In 1947, Major League Baseball tried to ease racial tensions with a photoshoot

Dodgers second baseman Jackie Robinson called the photoshoot with Phillies manager Ben Chapman “one of the most difficult things I had to make myself do”

Erin Looney

Dec 17, 2019·17 min read

The rookie second baseman strolled to the plate in the first inning of a late April game, just as he had done since his call-up earlier that month. Digging into the batter’s box, he heard the familiar sound of chatter from the opposing bench. But in the chatter this day was a more sinister message, aimed directly at him.

“Hey, n****r, why don’t you go back to the cotton fields where you belong?”[1]

It was the voice of the opposition’s white manager. He continued, this time invoking the rest of the rookie infielder’s team, “Hey, snowflake, which one of these white boys’ wives are you dating tonight?”[2]

The second baseman remained quiet and continued his at bat, but his teammates began to stir. White players began firing back at the vocal visiting manager, peppering their responses with support for their teammate as well as threats and challenges to the offender. By the end of the game, the home team logged a 1–0 victory, the target of the manager’s assault retaliating with his bat via a single that culminated in the game’s only run. Moreover, another player for the home team remarked later that the incident had served as a catalyst for unifying the black infielder and his white teammates.

There is no unity in their pose, with the men’s gazes fixed in opposition to one another even as they stand in feigned solidarity.

The year was 1947, and this incident did not occur in St. Louis or Baltimore, the southernmost Major League Baseball locations at the time. It happened in Brooklyn in the Dodgers’ own Ebbets Field against Philadelphia, a city situated comfortably north of the Mason-Dixon Line. The second baseman was Jackie Robinson, the first black Major League player since 1884, and the Phillies manager was white, Nashville-born, Alabama-bred Ben Chapman. Robinson commented on that game in the Pittsburgh Courier, “The things the Phillies shouted at me from their bench have been shouted at me from other benches and I am not worried about it. They sound just the same in the big league as they did in the minor league.”[3]

However, Robinson said, on that day in April, he was “nearer to cracking up than I had ever been” after the incident with Chapman, adding:

“For one wild and rage-crazed minute I thought, ‘To hell with Mr. Rickey’s noble experiment. It’s clear it won’t succeed. I have made every effort to work hard, to get myself into shape. My best is not enough for them.’ I thought what a glorious, cleansing thing it would be to let go. To hell with the image of the patient black freak I was supposed to create. I could throw down my bat, stride over to that Phillies dugout, grab one of those white sons of bitches and smash his teeth in with my despised black fist. Then I could walk away from it all. I’d never become a sports star. But my son could tell his son someday what his daddy could have been if he hadn’t been too much of a man.”[4]

The Noble Experiment

Chapman had warned sports writers that he planned to give Robinson a hard time when the Phillies were in Brooklyn, but he never indicated the heights to which his terrorizing would reach.[5] Further, the Phillies skipper had built a reputation for virulent race-baiting of Jewish, Italian, and Polish players before Robinson entered the league.[6] In other words, Ben Chapman’s behavior, on the whole, was not a surprise. Notorious as he was for taunting, though, his words to Robinson were verbal torture. Harold Parrott wrote of that game:

“At no time in my life have I ever heard racial venom and dugout abuse to match the abuse that [Chapman] sprayed on Robinson that night. Chapman mentioned everything from thick lips to the supposedly extra-thick Negro skull. . . [and] the repulsive sores and diseases he said Robinson’s teammates would become infected with if they touched the towels or the combs he used.”[7]

Chapman maintained he was merely engaging in classic ribbing of the rival — trash talk, if you will — a tradition in baseball for as long as the game has been around. In Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy, Jules Tygiel explained baseball was torn regarding Chapman’s behavior, with many agreeing with Chapman’s insistence he was treating Robinson the same as he would treat any other opponent.[8] A number of writers agreed Chapman was only doing what Rickey and the Dodgers had asked opponents to do and treating Robinson as an equal on the diamond. Despite a modicum of support for his position, Chapman found himself officially on the unpopular side of the issue when the Commissioner’s office issued a formal warning to the Phils skipper to cease his abuse.[9] More importantly, Chapman’s behavior had an unintended, inadvertent but perhaps more powerful effect on integration in the game of baseball.

