Tuskegee University's William Clarence Matthews, whose photo is adapted from a June 1905 image in McClure’s Magazine (courtesy of Karl Lindholm), began playing for Burlington in the Northern League later that summer. (Photo Illustration by Mark Bushnell).The rumor arose in July 1905: William Clarence Matthews was about to become the first African-American player in Major League Baseball. The news reached Vermont just days after Matthews did.
Matthews, who had just graduated from Harvard (University), had signed to play shortstop for the Burlington team in the Northern League. The rumor, which first appeared in the pages of the Boston Traveler newspaper, was that Fred Tenney, manager of Boston's National League club, was considering adding Matthews to his roster.
If a club was looking for a player to test the unwritten rule that kept blacks out of the major leagues, Matthews was an excellent candidate. Well-educated, well-spoken and well-liked, Matthews seems to have had the temperament and intellect to bear the pressure that would come with being the player to break the "color line." And, as he had proved while leading Harvard, one of the country's best amateur teams, he could hold his own with the best white players.
Today, we know that the rumor never came to fruition. The world would have to wait 42 more years for Jackie Robinson to break the color line. But thank goodness the Traveler printed the rumor, whether or not it had any basis in fact. Otherwise, Matthews might have been lost to the ages.
The notice in the Traveler sparked debate in newspapers around the country. That debate was mentioned briefly in a couple of books about blacks in baseball. When Vermont scholar Karl Lindholm saw those few lines, he suspected there was more to the story. He has been working since to resurrect Matthews from obscurity.
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Karl Lindholm is a Dean of Cook Commons and Assistant Professor of American Studies at Middlebury College. He specializes in the study of baseball, the Negro leagues in particular, and has published widely on baseball topics. He has written about William Clarence Matthews for academic journals and other magazines and is nearing completion of a full-length biography. Most of the details in this column come from Lindholm's research. Lindholm earned his B.A.( English ) from Middlebury (1967) and holds a Ph.D in American Studies (American Literature) from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
