In the early 1960s, he was at the forefront of the newspaper’s campaign to integrate spring training facilities in Florida. He stood out in the still rough and tumble newspaper business of the time and he was prolific, writing about baseball, boxing and other sports. (He also became the first Black member of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America).
The next year, Chicago’s Herald-American hired Smith, who became the first Black sports writer at a white newspaper in the country. On April 15, 1947, Robinson became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era. Rickey also hired Smith to travel with Robinson during the 19 seasons to provide support, even as Smith continued to write for the Courier. After extensive scouting and meetings, Rickey signed Robinson and sent him to the Montreal Royals, a Triple-A minor league club.
Smith knew Jackie Robinson and told Rickey about him. It was late in 1945 when he and Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey talked about the possibility of signing a Black player.
That disappointment would fuel, as he put it, his desire to “do something on behalf of the Negro ballplayers.”ĭirectly out of college, he was hired - at $17 a week - by the Pittsburgh Courier, the weekly African American newspaper where he worked from 1937 to 1948. He was the publicist for the school’s football team but his ambitions to play professional baseball were thwarted by Major League Baseball’s segregationist policies. He was a talented athlete in high school and while attending West Virginia State College as a physical education major.
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