STRIKING OUT JIM CROW
Falmouth Jewish Congregation and Its Brotherhood Present A Black History Month Program Featuring Author Larry Tye in a Talk on Satchel Paige and the Legacy of Racism in American Baseball
Includes an interview with Sol Gittleman and Q & A
Friday, February 12 at 10:00 A.M.
Everyone is invited to attend this program
Register for Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0rdeipqT4jHtYXW8-z1hd2VoC9i7UrEzwK
Or view on FCTV Channel 13 or stream live on www.fctv.org
Larry Tye's book is actually the bio of two American icons: Satchel, the most overpowering pitcher ever to throw a baseball; and Jim Crow, the name given to the collection of 1900s racial segregation laws. This program for Black History Month addresses race in our country and in our national pastime, past and present.
Falmouth Jewish Congregation and its Brotherhood will host a free, public and virtual talk by author Larry Tye entitled “Striking Out Jim Crow.” Everyone is invited to access this free program honoring Black History Month. This event will be broadcast live on FCTV (Falmouth Community media Center) Channel 13 and streamed live at www.fctv.org from 10:00 – 11:00 A.M. on Friday, February 12. Participants can also opt to view on Zoom by registering in advance at the Falmouth Jewish Congregation website (www.falmouthjewish.org) or directly through this Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0rdeipqT4jHtYXW8-z1hd2VoC9i7UrEzwK
Larry will be joined in conversation by Cotuit summer resident and baseball enthusiast Sol Gittleman, emeritus professor at Tufts University. There will also be an opportunity for Q & A. You may pose questions via Zoom or submit them in advance, by Thursday evening, February 11, to pbrothstein@comcast.net.
Larry Tye's book on Negro Leaguer Satchel Paige is actually the bio of two American icons: Satchel, the most overpowering pitcher ever to throw a baseball; and Jim Crow, the name given to the collection of 1900s racial segregation laws. It’s a timely topic for Black History Month, with race back where it belongs atop our public agenda, and Major League Baseball ham-handedly offering to open its record books to the Black players it banned.
In his deeply researched, exuberantly told first biography of baseball’s Leroy “Satchel” Paige, award-winning author and journalist Larry Tye wrote the long-deserved, overlooked story of this great athlete, showman, philosopher and boundary breaker. The child born to a poor Alabama washerwoman, Paige earned his nickname from his enterprising work as a railroad porter and took up baseball on the streets and in reform school before becoming the superstar hurler. During his years in the Negro Leagues he fine-tuned a pitch so scorching that catchers tried to soften the sting by cushioning their gloves with beefsteaks. His career stats -- 2,000 wins, 250 shutouts, and three victories on the same day -- are so eye-popping they seem like misprints. But bigotry kept big league teams from signing him until he was forty-two, at which point he helped propel the Cleveland Indians to the World Series. Over a career that spanned four decades, Satchel pitched more baseballs, for more fans, in more ballparks, for more teams, than any player in history.
Larry Tye is a New York Times bestselling author of wide-reaching interests. From 1986 to 2001, Tye was an award-winning reporter at The Boston Globe, where his primary beat was medicine. He also served as the Globe’s environmental reporter, roving national writer, investigative reporter, and sports writer. His latest book, Demagogue, a biography of Senator Joe McCarthy was released last summer. Among Tye’s other titles are Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon, The Father of Spin, a biography of public relations pioneer Edward L. Bernays. Home Lands – a look at the Jewish renewal underway from Boston to Buenos Aires, and Rising from the Rails, a study of how the black men who worked on George Pullman’s railroad sleeping cars helped kick-start the Civil Rights movement and gave birth to today’s African-American middle class. Shock, a collaboration with Kitty Dukakis, is a journalist’s first-person account of ECT, psychiatry’s most controversial treatment, and a portrait of how that therapy helped one woman overcome debilitating depression. Tye’s Superman tells the nearly-real life story of the most enduring American hero of the last century. Tye is currently writing, for Houghton Mifflin, a book entitled The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Satchmo Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America. In addition to his writing, Tye runs the Boston-based Health Coverage Fellowship.
Joining Tye is Sol Gittleman, emeritus professor at Tufts and summer resident of Cotuit, where he has watched a lot of college baseball. In 2016, after fifty-three years on the Tufts faculty (German and Judaic Studies), Gittleman was named the Alice and Nathan Gantcher University Professor, Emeritus. He taught a seminar at Tufts entitled “America and the National Pastime” and authored the baseball history book, Reynolds, Raschi, and Lopat: New York’s ‘Big Three’ and the Great Yankees Dynasty of 1949–1953 (2007).