It was still early in Robinson’s rookie campaign and the Dodgers were still decidedly split on whether they supported Branch Rickey’s choice for their new second baseman. While a number of players were publicly accepting of Robinson, some were still coming to terms with such a “bold” move on their team. When the Phillies unleashed their abuse, however, Robinson’s teammates united in his defense. Upon the initial contract, Rickey suggested to Robinson the best way to handle the inevitable attacks he would endure on the field was to avoid fighting back, to allow his dignity and baseball talent to prove his worth for him. This was difficult for a man who had, until now, often responded to racism with the justifiable anger and heat he felt toward the offenders.[10] So that day in April, not even two weeks after his Major League debut, Robinson and his teammates were navigating unfamiliar waters. Knowing Robinson had sworn to remain calm and fight with his bat and glove, his teammates scrambled to his defense as the abuse escalated. Two Dodgers in particular made notable statements in their alliance with Robinson, one for his shifting feelings toward integration and the other for the fervor with which he defended his teammate.

Placing the media’s superhero alongside its arch villain in a staged photo might telegraph that there was no trouble in paradise, that there was in fact joy in Mudville.

When it was evident Robinson was not destined to be a career minor leaguer, Dodgers outfielder Dixie Walker quickly voiced his refusal to accept playing alongside a black man, even writing a letter to Rickey stating his intent to leave the team if Robinson played for the Dodgers and circulating a petition among the players protesting the integration of the Dodgers.[11] However, when Chapman, a close personal friend of the Alabama-born Walker, let loose his cannon of vitriol, even Walker felt compelled to chide the Phillies manager.[12] While Walker’s reprimand of Chapman was notable, it was mostly symbolic and occurred after the on-field incident.

On the other hand, Brooklyn infielder Ed Stanky’s response to Chapman and the Phillies’ abuse was both public and timely as a unifying force for Robinson and his somewhat unconvinced teammates. By the third game of the season, the Philadelphia-born but Alabama-raised Stanky had reached his limit, coming out of the dugout to confront Chapman.[13] Multiple accounts of the story, including Robinson’s own, quote Stanky as threatening the Phillies manager by saying, “Listen, you yellow-bellied cowards, why don’t you yell at somebody who can answer back?”[14] Robinson’s account of his story indicates the gravity of Stanky’s choice to intervene, as he explained “it was then [after Stanky’s stand] that I began to feel better. I remembered Mr. Rickey’s prediction. If I won the respect of the team and got them solidly behind me, there would be no question about the success of the experiment.”[15]

As easily as Stanky chose to defend Robinson, he could have looked the other way. As teammates, the other Dodgers would likely never have joined Chapman in his taunts, but they still had the option to say nothing, to remain idly by and allow Robinson to handle the situation either by retaliation or through his own lonely silence. We will never know if Robinson would have maintained his stoicism or eventually fired back at the abuse nor what impact his behavior might have had on Rickey’s “experiment.” What we do know is Rickey argued Chapman’s abuse inadvertently strengthened the bond of the 1947 Dodgers:

“Chapman did more than anybody to unite the Dodgers. When he poured out that string of unconscionable abuse, he solidified and unified thirty men, not one of whom was willing to sit by and see someone kick around a man who had his hands tied behind his back — Chapman made Jackie a real member of the Dodgers.”[16]

The Photograph(s)

The vitriol with which he taunted the Dodgers second baseman was both a strong reminder of the objections to Robinson’s presence held by many and a powerful force in furthering his acceptance in the game. Other teams had given Branch Rickey’s “noble experiment” a hard time, but the incident with Philadelphia and Chapman became as pivotal in cementing Robinson’s legacy as in exposing the pervasiveness of racism even in a major northern city like Philadelphia. More importantly, a photograph taken after the events but before Chapman’s firing in 1948 served as an important rhetorical bandage for both baseball and the city of Philadelphia.

In early May 1947, when the Dodgers traveled to Philadelphia, Jackie Robinson and Ben Chapman posed together for a publicity photo ostensibly to show they had mended fences and were ready to move on from the hate. In the photo, both men are holding the same bat, and at first glance the photograph gives the illusion the men agreed to let bygones be bygones, as the saying goes. They are, in fact, posed together in the photo, indicating there must have been some agreement for the photograph to even exist. The singular bat acts as a stilted symbol of one game — the same game — being played by men who were able to look past their differences.

