Racism and baseball cards

[oaks1912]

Chris,
Absolutely correct. The Remars were distributed one player per week, free of charge, in most East Bay Area (Oakland) markets. However there are period collectors that lived in upper middle class areas (Kensington, Berkeley Hills, Piedmont for example) that do not remember seeing any cards of the black players being distributed at their local markets.

In diverse, middle class areas, such as the Berkeley flatlands, Richmond and East Oakland, all of the players were distributed at the local markets. I don't think the issue was with Remar Bakery, as owner Peter Pedersen sponsored around 100 youth baseball teams in and around Oakland beginning in the 1930's as part of the Remar Baseball League. The problem was likely with a few individual grocery store owners that either disagreed with integrating baseball, or that some of their customers may have been offended.

Three of the cards pictured were definitely tougher to acquire when I first started to build Remar sets 50 years ago. (Woods was the toughest for me to initially acquire) The Wilson card was likely printed in larger quantities due to his popularity with fans, and despite the absence from some retail markets (maybe 5-10%), other markets were likely given larger quantities, and the kids could grab as many as they wanted. Wilson, the last .400 hitter in the Negro Leagues also went on to become the PCL batting champ in '49 with a .348 average.

Mark

Originally Posted by Chris Counts

I was told by an authority on the topic that cards of African-American players in the 1949 and 1950 Remar Bread sets were tougher to find because some distributors refused carry them.