AHC: Earlier desegregation

What would be required for the US to desegregate earlier? What would have happened if the civil Rights movement started in the 30s instead of the 50s/60s?
 
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This Time magazine article is saying baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis was not a racist.

https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/4294175/jackie-robinson-burns-landis-myth

Instead, it was the damn owners. But if . . . we can get rolling with baseball segregation about a decade and a half earlier, we probably get integrated military units throughout almost all of World War II — and probably incidentally a little bit more cost-effective military — and post-war, desegregation rolls like water.

With many more Americans having the experience of serving in integrated units, there’s no longer any convincing moral case to be made. And Americans who continue to believe in discrimination are truly out of step with the rest of society.
 
d1qikntta4cp8k.cloudfront.net


This Time magazine article is saying baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis was not a racist.

https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/4294175/jackie-robinson-burns-landis-myth

Instead, it was the damn owners. But if . . . we can get rolling with baseball segregation about a decade and a half earlier, we probably get integrated military units throughout almost all of World War II — and probably incidentally a little bit more cost-effective military — and post-war, desegregation rolls like water.

With many more Americans having the experience of serving in integrated units, there’s no longer any convincing moral case to be made. And Americans who continue to believe in discrimination are truly out of step with the rest of society.

Happy Chandler always claimed that he saw Landis's personal papers, and Landis was indeed a racist and supporter of the color line.

I'll throw a few possible POD out there:

- Red Faber doesn't come down with the flu in 1919. That means Arnold Rothstein can't buy off enough Chicago pitchers, and Landis never becomes commissioner. Comiskey integrates the White Sox in 1931 or 1932, not out of altruism but because he can get Negro League players to sign cheaper. Sox quickly win a couple of Series and owners who don't want to be left behind jump on boardboard.

- Babe Ruth was rumored to be passing for white. This is true and is proven in 1930. He obviously loses some popularity but a lot of people rethink their prejudices. (Same could work for Ike in 1946.)

- No "Birth of a Nation", and the Klan remains forgotten. No targeting of successful black business owners such as the Tulsa and Rosewood attacks. Over time business owners see the advantage of mutual trade and serving all customerscustomers, and see that the world doesn't end if you integrate.
 
Happy Chandler always claimed that he saw Landis's personal papers, and Landis was indeed a racist and supporter of the color line. . .
The Time article is saying otherwise. In particular, that Landis issued this statement in June 1942: “ . . Negroes are not barred from organized baseball by the commissioner and never have been during the 21 years I have served. . ”

PS I like PODs involving the 1918–1919 Influenza Pandemic.
 
What would be required for the US to desegregate earlier?

Have WW1 drag on longer, so that the colonial empires disintegrate a generation earlier, and several countries in Eastern Europe go Bolshevik. Thus you get the Cold War that much sooner, with WAllies and Communists competing for the support of non-white ex-colonies. That provides a motive to do something about the Southern racial setup, which will otherwise be a crippling handicap.

Also, a longer WW! may lead to even more Southern Blacks migrating north, which may produce enough of a labour shortage down South to accelerate the mechanisation of cotton picking. This undermines the economic base of the Old South.

It would also help if the Great Depression came sooner, as this makes the poorer states more dependent on Federal largesse, so less able to resist Federal measures against segregation.
 
Actually one of the most interesting potential scenarios is to have Wilson lose in the 1916 election. You only need c.3800 votes to swing in California, for example, to hand the election to Charles Evans Hughes and this could be quite different.

Wilson's Presidency had resegregated a number of major areas including the city of Washington DC and large parts of the Federal Workforce from 1913 onwards. Hughes would potentially have reversed this and would certainly not have given the resurgent Klan (and other elements) the tacit support Wilson did.

An earlier desegregated (or, more accurately, an un-re-segregated if you follow the logic...) federal workforce probably does a lot for African-American and White relations in terms of ordinary Americans working (and being seen to work) side by side. If the swing of voters is African American, moreover, prompted by Wilson's betrayal of his 1912 promise to advance prospects for black Americans, it probably emboldens the Republican Party to continue courting the black vote and also emboldens the moderate fringe of the Democratic Party ("I told you so...you've got to realise we live in a changing society etc").
 
Easiest way to speed up civil rights: speed up television. The Farnsworth picture tube was patented in 1929, and had the Depression not set in, the money might have been there to spread television. Of course, the transmission technology would be antiquated and networking nearly impossible, so the programs would be distributed on film. Wire photos might accompany voice transmission of newscasts to give the same effect television portrayed in the fifties: a modern society with no minority participation. THAT, in my opinion, was a major factor in the timing of the civil rights movement.
 
The ticket to any desegregation is need and opportunity. This means more American involvement in WWI - possibly the sinking of the Lusitania being treated as a casus belli a la Pearl Harbor and the Yanks getting involved in 1915 and the involvement lasting three years. This could be accomplished by having a more hawkish President - my thought is that TR runs again in 1908 after the GOP decides his first term didn’t count because he wasn’t elected to it (or McKinley survives the assassination attempt and bites it in 1903 from something else and the GOP decides a year and a half doesn’t constitute a term.)