“The things the Phillies shouted at me from their bench have been shouted at me from other benches and I am not worried about it. They sound just the same in the big league as they did in the minor league.” — Jackie Robinson

However, more than a two-second glance at the photo reveals something other than unity and peace, as Chapman is looking into the camera and gripping the handle of the bat and Robinson stands to his right looking away from the camera and uncomfortably supporting the barrel of the bat with his right hand. The men are standing close to one another, but there is a visible distance between them. Robinson’s left hand appears to be on his hip, serving as a barrier between the men, keeping Chapman at a comfortable distance. There is no unity in their pose, with the men’s gazes fixed in opposition to one another even as they stand in feigned solidarity. Neither player nor manager appears genuine; the smile on Robinson’s face looks forced and Chapman’s stony visage reveals nothing. Nevertheless, the photo ran in several newspapers, positioned as a gesture of good will between the men.

There are two versions of the photo, in fact. In the second, Robinson still has his left hand on his hip with his right hand supporting the barrel of the bat. Chapman still grips the handle with both hands. In this second photo, however, the two men appear to be making eye contact. Chapman’s lips are parted as if he is speaking; Robinson’s mouth shows a slight smile — or perhaps a smirk. At first, they appear somewhat more comfortable with one another in this second photo, but a longer study appears to show Chapman looking slightly down and past Robinson. Robinson, in turn, is staring directly into Chapman’s face. It’s difficult to say for sure where the men were looking, what — if anything — they were saying, to whom they were speaking. It isn’t difficult, however, to see their pose is anything but authentic. Understanding the events that prompted the shoot negates the message the league intended to send through the images.

The Meeting

Just as there are two photos, there are two versions of the story that led to the photos. In one, Robinson quickly agreed to meet with Chapman, and in the other, there was hesitation by the Dodgers second baseman.[17] In either case, the men met as a result of a series of events that transpired in the time between the Brooklyn series and the Philadelphia series. During the weeks between April 22 in Brooklyn and May 9 in Philadelphia, Rickey had been in contact with Phillies president Bob Carpenter, general manager Herb Pennock, and Commissioner of Baseball Happy Chandler regarding Robinson’s inclusion on the roster when the Dodgers came to Philadelphia. Pennock warned Rickey that Robinson was unwelcome in the City of Brotherly Love and that if he traveled with the team, the Phillies would refuse to play, a threat which Rickey was content to see through as it meant forfeiture for the Phils (the score would be recorded as 9–0 for the Dodgers).[18] Further, the Dodgers were refused lodging at their usual accommodations, the Benjamin Franklin Hotel, the manager explaining he would not house the team “while you have any Nigras with you.” Thus, the Dodgers retreated to the Warwick, a more expensive arrangement.[19]

It was after this not-so-warm welcome that both Rickey and Commissioner Chandler arranged the Robinson-Chapman meeting. Whether either party went willingly, the men are visibly uncomfortable in the resultant photographs. Robinson commented on the meeting in I Never Had It Made, his 1972 autobiography with Alfred Duckett:

“The Phillies manager was genuinely in trouble as a result of all the publicity on the racial razzing. Mr. Rickey thought it would be gracious and generous if I posed for a picture shaking hands with Chapman. The idea was also promoted by the baseball commissioner. I was somewhat sold — but not altogether — on the concept that a display of such harmony would be ‘good for the game.’ I have to admit, though, that having my picture taken with this man was one of the most difficult things I had to make myself do.”[20]

However, the photos were taken not for the sole purpose of absolving Chapman and the Phillies; the meeting was a greater attempt to calm the ensuing storm Chapman’s actions had inadvertently prompted. Prior to the 1947 season, when Robinson was expected to play Major League Baseball but had not yet set foot on the field, there were numerous empty threats by opposing teams, managers, fans, and even Robinson’s own teammates, as discussed previously, but the Commissioner’s Office supported Rickey and Robinson and the 1947 season kicked off quietly until Chapman’s outburst in the latter half of the first month of the season. First there was Chapman’s loud dissent on April 22, but another highly visible objection reared its ugly head in early May.

“If you do this, you will be suspended from the league. You will find that the friends you think you have in the press box will not support you, that you will be outcasts.” — Ford Frick

