1. Why do championship sports teams visit the White House anyway? For all those who think that @whatwouldDOOdo is politicizing a time-honored nonpartisan ritual, let’s take a little trip back to the very first such visit, in 1865:
@whatwouldDOOdo 2. The Civil War was over. Black teams and white teams—many of them still comprised of Union soldiers—in Washington, D.C., gather on the White Lot, what we now call the Ellipse, mingling freely and playing ball.
@whatwouldDOOdo 3. A three game tournament was arranged between the Brooklyn Atlantic, the Philadelphia Athletic, and the Washington National. Fans flocked to the games. The president gave federal workers time off to attend. And the winning club—The Atlantic, of course—went to the White House.
@whatwouldDOOdo 4. The visit was arranged by the ambitious president of The Nationals, Arthur Pue Gorman, a patronage appointee of President Andrew Johnson’s. He wanted baseball to become a tool of national reunification, and he wanted a “national stamp” on that effort.
@whatwouldDOOdo 5. In 1867, Gorman was elected president of the National Association of Base Ball Players. He helped push through the very first Jim Crow rule in the nation, banning any club with one or more colored players.
@whatwouldDOOdo 6. "If colored clubs were admitted,” argued the NABBP’s secretary, “there would be in all probability some division of feeling, whereas, by excluding them no injury could result to anybody, and the possibility of any rupture being created on political grounds would be avoided."
@whatwouldDOOdo 7. Gorman then set about doing the nation what he had done to baseball. He was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he thundered, “We have determined that this government was made by white men and shall be ruled by white men as long as the republic lasts."
@whatwouldDOOdo 8. So here we are, 150 years later. A very different Washington Nationals club has won the championship. But visits to the White House have been political from the very first, which helped give a presidential imprimatur to the country’s original color line.
@whatwouldDOOdo 9. When I look at people objecting to @whatwouldDOOdo’s rationale for skipping the White House visit, I think back to Gorman trying to avoid a “division of feeling.” But some stands are worth taking.
I wrote about that original White House visit, here:
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
I wrote about that original White House visit, here:
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
