Seven years after he integrated major league baseball, Jackie Robinson led an effort to end discrimination at the Chase Hotel in St. Louis.
In 1954, the Cardinals had their first black player, first baseman Tom Alston. The United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. Despite these milestones, the Chase Hotel still prohibited blacks from using its dining room, bar or pool.
Robinson took a stand in trying to uproot the hotel’s segregationist policies when the Dodgers came to St. Louis to play the Cardinals in 1954, but it created friction with other blacks on the team.
White lodge
Located at the corner of Lindell and Kingshighway and across the street from Forest Park, the elegant Chase Hotel was built in 1922 by Chase Ullman and became known for its luxury, glamour, fine dining and entertainment. Features included a roof garden, Turkish steam baths and “rubbing rooms” for men and women, St. Louis Magazine noted. The roof garden eventually was enclosed and turned into the Zodiac Room Lounge.
A Mediterranean-style swimming pool became another popular feature of the Chase. The pool was “about the shade of the gold lame briefs Rudolf Nureyev is rumored to have worn there,” according to St. Louis Magazine. Pirates baseball broadcaster Bob Prince dived into the pool from a third-floor guest room to settle a $20 bet, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported, prompting the hotel to erect metal barriers on the windows facing the pool.
In 1929, the rival Park Plaza was built next door to the Chase. The two merged into the Chase Park Plaza in 1961. Today, the Chase Park Plaza Royal Sonesta Hotel boasts on its Web site: “Upholding the grand tradition of early 20th century style and gracious hospitality.”
Until the 1950s, the hospitality was extended only to whites. The hotel didn’t accept black guests, but it did entertain its white customers with top black performers such as Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Dorothy Dandridge, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne and Eartha Kitt.
Horne told the Washington Post, “The first time I worked at the Chase, I couldn’t come in through the front door.”
In 1952, Dandridge demanded to be the first black performer to stay at the hotel. Though Chase officials “reluctantly agreed,” parts of the building remained off limits to her and all blacks. She was required to use the service elevator before and after each performance rather than walk through the lobby to the guest elevators, according to the website Vanguard of Hollywood.
Strings attached
After Jackie Robinson integrated the major leagues with the Dodgers in 1947, the Chase didn’t permit the black players of visiting ballclubs to stay there. If a ballclub chose to stay at the Chase, it meant the white team members went there and the blacks went to another hotel, usually a so-called black hotel.
“For years, St. Louis has been the only city on the circuit where Negro players lived apart from the team,” Lou Smith reported in the Cincinnati Enquirer.
In 1953, the Chase altered its policy and allowed the entire New York Giants team to stay there, including its three black players _ Ruben Gomez, Monte Irvin and Hank Thompson, the Baltimore Afro American newspaper reported. (Willie Mays wasn’t with the Giants in 1953 because of military service.)
The Giants’ black players “didn’t care for” the restrictions placed on them at the Chase, The Sporting News reported. The restrictions included no use of the bar, dining room or swimming pool, author Neil Lanctot noted in his book “Campy,” a biography of Dodgers catcher Roy Campanella.
Nonetheless, the Dodgers declared they would stay at the Chase in 1954. When the ballclub arrived in St. Louis on April 26, the Dodgers’ six black players (Sandy Amoros, Joe Black, Roy Campanella, Jim Gilliam, Don Newcombe and Jackie Robinson) were given the option by traveling secretary Lee Scott of staying at the Chase with its restrictions or going to the Adams Hotel, which catered to blacks.
If the black players stayed at the Chase, they would have to eat all meals in their rooms instead of the dining room, stay out of the bar and the pool, and not appear in the hotel lobby except for going to and coming from the ballpark and the train station, The Sporting News reported.
Split decision
Robinson was the only one of the six black Dodgers to agree to stay at the Chase. Though he bristled at the restrictions, Robinson said he believed staying there was an important step toward ending discrimination.
