was an American catcher in baseball's Negro leagues. He played for the Homestead Grays from 1930 to 1931, moved to the Pittsburgh Crawfords from 1932 to 1936, and returned to the Grays from 1937 to 1939 and 1942 to 1946...
and Cool Papa Bell.
In 1936 Lacy began lobbying Senators owner Clark Griffith
Clark Griffith
Clark Calvin Griffith , nicknamed "the Old Fox", was a Major League Baseball pitcher, manager and team owner.-Biography:...
to consider adding star players from the Negro Leagues; in particular, those playing for the Homestead Grays team that leased Griffith Stadium for its home games. He finally gained a face-to-face meeting with Griffith on the subject in December 1937. Griffith listened but wasn't keen on the idea, as Lacy later told a Philadelphia reporter:
Lacy also wrote that Griffith voiced concern that the fall of the Negro Leagues would "put about 400 colored guys out of work." Lacy retorted in a column, "When Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, he put 400,000 black people out of jobs."
In October 1937, Lacy broke his first major story when he reported the true racial origins of multi-sport athlete Wilmeth Sidat-Singh
Wilmeth Sidat-Singh
Wilmeth Sidat-Singh was an African-American basketball and football player who was subject to segregation in college and professional sports in the 1930s....
. Syracuse University
Syracuse University
Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...
had claimed Sidat-Singh was of Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
and India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n heritage, when in truth his widowed mother had re-married an Indian doctor. But prior to a football game against the University of Maryland
University of Maryland
When the term "University of Maryland" is used without any qualification, it generally refers to the University of Maryland, College Park.University of Maryland may refer to the following:...
, Lacy revealed Sidat-Singh's had been born to black parents in Washington, D.C., and trumpeted the news as a sign the color barrier at segregated Maryland was about to fall. When Maryland officials refused to play the game unless Sidat-Singh was barred from the field, Syracuse removed him from the team and lost the match 13-0. The controversy prompted an outcry against both schools' policies and actions, and Sidat-Singh was allowed to play against Maryland the following year as he led Syracuse to a decisive 53-0 win. Lacy drew criticism in some circles for divulging Sidat-Singh's ethnicity, but maintained his stance that racial progress demanded honesty.
The 1940s
In August 1941 Lacy moved to ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
to work for another black newspaper, the Chicago Defender
Chicago Defender
The Chicago Defender is a Chicago based newspaper founded in 1905 by an African American for primarily African American readers.In just three years from 1919–1922 the Defender also attracted the writing talents of Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks....
, where he served as its assistant national editor. While in the Midwest he made repeated attempts to engage Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, consisting of teams that play in the National League and the American League...
commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis on the topic of desegregating the game, writing numerous letters, but his efforts went unanswered.
Lacy also targeted blacks in management and ownership positions with the Negro Leagues, some of whom had a vested financial interest in keeping the game segregated. In a Defender editorial, he wrote:
In 1943 Lacy returned East, joining the Afro-American
Baltimore Afro-American
The Baltimore Afro-American, commonly known as The Afro, is a weekly newspaper published in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. It is the flagship newspaper of the Afro-American chain and the longest-running African-American family-owned newspaper in the United States.-History:The newspaper was founded in...
in Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
as sports editor and columnist. He continued to press his case for integrating baseball through his columns and editorials, and many other black newspapers followed suit. In one such piece in 1945, Lacy wrote:
However, Lacy did not make any headway on the issue until Landis died in late 1944. Lacy began a dialogue with Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey
Branch Rickey
Wesley Branch Rickey was an innovative Major League Baseball executive elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1967...
, and Landis's successor in the commissioner's office, Happy Chandler
Happy Chandler
Albert Benjamin "Happy" Chandler, Sr. was a politician from the US state of Kentucky. He represented the state in the U.S. Senate and served as its 44th and 49th governor. Aside from his political positions, he also served as the second Commissioner of Major League Baseball from 1945 to 1951 and...
, lent his support to the effort. It ultimately led to Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson
Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson was the first black Major League Baseball player of the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947...
signing with the Dodgers' minor league team, the Montreal Royals
Montreal Royals
The Montreal Royals were a minor league professional baseball team located in Montreal, Quebec, that existed from 1897–1917 and from 1928–60 as a member of the International League and its progenitor, the original Eastern League...
on October 23, 1945, which was Lacy's 42nd birthday.
Lacy spent the next three years covering Jackie's struggle for acceptance and a spot in the big leagues. He traveled with Robinson to the Royals' games at various International League cities throughout the Northeast, to the Dodgers' spring training site in Daytona Beach, Florida, to competing clubs' camps throughout the deep South, and to Cuba for winter baseball.
