When [Jackie] Robinson joined the [Kansas City] Monarchs, [Buck] O’Neil believed, the Monarchs started learning from him very quickly. Previously, they had always traveled by bus, and as they swung through the South, there were certain places they always stopped for gas and food. There was a place in Muskogee, Oklahoma, where they had always gassed up, but where the owner never let them use the rest rooms. Robinson had not known that, so when the bus pulled in, ready to fill up its twin fifty-gallon tanks, he got out to go to the men’s room. “Where you going, boy?” the owner said, and Robinson answered that he was going to the men’s room. “No, you’re not,” the owner said. “You boys know that.” Robinson never even hesitated. “Take the hose out of the tank!” he said immediately, and that was no idle threat, for one hundred gallons of gas was a big sale, a fair percentage of the amount of money the man might make on a given day. The man looked at Robinson and saw the anger and strength in his face. He was not the first, and certainly not the last, white man to see that conviction, and he immediately backed down. “You boys can use the rest rooms,” he said. “Just don’t stay there too long.”
This is from David Halberstam, October 1964. I’m enjoying learning a lot about early baseball. I didn’t follow it much until the late 1980s. And of course the interplay of baseball and racial discrimination is a major theme of the book.
The Kansas City Monarchs were a baseball franchise in the Negro American League. Jackie Robinson joined the team in 1945. Buck O’Neil was the Monarchs’ manager from 1948 to 1955.
Although I don’t know if economist Gary Becker knew this story, I’m pretty sure, given his insights about how free markets undercut racial discrimination, that he wouldn’t have been surprised and, of course, would have been delighted.
READER COMMENTS
Jerry Brown
Jan 4 2022 at 7:46pm
Great story- thanks for sharing it!
I remember (long time ago) my micro economics 101 professor asking the class about the economic reasons that racial discrimination by firms might be inefficient. He seemed genuinely surprised when I said that excluding talented people only because of their race was bound to be inefficient on multiple levels. Jackie Robinson, and Hank Aaron, and Willie Mays absolutely make that point obvious. Major League Baseball was far better off when they stopped their blatant discrimination.
Still wonder why the professor was so surprised by my answer though. But it was a long time ago.
David Henderson
Jan 4 2022 at 10:34pm
Strange. When he asked the question, he must have had some answer in mind. I wonder what it was.
Jeff G.
Jan 4 2022 at 8:20pm
Great story but you left off the best part. After that one example, the whole team starting asking if they could use the bathroom before they filled up at any other gas station.
robc
Jan 5 2022 at 7:56am
https://www.billjamesonline.com/why_david_halberstam_committed_more_errors_than_lou_brock/
I was looking for Bill James’ review of Halberstam’s Summer of 49 and came across this instead.
David Henderson
Jan 5 2022 at 9:49am
Wow! Thanks. Of course, it makes me wonder whether the story I quoted above is true.
robc
Jan 5 2022 at 10:02am
Or worse, is anything Halberstam wrote about anything true?
Daniel
Jan 5 2022 at 8:57am
Of course, higher-cost/lower-profit producers can survive in localized marketplaces for quite some time (see almost every business on The Profit), just not in the “long run.” Is the moral of the story that producers privilege profit over discrimination, or that they will do so for the occasional high stakes? One can easily picture Robinson being turned away with a 10 gallon (rather than 100 gallon) purchase in mind. The theory is great; perhaps widespread discrimination can be excised from the general marketplace pretty quickly (anecdotal evidence exists). But the practice in marginal cases seems less clear; localized discrimination may take a while to be snuffed out (systematic evidence needed).
robc
Jan 5 2022 at 9:03am
I have argued before, and still contend, that Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey did more to end racial discrimination than the Civil Rights Acts.
The CRA was a lagging indicator at best.
nobody.really
Jan 5 2022 at 1:01pm
For what it’s worth, Harvard’s Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone) and Shaylyn Romney Garrett reached a similar conclusion in The Upswing: By many measures, the 1960s/early 1970s marked the apex for racial progress and social cohesion in the US. Things have deteriorated since then.
Andrew_FL
Jan 5 2022 at 11:04am
It’s a great story, but O’Neil presents the story as if he were an eyewitness when, at best, he must be giving a second hand account, since there was no actual overlap between O’Neil’s tenure with the Monarchs and Robinson’s.
Fred
Jan 6 2022 at 11:29am
No question that Jackie Robinson did much to remove racism from sports and American society in general, but the impact was not instantaneous. Thirty years after the incident in this story, Warren Moon went undrafted by the NFL despite a highly successful college career including MVP of the Rose Bowl when the Rose Bowl was the big one. Black coaches at D1 schools still seem underrepresented https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/30435797/the-lack-black-college-football-coaches-glaring-the-excuses-it
We have made progress, but it’s been slow.
Actually, many things that people and societies do, don’t make sense from a pure market economic standpoint.
zeke5123
Jan 6 2022 at 6:14pm
Why jump to racism?
Tom Brady had a good college career. Seriously, go look at his final two seasons. It was pretty good. He was drafted in the 6th round. Was it because drafters were biased against Brady? Or is that maybe mistakes are sometimes made.
David Seltzer
Jan 6 2022 at 6:24pm
My activist mother, an ardent FDR Democrat, attended a civil rights rally in Chicago where MLK and Jackie Robinson spoke. During the Q and A, a young Black person asked Jackie how he could succeed in a world that had excluded him. Mr. Robinson replied, “Make yourself valuable.” As an aside, my mother worked tirelessly with her time and money to help get Richard Hatcher elected Mayor of Gary.
T Boyle
Jan 7 2022 at 11:28am
Great story, and of course the market can punish discrimination.
But the market can also impose discrimination, if other customers pressure a business to discriminate, when it might otherwise not do so.
I don’t know how big a factor that was in racial discrimination in the Jim Crow era, but viewpoint/political discrimination has certainly been effectively imposed by market forces. Consider that during the McCarthy and Cancel Culture eras, businesses – pressured by their customers – terminated relationships with otherwise-valued employees and service providers. It wouldn’t surprise me if this sort of thing was also a significant factor in business decisions in the Jim Crow south.
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