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April 30, 2008 05:43 pm
Hall-of-famer is man worth remembering
Column: George Sweatt, a Pittsburg State University student from 1920-1922, was the university's first black athlete to receive a sports letter and was noted as a professional athlete, soldier and teacher.
By Mike Pound
CNHI News Service
PITTSBURG, Kan. — The photo and plaque was just one of many among the many lining the hallway of Weede Physical Education Building on the Pittsburg State University campus, but it just sort of jumped out at me.
The section of photos I was looking at was dedicated to members of the university’s Sports Hall of Fame. The reason I noticed the photo in question was because it looked out of place. It wasn’t so much that the photo itself that looked out of place as it was the subject in the photo.
According to the plaque that accompanied the photograph, the man in the picture was George Sweatt. The information on the plaque stated that George, born and raised in Humboldt, Kan., was a standout football, basketball and track athlete at PSU — then known as the State Manual Training Normal — from 1920 until 1922. The plaque also said that Sweatt went on to play professional baseball and appeared in four World Series games.
I’m a sports fan and I had never heard of George Sweatt, but that’s probably because George was a black man and the four World Series he played in were in the Negro Baseball League. But still, I was a little embarrassed that I hadn’t heard of George. I figured that a man, particularly a black man who attended and excelled at multiple sports at a Kansas college and went on to make history in a now legendary professional baseball league, would have achieved a certain amount of local acclaim. I figured I should have heard of George Sweatt. But I hadn’t.
It turns out that until a curious PSU archivist stumbled across newspaper accounts of George in 2000, not many other people had heard of George Sweatt either. When Randy Roberts, the university archivist, did some more digging through university records, he discovered that George not only attended PSU but he had the distinction of being the first black athlete in the school’s history to receive a sports letter.
As Randy did further research into the life of George Sweatt, he was stunned to find a man who had served his country as a soldier in the Army during World War I. A man who was a contemporary of the Hall of Fame baseball pitcher Walter Johnson, who was also born in Humboldt. A man who, according to all newspaper accounts at the time, garnered nearly universal respect from teammates and fellow students on the Pittsburg campus. A man who became the only regular player to appear in the first four Negro League World Series with the Kansas City Monarchs and the Chicago American Giants.
In short, a man worth remembering. But oddly enough, a man who was almost forgotten, which, by the way, was the title of an article Randy wrote about George in 2001 for the PSU magazine.
It’s a fascinating story and George Sweatt is a fascinating man. Not only for what he did, but for how quickly he voluntarily stepped out of the limelight. After his career at PSU, George played professional baseball from 1922 until 1928. During the off-season he taught at a segregated black school in Coffeyville, Kan. When, after the 1928 baseball season, he was not offered a raise by the new team owner, he simply returned the contract unsigned and went to work for the post office in Chicago. He would continue to coach semi-pro teams on weekends while working at the post office. He married, had a son and worked as a Boy Scout leader and a Little League coach. He retired from the post office in 1957 and moved to Los Angeles, where he died on July 19, 1983.
The residents of Humboldt began to revive George’s memory as early as the 1970s. The town’s museum now contains a display honoring him, and every summer in July the town hosts a baseball tournament named in honor of both Humboldt baseball heroes: George Sweatt and Walter Johnson.
Toward the end of his life, George wrote a brief memoir of his life. This is how he described himself: “This is the story of a negro boy, who with the help of the Almighty, became an honorable American citizen. I take this opportunity to thank the older citizens of Humboldt, Kansas, for accepting me for what I was.”
In 2005, George Sweatt — thanks largely I think to the work of Randy and a friend of his named Dick Davis from Chanute — was inducted to Pittsburg State University’s Sports Hall of Fame.
It took a while but George Sweatt, a man who was almost forgotten at PSU, was finally remembered.
Mike Pound writes for The Joplin (Mo.) Globe.
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