+1

You can count me among the group that is uncomfortable with judging historical figures based on current mores and concepts, even though I'm also quite uncomfortable with many of the obviously terrible things that were commonplace in historical society.

Much of my discomfort stems from the fact that I will likely be judged harshly by future generations for things that seem relatively quotidian to me, like driving a car with an internal combustion engine, eating meat, or having 3 kids. Now obviously those things today are very different than being a hard core racist. But 150+ years ago they might not have seemed quite so far apart (aside from the car thing, since cars didn't really exist). But 150+ years from now, my driving and dining and reproduction habits might be viewed just as perniciously as we currently view hard core racists from 150+ years ago.

I also don't have Cap Anson in my collection, mostly because he's not part of my collecting focus. However, I'm sure that plenty of other players in my collection were less than saints.

I will say that I can conceive of stuff that I definitely wouldn't collect because it's so disagreeable to me personally. Nazi stuff comes to mind as an obvious example. Maybe CSA stuff too, because I'm not big on traitors? But it's always a tricky thing to attempt to draw the line, simply because it's so nuanced in so many ways. So I can also understand why others would draw the line in a different spot than I do.

I sincerely want to thank you for what you posted. I want to take back what I said, and put my .44 Magnum away. I am very glad I was wrong about Ned Williamson. Why he was turned sideways is beyond me, and maybe that's just as well. Obviously, the photographer either did not notice Ned, or was told to take it anyway, or chose to take it and let them be embarrassed.

Of course, maybe Ned saw a beautiful-looking gal, and just could not take his eyes off of her. I'll choose that possibility.:D --- Brian Powell

This is the way I look at it.

Again it’s not Ned Williamson it’s Tom Burns - A seemingly nice enough fella but also a good pal of Cap Anson

Looking like heads blown off is back on the menu, boys.

I get what Fred is saying from a historical perspective. It's really hard to judge a person in 2025 who was a teenager when slavery ended. What I don't think a lot of people consider when they look at the subject is that Europeans put other Europeans in different boxes too during this time. A lot of them back then were 100% of something, first generation Americans mixing with people from different countries for the first time. They often flocked to people from their own country.

I know that my great-grandfather, who grew up with Dots Miller in Kearny NJ, was 100% German, with his parents being born in Germany. Miller was also 100% German. They lived in the German section of Kearny. My great-grandfather lived in four different houses during his life and never left that section of town. Even when my dad grew up 70 years later in the same town, he says there were sections of town where you could find the Irish kids, the Italians, etc. It took a long time for the town to stray from that model.

It was just more natural back then to stay with your own. If you read newspapers from back then, they would tell you the nationality of players all of the time. Many of those times it was not in a nice way. That's obviously less common now, but it was natural then.

As someone who spent a lot of time growing up with my Italian grandmother, her cooking and her extended family, I can put into perspective the writers of the 1920s-30s freely sharing stereotypes about Italian players and not judge the writers harshly. It happened. They didn't start it. They didn't know any different. They weren't being outrageous to prove a point. If it happens now when it's pretty clear it shouldn't happen, then I can judge that person. They don't get a pass because it was accepted 80-100 years ago. Same with Anson. I can put it in perspective because of how/when he grew up and not judge him by today's standards. Do I agree with him? Obviously not, but I'm not going to pretend he was acting wildly irrational for his time.

Along similar lines, my great-grandfather immigrated to the US from Northern Italy in 1901, along with his 3 brothers. Looking at some historical maps of the tiny town where he ended up in Northern California (Philo, for those who know Anderson Valley), a section of town was labeled as "Itey-Town", where the Italians lived.

I think I also read somewhere that Italians were not viewed as white until the 50s or 60s. Certainly my dad was called by Italian ethnic slurs as a kid in the 50s and 60s. Although I suspect that still happens to some extent today with just about every ethnic group, given how kids are at school.

Approximate numbers of soldiers killed fighting the Germans in WW2. American, 300,000. British, 380,000. French 350,000. Canadian, 42,000. Russian, 10,700,000.

This is a confronting sentiment. If it took 50 years for Italians to be considered "white", imagine how long it would take for black people.

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The goal is to live in a society that doesn't define people by skin color, but defines people by character instead, like Martin Luther King envisioned.

Unfortunately there seems to always be a group of people that want to make everything about race.
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Have we reached that goal? King would certainly say that we have not. The flip side of your statement is "Unfortunately there seems to always be a group of people that want to push back against progress for marginalized groups by pretending that racism (or sexism, or whatever) longer exists."

It's not a group thing. Some people are racist, some are not. I see a real problem in putting everyone into a group based on some characteristic, then pitting the groups against each other. If it's racist to put down one group (and it is,) then it's likewise racist to turn the tables and put down a different group.

People are people, period, and I wish we could all just realize that and quit separating segments of society from each other with all the group-think.

Cap Anson was quite clearly a racist. He did not represent anyone but himself in that. Other people in his day were not racist, and they, too, represented themselves, not some group of people with some attribute in common.

Hi Mark, I mostly agree with you here. The segmentation and opposition is not a good thing and yet we see it more and more. I have many thoughts about that but it would go way off topic...