Wendell Smith
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Wendell Smith (March 23, 1914 - November 26, 1972) was a noted African American sportswriter who was influential in the choice of Jackie Robinson to become the first African American player in Major League Baseball in the 20th century.
A Detroit native, Smith graduated from West Virginia State College with a degree in physical education. He began his writing career in 1938 with the Pittsburgh Courier, then the most popular paper within the black community in the country. He covered the Homestead Grays, Pittsburgh Crawfords, and Pittsburgh Pirates of baseball's Negro Leagues for the Courier. Smith also petitioned the Baseball Writers Association of America for membership but was turned down because he was with the Courier and not one of the white-owned papers.
As a result of the times, Robinson would have had to stay in many hotels alone as a result of segregation. The Courier offered to pay for Smith to travel with Robinson. Smith traveled with Robinson in the minors in 1946 and with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
After the 1947 season, Smith moved on to Chicago and joined the white-owned Chicago Herald-American. Smith left his baseball beat and covered mostly boxing for the American. In 1948, his application to join the BBWAA was approved, and he became the first African American member of the organization.
Smith moved to television in 1964 when he joined Chicago television station WGN, though he continued to write a weekly column for the Chicago Sun-Times. Smith died of cancer at age 58.
In 1993, he was a posthumous recipient of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award for excellence in journalism, enshrining him in the "writers wing" of the Baseball Hall of Fame. His widow Wyonella Smith donated his papers to the Hall of Fame's archives in 1996, providing invaluable research material on the subject of baseball's integration.