Powered by the Phillies manager’s actions, the St. Louis Cardinals voiced their own disapproval of Robinson’s inclusion on the Brooklyn roster. The Dodgers were scheduled to play in St. Louis shortly after the incident at Ebbets Field and with media attention still focused on Chapman’s racial slurs, the Cardinals began organizing their own protest. According to Rampersad’s account in Jackie Robinson: A Biography, Cards owner Sam Breadon got wind of his team organizing a strike, refusing to play on the same field as Robinson, an action that “might then spread throughout the league, to turn back the clock on integration.”[21] Breadon took his discovery to National League president Ford Frick in an attempt to keep the impending incident from occurring as well as to keep it out of the papers. Herald Tribune writer Stanley Woodward (no relation to Bob), however, got wind of the plot and quickly reported it alongside Frick’s reaction to it. Frick reportedly said, “If you do this, you will be suspended from the league. You will find that the friends you think you have in the press box will not support you, that you will be outcasts.”[22] He added the National League “will go down the line with Robinson whatever the consequences,” indicating his support for the Dodgers infielder and, by extension, the integration of Major League Baseball.[23] The message was also sent to other National League teams as a preemptive strike should any other clubhouse be cultivating a similar idea.[24]

Press following the revelation of St. Louis’s strike plot was mostly negative toward the Cardinals’ behavior. Nonetheless, even as the media overwhelmingly supported Robinson and the Dodgers, baseball’s front office recognized that the recent negative publicity regarding integration might be detrimental to the game. Enter the photo op. While authors like Rampersad have speculated Chapman negotiated the meeting because he recognized his job was in danger, Rickey and Robinson’s agreement to the rendezvous — reluctant or not — indicated another motivation for it. In the weeks prior to the photograph, both men’s names had been prominent in the sports news pages. While there were some accounts of Stanky’s passionate response to the abuse, Walker’s unexpected support, and the entire Cardinals roster’s threat to strike, the story that had faces was the story of Chapman’s race-baiting. Major League Baseball — including Chandler, Rickey, Carpenter, and even Chapman and Robinson themselves — recognized the episode in Flatbush could have dire consequences not just for integration or for one man’s managing job but for the game itself, for the American pastime. Baseball was wounded by the negativity surrounding Robinson as much as it was strengthened by the support. Therefore, placing the media’s superhero alongside its arch villain in a staged photo might telegraph that there was no trouble in paradise, that there was in fact joy in Mudville.

Moreover, Robinson had been receiving loads of fan mail peppered with handfuls of terrifying hate mail. Baseball fans were divided on Robinson’s inclusion in the game, and Major League Baseball hoped to unify them for many reasons, not the least of which was to avoid any follow-through on threats made toward Robinson and his family. Again, placing Robinson and Chapman in a voluntary partnership — never mind how staged it was — might soften the rage of dissenting baseball fans. Put crudely, if the redneck from Alabama could make peace with the black man, so could the fans.

This time, unlike in May 1947, the awkward veneer of the photos is stripped away and viewers are made keenly aware the men were feigning a truce, doing what each felt was best for himself and for the game they both loved, albeit in different ways.

The photos made their rounds in the press, rhetorically and publicly closing the lid on the feud between Chapman and Robinson, but Chapman did not surrender the ideas or managing practices that had helped him earn his reputation, and in 1948, the Phillies fired him. Robinson continued to draw ire from some corners of the baseball landscape, but overall, Rickey’s “noble experiment” was successful and more black baseball players were signed by Major League teams in the subsequent years. The Philadelphia Phillies, as it happened, were Major League Baseball’s last team to integrate, and it took them ten years after the iconic photo was taken to do so.

The Aftermath

Following the 1947 season, the photos still invoked a divided understanding, as they were often used as symbolic of Robinson’s acceptance and baseball’s forward-thinking stance on integration. Until the April 2013 release of Brian Helgeland’s Jackie Robinson biopic 42, the incident between Chapman and Robinson had seemingly faded from a now fully integrated Major League Baseball. With the movie’s release came renewed interest in the events connected with the photograph, as the scene between Chapman (Alan Tudyk) and Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) is one of its most compelling. Media outlets such as The New York Times, Philly.com, and The Atlantic posted stories about Chapman and “what really happened” between the men that day in April 1947.[25] Seamheads.com re-published a piece from 2010 by Eddie Gilley, who had met with an older Chapman while the author was in college, in which he asked Chapman to tell his side of the story.[26] Gilley paints a picture of a man who was honest about his actions in 1947 but who seemed troubled by his place as a villain in the history of baseball.

In 2016, the City of Philadelphia issued a long-overdue posthumous apology to Robinson for the way he was treated in Philadelphia and by the Phillies at Ebbets Field in the spring of 1947.[27] The measure was introduced by Philadelphia City Council member Helen Gym after she was inspired in part by the 2013 film starring Boseman and by a barnstorming tour through the south by a Philly-based Little League team.[28] That team featured another baseball trailblazer in Mo’ne Davis, one of two girls — and a girl of color — to play in the 2014 Little League World Series (LLWS) and the first girl to earn a win and pitch a shutout in the LLWS.