Like Robinson and the other black athletes he had covered, Lacy encountered racist indignities and hardships. He was barred from press boxes at certain ballparks, dined at the same segregated restaurants with Jackie, and stayed at the same "blacks only" boarding houses as Robinson. Robinson would eventually break MLB's color barrier in 1947 with the Dodgers, but Lacy never allowed their racial bond to cloud his journalistic objectivity. During spring training in 1948, Lacy chastised Robinson in print for arriving 15 pounds overweight, his "lackadaisical attitude" and for "laying down" on the job. He also plastered details of Robinson's personal life throughout his articles, including the dining, shopping, wardrobe and travel habits of Jackie and his wife, Rachel.
Lacy resisted having his own personal bouts with racism become part of the integration storyline, and kept the focus on the athletes he covered:
Lacy made sure to cover all angles of the race issue. In 1947, he reported on the interaction between white St. Louis Browns outfielder and rumored racist Paul Lehner, and his black teammate Willard Brown:
In 1948, he reacted to the death of Babe Ruth
Babe Ruth
George Herman Ruth, Jr. , best known as "Babe" Ruth and nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Sultan of Swat", was an American Major League baseball player from 1914–1935...
not with adulation for the star but with spite toward Ruth's personal behavior:
Lacy covered the first interracial college football game ever played in the state of Maryland when all-black Maryland State College
University of Maryland Eastern Shore
University of Maryland Eastern Shore located on 776 acres in Princess Anne, Maryland, United States, is part of the University System of Maryland...
faced all-white Trenton (N.J.) College in 1949:
Later career
Not content to see black ballplayers reach the major leagues, Lacy began pushing for equal pay for athletes of color, and for an end to segregated team accommodations during road trips. His first success on those fronts was persuading New York Giants general manager Chub FeeneyChub Feeney
Charles Stoneham "Chub" Feeney was an American front office executive in Major League Baseball and president of the National League during a 40-plus year career in baseball....
to address the latter issue:
Over the ensuing decades, Lacy pushed for the Baseball Hall of Fame to induct deserving Negro League players, and later criticized the Hall for placing such players in a separate wing. He also pressured national TV networks over the lack of black broadcasters, criticized Major League Baseball for the absence of black umpires, targeted corporations for their lack of sponsorships of black athletes in certain white-dominated sports including golf
Golf
Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....
, and highlighted the National Football League
National Football League
The National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...
's dearth of black head coaches.
Stories covered extensively by Lacy included the grand slam
Grand Slam
Grand Slam may refer to:-Card games:* In the game of contract bridge a bid to win all the tricks of that hand. By extension, the taking of all the important elements in an endeavour.-Equestrianism:...
tennis
Tennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
titles won by Althea Gibson
Althea Gibson
Althea Gibson was a World No. 1 American sportswoman who became the first African-American woman to be a competitor on the world tennis tour and the first to win a Grand Slam title in 1956. She is sometimes referred to as "the Jackie Robinson of tennis" for breaking the color barrier...
and Arthur Ashe
Arthur Ashe
Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr. was a professional tennis player, born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. During his career, he won three Grand Slam titles, putting him among the best ever from the United States...
two decades apart, Wilma Rudolph
Wilma Rudolph
Wilma Glodean Rudolph was an American athlete. Rudolph was considered the fastest woman in the world in the 1960s and competed in two Olympic Games, in 1956 and in 1960....
's three track & field gold medals at the 1960 Olympic Games
1960 Summer Olympics
The 1960 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held from August 25 to September 11, 1960 in Rome, Italy...
in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, and Lee Elder
Lee Elder
Robert Lee Elder is an American golfer. He is best remembered for becoming the first African-American to play in the Masters Tournament in 1975.-Background and family:...
playing at Augusta National in 1975 as the first black golfer in The Masters tournament.
In 1954, Lacy questioned why the city of Milwaukee had chosen to honor Braves outfielder Hank Aaron with a day in his honor a mere two months into his playing career:
Lacy worked as a television sports commentator for WBAL-TV
WBAL-TV
WBAL-TV is the NBC-affiliated television station in Baltimore, Maryland. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on VHF channel 11. It is one of the flagship stations of Hearst Television, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Hearst Corporation, which also owns sister radio stations WBAL and...
from 1968 to 1976.
Lacy remained with the Baltimore Afro-American for nearly 60 years, and became widely known for his regular "A to Z" columns and his continued championing of racial equity. The onset of arthritis in his hands in his late 70s left him unable to type, so he wrote his columns out longhand. Even into his 80s he maintained his routine of waking at 3 A.M. three days a week, driving from his Washington home to his Baltimore office, working eight hours, and playing nine holes of golf in the afternoon. Lacy could no longer drive after a suffering a stroke in 1999, so he rode to the office with his son, Tim, who followed in his footsteps as a sportswriter for the Afro-American.
In 1999, Lacy teamed with colleague Moses J. Newson, a former executive editor at the Afro-American, to write his autobiography, Fighting for Fairness: The Life Story of Hall of Fame Sportswriter Sam Lacy.
