Florida Historical Markers Programs - Marker Detail

Description: Side One: The year was 1946. Daytona Beach was the only city in racially segregated Florida, perhaps in the entire South, that accepted integrated modern professional baseball. City officials ignored the Jim Crow laws when the Brooklyn Dodgers and their top minor league team, the Montreal Royals, held spring training in Daytona Beach. Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, a nationally recognized Civil Rights leader who founded nearby Bethune-Cookman College, influenced city politics. Dodgers president Branch Rickey, in an attempt to reintegrate organized baseball after nearly 70 years of segregation, had signed two Negro League players, infielder Jackie Robinson and pitcher Johnny Wright, to play for the Royals in 1946. Before and after his historic appearance at City Island Ballpark in Daytona Beach on March 17, 1946, where he broke Major League Baseball's color barrier, Robinson and the Montreal team spent most of their time practicing and playing games with other minor league teams at Kelly Field. Located just steps from this spot, Kelly Field was for decades a key community gathering spot for African Americans in Daytona Beach's Midway neighborhood. Side Two: On March 6, 1946, two African American ballplayers, Jackie Robinson and Johnny Wright, and their white Montreal Royals teammates began spring training in Daytona Beach. The site was Kelly Field, which was located just a few steps from here. Part of that initial practice was a scrimmage game, in which Robinson played four innings at shortstop. Baseball Hall of Fame sportswriter Sam Lacy of the Baltimore Afro-American wrote in his nationally syndicated column, "It was the first time in history that a colored player had competed in a game representing a team in modern organized baseball." Following spring training in Daytona Beach, the only city to allow integrated baseball during that spring training, Robinson went on to lead Montreal to a 1946 minor league championship. He was promoted to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 and helped the Dodgers to six National League pennants and one World Series championship. Following his ten-year major league career, Robinson was enshrined in baseball's Hall of Fame in 1962.