Ebbets Field, Race, and Racism

Ebbets Field holds a special place in the hearts, minds, and memories of New Yorkers. For a half-century, fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers rode trollies and the subway to cheer on their team. But the Dodgers were almost never as good as their crosstown rivals, the Yankees. The team’s fortunes turned in 1947 when Jackie Robinson, a fleet footed, African American infielder joined the club.  Robinson not only broke baseball’s color barrier, he ushered in a new era of Dodger baseball, culminating in a World Series Championship in 1955. But the heyday of Dodger baseball was shortlived. In 1957, the team moved to Los Angeles. Three years later, the old ballpark in Crown Heights was demolished.

The Dodgers weren’t the only ones to leave town. The Italian, Irish, and Jewish immigrants who had called Crown Heights home left too, bound for lilywhite suburbs in southern Brooklyn, the outer boroughs, and elsewhere. In short order, black migrants from the South, followed by immigrants from the Caribbean, made up the majority in the old neighborhood.

It is commonly said that when the Dodgers moved, the team took the soul of Brooklyn with it, leaving behind a community unsuitable for the striving classes. Over the years, countless writers and journalists have made the pilgrimage to the site of the old ballpark. And almost universally, they have lamented the tragic turn the neighborhood has taken. “Where Once Brooklyn Triumphed, A Tragic Scene,” declared the headline of a 2008 New York Times expose on poverty and crime in and around Ebbets Field Apartments.

My remarks will explore the hold that Ebbets Field and the Brooklyn Dodgers continues to have on New Yorkers, and the ways that this hold has framed race and racism through the present day.