Each of these stories also ran at least one of the uncomfortable photos of the men once again, renewing their importance to a new generation of baseball fans. This time, unlike in May 1947, the awkward veneer of the photos is stripped away and viewers are made keenly aware the men were feigning a truce, doing what each felt was best for himself and for the game they both loved, albeit in different ways. Since it was taken, both Robinson and Chapman have spoken numerous times about the events that led to the inception of the iconic photos, revealing the discomfort that now seems so obvious within them. Instead of indicating unity, a modern reading shows only distance, and rather than standing as symbols of the great strides by Major League Baseball toward integration, the shots reveal the great lengths to which the game and those within it still needed to go before Robinson or any other black player would be accepted as equal, or as in Robinson’s case, at least slightly better, on the diamond.

[1] Rampersad, Arnold, Jackie Robinson: A Biography. Toronto: CNIB, 2002, p. 172.

[2] Rampersad, Arnold, Jackie Robinson: A Biography. Toronto: CNIB, 2002, p. 172.

[3] Rampersad, Arnold, Jackie Robinson: A Biography. Toronto: CNIB, 2002, p. 173.

[4] Robinson, Jackie, and Alfred Duckett. I Never Had It Made. New York.: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995, p. 59.

[5] Rossi, John. “He Was Unwelcome.” The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 7, 2013

[6] Lamb, Chris. “Public Slur in 1938 Laid Bare a Game’s Racism.” The New York Times. July 27, 2008.

[7] Tygiel, Jules. Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 182.

[8] Tygiel, Jules. Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 183.

[9] Tygiel, Jules. Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 183.

[10] Rampersad, Arnold, Jackie Robinson: A Biography. Toronto: CNIB, 2002.

[11] Rampersad, Arnold, Jackie Robinson: A Biography. Toronto: CNIB, 2002.

[12] Rampersad, Arnold, Jackie Robinson: A Biography. Toronto: CNIB, 2002.

[13] Rampersad, Arnold, Jackie Robinson: A Biography. Toronto: CNIB, 2002.

[14] Rampersad, Arnold, Jackie Robinson: A Biography. Toronto: CNIB, 2002, p. 173. Tygiel, Jules. Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 183. Robinson, Jackie, and Alfred Duckett. I Never Had It Made. New York.: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995, p. 60.

[15] Robinson, Jackie, and Alfred Duckett. I Never Had It Made. New York.: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995, p. 90.

[16] Robinson, Jackie, and Alfred Duckett. I Never Had It Made. New York.: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995, p. 93.

[17] Rampersad, Arnold, Jackie Robinson: A Biography. Toronto: CNIB, 2002. Tygiel, Jules. Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 183. Robinson, Jackie, and Alfred Duckett. I Never Had It Made. New York.: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995.

[18] Rampersad, Arnold, Jackie Robinson: A Biography. Toronto: CNIB, 2002.

[19] Rampersad, Arnold, Jackie Robinson: A Biography. Toronto: CNIB, 2002, p. 175.

[20] Robinson, Jackie, and Alfred Duckett. I Never Had It Made. New York.: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995, p. 92.

[21] Rampersad, Arnold, Jackie Robinson: A Biography. Toronto: CNIB, 2002, p. 174.

[22] Tygiel, Jules. Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 188.

[23] Robinson, Jackie, and Alfred Duckett. I Never Had It Made. New York.: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995, p. 93.

[24] Burk, Robert Frederick. Much More Than A Game: Players, Owners, & American Baseball Since 1921. Charlotte: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

[25] Barra, Allen. “What Really Happened to Ben Chapman, the Racist Baseball Player in 42?” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, July 17, 2013. Robinson, Ray. “Jackie Robinson and a Barrier Unbroken.” The New York Times, May 18, 2013. Rossi, John. “He Was Unwelcome.” The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 7, 2013.

[26] Gilley, Eddie. “Ben Chapman and Jackie Robinson.” Seamheads.com RSS. Accessed December 11, 2019.

[27] Tracy, Marc. “69 Years Later, Philadelphia Apologizes to Jackie Robinson.” The New York Times, April 15, 2016.

[28] Wang, Yanan. “Philadelphia Apologizes to Jackie Robinson for the ‘Unconscionable Abuse’ He Once Suffered There.” The Washington Post, April 30, 2019.