In a column by Sam Lacy of the Baltimore Afro American, Robinson said, “Other fellows coming along behind me will benefit by this opening wedge. If you don’t get your foot in the door, you’ll never force it open.”
The other black Dodgers disagreed. Roy Campanella and Joe Black persuaded Sandy Amoros, Jim Gilliam and Don Newcombe to go to the Adams Hotel in the Gaslight Square entertainment district, the Baltimore Afro American reported.
“The Chase is not for me,” Campanella said to Sam Lacy. “As I see it, they didn’t want us down there for seven years. So as far as I’m concerned, they can make it forever.”
Campanella also told Wendell Smith of the Pittsburgh Courier, “I’m not going to stay there. If they didn’t want us before, they won’t get my business now.”
Campanella and the others had additional reasons for preferring the Adams.
“The manager of the (Adams) had been good to us for years,” Newcombe told Dick Young of the New York Daily News in May 1954. “He even supplies us with a car to get to and from the ballpark. Why should we let him down now? We’re not trying to set any precedents.”
In an interview with Neil Lanctot, Dodgers executive Buzzie Bavasi said the Adams “had a superstretch limo pick up the black players, usually with a blonde or two in the backseat.”
Dodgers divided
Robinson, who viewed Campanella as being too timid on civil rights issues, was upset with his teammate’s decision to choose the familiar comfort of the Adams. According to Neil Lanctot, “The issue of segregation at the Chase destroyed whatever little remained of their relationship.”
Dick Young wrote in the Daily News, “A lively argument ensued in the clubhouse _ Robinson against Newcombe and Campanella.”
According to Young, Campanella said, “I’m no crusader. I’m a ballplayer and I’m happy right where I am,” and Newcombe said of Robinson, “He thinks we owe him something because he was the first. We owe him nothing.”
(Decades later, in interviews with the Daily News and Los Angeles Times, Newcombe claimed he joined Robinson in trying to reverse discrimination at the Chase.)
When the Pirates arrived at the Chase after the Dodgers departed, their black second baseman, Curt Roberts, registered, went to the dining room and waited 45 minutes without being served. Frustrated, he checked out and went to the Adams, the Pittsburgh Courier reported.
“Within a few days, the situation at the Chase had become a national story in the black press,” according to the Campanella biography. (Most of the mainstream newspapers, including the two St. Louis dailies, provided little or no coverage of the issue.)
Change for the better
The Pirates, whose general manager, Branch Rickey, was the Dodgers executive who brought Robinson to the majors, acted quickly to defend Curt Roberts. Pirates traveling secretary Bob Rice told Chase officials the ballclub wouldn’t return there unless Roberts was given the same treatment as other team members, the Pittsburgh Courier reported.
Jackie Robinson told Dodgers traveling secretary Lee Scott he would insist on being served in the Chase dining room the next time the ballclub went there. Dodgers management pledged support, the Baltimore Afro American reported.
Just before the Dodgers and Giants returned to St. Louis for games in June 1954, they received letters from Chase management, assuring them blacks no longer would be restricted from using the dining room or lobby, and could attend shows in the roof garden, according to the Baltimore Afro American.
(The bar and pool remained off limits to blacks as late as 1957, according to Neil Lanctot.)
The St. Louis NAACP (National Association for Advancement of Colored People) and two weekly newspapers, St. Louis Argus and St. Louis American, had protested to Chase management about discriminatory policies, “and this, along with the undesirable publicity, is believed to have influenced the hotel’s capitulation,” Sam Lacy reported.
When the Dodgers went to St. Louis in June 1954, the entire team, including all the black members, stayed at the Chase. It was the first time since 1946 that every member of the Dodgers stayed in the same St. Louis hotel.
It would not have happened when it did “if Robinson had not been made of sterner stuff than Campanella, Gilliam and Newcombe,” Clifford McKay concluded in the Baltimore Afro American.