You might be right that something he said or did could be considered racist today, but I don't think he would have been considered a racist in his time. In 1952 he's advocating for full integration of baseball 7 years before the last team integrated.

Just to dispel myths about the Cobb family and their political leanings too, here's a quote from Cobb's father while a Georgia State Senator in 1900. He's discussing voting against a bill that would tax African American properties to finance African American schools:

“Negroes had done, and were doing a good deal for the up building of the state, and I am in favor of allowing them money for education.”

That doesn't sound like a hardline Southern racist to me. This was 1900.

im pretty sure someone with an MA has opinion on books to read as well. Im sure there are books that take different positions on most subjects. Quoting one book does mean something but its the open course of discussion where there becomes a certain consensus on what the facts are when going through all information as people have to defend and listen to other positions....usually the discussion is between published scholars which later becomes the established consensus..there are always outliers

in any event, i not saying who is right...but just saying pointing to one book as dogma basically is just as bad or maybe worse as someone thinking since they have a degree they know it all too (not that someone did that)

The South would spend the next century enacting Jim Crow laws to re-establish a white dominated society. They didn't spend the next century trying to preserve a stronger Union. That tells me the war was more about one thing than the other, even if individual soldiers didn't know it.

Ordered Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty today. Hope it's a good read