So TR wins in 1908 and steps aside in 1912, and he’s in Taft’s ear in 1915 pushing for war after the Lusitania. Taft gives a rousing speech and the US goes to war against the Central Powers sooner.

This accomplished two things - one, the federal government is never segregated, and two, all of a sudden America NEEDS black folks like crazy. It needs everyone, all hands on deck - even Henry Ford is told to stick his anti-Semitism up his ass.

Another side effect is that it likely relegated Birth of a Nation to a footnote - most films of the following three years are patriotic dramas and caricatures of the asshole Central Powers. Glorifying the Confederacy is taboo during this time - everyone’s on the same team and the Kaiser is the bad guy. So Birth of a Nation still enjoys some time in the sun but ultimately ends up in cult status among racists. The Klan ends up being a bunch of dipshits riding around in robes looking like fools.

Baseball becomes integrated sooner on a piecemeal scale, and a few teams by 1930 still don’t have black players - Boston was always notoriously hard-nosed on race matters (the Red Sox were the last MLB team OTL to integrate) and the Reds are next door to the South as are the Cardinals and Browns. However, if owners are allowed to integrate if they so choose, which is probably how it will go, the first to integrate will be the self-interested. Branch Rickey wants an edge. Bill Veeck signed a 3’7” guy; of course he’ll sign a black guy. Charles Comiskey was a cheap asshole who would have signed a corpse if he could save a buck. And when the best black players get signed and contribute, most other teams would think, well, shit, we better sign good black players too or we’re not winning anything.

Some other butterflies of the US joining WWI earlier may be - no Lenin and no Bolshevik Revolution, a different Versailles Treaty that likely averts the Nazis (what we know as WWII probably goes down as the Japan War and is likely US-Japan with Japan ending up getting a similar treatment to Germany post-Great War, likely being splintered; a bunch of Civil Rights landmarks being in the 1930s and reinforced after the Japan War; no Cold War and communism ends up a fringe idea.
 
Another side effect is that it likely relegated Birth of a Nation to a footnote - most films of the following three years are patriotic dramas and caricatures of the asshole Central Powers. Glorifying the Confederacy is taboo during this time - everyone’s on the same team and the Kaiser is the bad guy. So Birth of a Nation still enjoys some time in the sun but ultimately ends up in cult status among racists. The Klan ends up being a bunch of dipshits riding around in robes looking like fools.
Ultimately, the KKK looking like fools would be the result, but only after Confederates are recognized as American Veterans, to secure their support to send their grandsons and nephews off to war in the U.S. Army. So, there would be a brief "step back" for the goal of putting everyone on the "same team" to fight the bad guy. So, to integrate the Army and integrate baseball would be excellent starting points. Plus the progress of the ATL twenties might lessen the upcoming recession. A less punished Germany contributes to world technology through the twenties and thirties.
 
Have WW1 drag on longer, so that the colonial empires disintegrate a generation earlier, and several countries in Eastern Europe go Bolshevik. Thus you get the Cold War that much sooner, with WAllies and Communists competing for the support of non-white ex-colonies. . . .
That didn’t so much happen in the cold war OTL, with the U.S. propping up dictatorships and the Soviets supplying rebel armies, and some mixing of roles in this regard,

but in a re-run? Heck, I’d welcome more competition on the economic front and altogether a much more positive cold war. :)
 
If you want to integrate baseball earlier, have John McGraw get the ear of the owners of the Giants in the early 1920s and present a plan to make the Giants top dogs in New York once more by signing several black players: IOTL, McGraw kept a list of black players he coveted for the Giants but was never able to act on it. In this case, though, to put Babe Ruth and the Yankees in eclipse, the Giants say the hell with the color line, sign Cool Papa Bell, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and perhaps a few others, regaining dominant status in the National League, and changing the style of baseball. You'd probably get a few other teams doing likewise, like the perennial tail-end Phillies and Braves in the NL, or the A's, Red Sox, and Browns in the AL. (Yes, I know IOTL the Red Sox were the last to integrate; however, we're talking the 1920s following the Giants' revolutionary lead.)

This could turn the sport on its head, and lead to integration of the newborn NFL as well. Now you're getting a generation of kids growing up in the '20s with folk heroes who are black, thus countering to some degree the 19th century racial attitudes of their elders. That in turn should smooth the road somewhat for further integration.
 
You can talk about different courses and terms of World War I and change world history, but with baseball, you have a uniquely American institution. Abandonment of the “dead ball” after 1926 makes the sport more interesting. Baseball becomes the sport shared through the newly expanding medium of radio, as each play can be reduced to sets of one-dimensional moves easily understood by fans familiar with the sport. Baseball cards existed (often in tobacco products) and racially integrated teams would be visible and collectable.

In this case, baseball in the twenties might do what rock and roll did in the fifties: made racial equality a reality in a given place, the juke box
 
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