When Baseball Went White

"A boon to scholars of both the early development of baseball and race relations after the Civil War."—Library Journal

"When Baseball Went White is an intriguing, insightful, and provocative book that opens exciting possibilities for future researchers."—David Welky, Journal of Sport History

"Lively and engaging."—Dain Tepoel, Sport in American History

“Ryan Swanson's carefully researched and wonderfully nuanced study of baseball’s declining race relations during Reconstruction sheds considerable light on this oft-neglected topic. A must-read.”—Peter Morris, author of A Game of Inches and Level Playing Fields

“Deeply researched and well written, Ryan A. Swanson’s When Baseball Went White carefully examines ‘the mechanics of segregation’ that racially cleansed organized baseball during Reconstruction and in the process helped the game become our ‘national pastime,’ at the expense of civil rights and racial justice.  Swanson reveals, in fine detail, how a sport that would become a truly meaningful cultural practice and institution nevertheless became something less than it might have been.”—Daniel A. Nathan, president of the North American Society for Sport History and author of Saying It’s So: A Cultural History of the Black Sox Scandal