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• High Cost of Sports SegregationYes, suh, the white folks of the sovereign state of Louisiana are determined to keep the colored folks “in their place”—even if the white folks have to penalize themselves to do it!That’s exactly what the white folks” did this week when they put into force a law which will wreck every, sports program in the state, intercollegiate and professional. Louisianans won’t see any first-rate collegiate football or basketball, any major league baseball exhibitions, or even any good tennis, unless they travel out of their state to see it. The new Louisiana law forbids white and colored athletes to play on the same field, or box in the same ring under penalty of $1,000 fine or a year in prison!* * *, And who is hurt by this attempt to legislate segregation in sports? Collegiate football and basketball teams in the East, North and West? They will find plenty of intersectional competition outside of Louisiana. The professional baseball teams? They can play spring exhibition games in many other states. Professional boxers? They can get matches in New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Boston, Milwaukee, and dozens of other owns that like good fights regradless of the color of the fighters skin.It’s the sports fans of Louisiana, their own promoters, and their own schools who bear the brunt of this narrow-minded law.The colleees already have felt, the ninnhbecause no, self-respecting college outside of the South would subject itself to this kind of restriction, regardless of whether they happened to have a Negro boy playing on a particular team that might be matched against a Louisiana team. Already the University of Wisconsin has cancelled a home-and-home football series with Louisiana State University, and Marquette University has removed Loyola of New Orleans from its basketball schedule. Dozens of other colleges are following suit, and the annual Sugar Bowl basketball tournament is wrecked. It will be interesting to see if the Sugar Bowl football game can find any competitors from outside the South to play in the annual New Year’s Day post-season game, once rated among the top three in the country.* * *Major league baseball teams will just by-pass Louisiana next spring on their exhibition schedule. Baseball outgrew its “color line” a decade ago, and it won’t turn back the clock for Louisiana’s segregationists.Louisiana couldn’t even play host to a first-class women’s tennis tournament, because Althea Gibson couldn’t play, although she is welcome in international tournaments from Australia to Forest Hills.In the sports world, the people of Louisiana have made themselves second-class citizens. And it’s nobody’s fault but theirr\\\rr\
Newspaper Details
Racine Journal Times Bulletin
Racine, Wisconsin, US
Sun, Oct 21, 1956
Page 8
Full Page
Clipped by
Uw -.
WI, USA 09 Mar 2022
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