Sam Lacy wrote his final column for the paper just days before his death at age 99 in 2003, and filed the piece from his hospital bed. In 1999, he explained his rationale for staying with the Afro-American while spurning more lucrative offers:
Personal life
Sam Lacy married Alberta Robinson in 1927. They had a son, Samuel Howe (Tim) Lacy, and a daughter, Michaelyn T. Lacy (now Michaelyn Harris). Sam and Alberta divorced in 1952, and Sam married Barbara Robinson in 1953. Barbara died in 1969, but Sam never remarried.As of December 2010, Tim Lacy remains a columnist at the Afro-American at the age of 72.
Lacy's paternal grandfather, Henry Erskine Lacy, was the first black detective in the Washington, D.C., police department.
Death
Sam Lacy died at age 99 of heart and kidney failure on May 8, 2003, at Washington Hospital CenterWashington Hospital Center
Washington Hospital Center is the largest private hospital in Washington, D.C.. It serves as a teaching hospital for Georgetown University School of Medicine....
in Washington, D.C. He had checked into the hospital a week earlier due to a loss of appetite. Besides his children, survivors included four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. His funeral was held on May 16, 2003, at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., with burial at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Suitland, Maryland.
Awards and Honors
In 1948, Lacy became the first black member of the Baseball Writers Association of AmericaBaseball Writers Association of America
The Baseball Writers' Association of America is a professional association for baseball journalists writing for daily newspapers, magazines and qualifying Web sites. The BBWAA was founded on October 14, 1908, to improve working conditions for sportswriters in the early part of the 20th century...
.
In 1984, Lacy became the first black journalist to be enshrined in the Maryland Media Hall of Fame.
In 1985, Lacy was inducted into the Black Athletes Hall of Fame in Las Vegas
Las Vegas metropolitan area
The Las Vegas Valley is the heart of the Las Vegas-Paradise, NV MSA also known as the Las Vegas–Paradise–Henderson MSA which includes all of Clark County, Nevada, and is a metropolitan area in the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada. The Valley is defined by the Las Vegas Valley landform, a ...
.
In 1991, Lacy received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Black Journalists
National Association of Black Journalists
The National Association of Black Journalists is an organization of African American journalists, students, and media professionals. Founded in 1975 in Washington, D.C...
.
In 1994, Lacy was selected for the Society of Professional Journalists
Society of Professional Journalists
The Society of Professional Journalists , formerly known as Sigma Delta Chi, is one of the oldest organizations representing journalists in the United States. It was established in April 1909 at DePauw University, and its charter was designed by William Meharry Glenn. The ten founding members of...
Hall of Fame by the Washington chapter.
In 1995, Lacy was in the first group of writers to be honored with the A.J. Liebling Award by the Boxing Writers Association of America
Boxing Writers Association of America
The Boxing Writers Association of America was originally formed in 1926 as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York. The association's purpose is to promote better working conditions for boxing writers, as well as hold its writers to the highest professional and ethical standards...
.
In 1997, the 50th anniversary of Robinson's groundbreaking major league debut, Lacy received an honorary doctorate from Loyola University Maryland, and was honored by the Smithsonian Institute with a lecture series. Lacy also threw out the ceremonial first pitch prior to a Baltimore Orioles
Baltimore Orioles
The Baltimore Orioles are a professional baseball team based in Baltimore, Maryland in the United States. They are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's American League. One of the American League's eight charter franchises in 1901, it spent its first year as a major league...
home game at Camden Yards that season.
On October 22, 1997, Lacy received the J. G. Taylor Spink Award for outstanding baseball writing from the Baseball Writers Association of America. The award carries induction to the writers and broadcasters wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and Lacy was formally enshrined on July 26, 1998.
In 1998, Lacy received the Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing...
Award from the University System of Maryland on April 23; the United Negro College Fund
United Negro College Fund
The United Negro College Fund is an American philanthropic organization that fundraises college tuition money for black students and general scholarship funds for 39 private historically black colleges and universities. The UNCF was incorporated on April 25, 1944 by Frederick D. Patterson , Mary...
established a scholarship program in Lacy's name on April 25; and he received the Red Smith Award
Red Smith Award
The Red Smith Award is awarded by the Associated Press Sports Editors for outstanding contributions to sports journalism. It has been awarded annually at the APSE convention since 1981...
from the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
on June 26.
In 2003, the Sports Task Force wing of the National Association of Black Journalists
National Association of Black Journalists
The National Association of Black Journalists is an organization of African American journalists, students, and media professionals. Founded in 1975 in Washington, D.C...
instituted the Sam Lacy Pioneer Award, presented annually to multiple sports figures in the host city for the NABJ convention. Recipients are selected based on their "contributions to their respected careers, but more importantly, their direct impact on the communities they served."
Lacy also served on the President's Council on Physical Fitness and on the Baseball Hall of Fame's selection committee for the Negro leagues.
External links
- Hill, Justice B. "Sportswriters key in integration," mlb.com, 11 April 2007 (retrieved 14 January 2011).
- Olesker, Michael. "Sam Lacy at 90: Voice of fairness still being heard," The Baltimore Sun, 21 October 1993 (retrieved 14 January 2011).