We're now in the 5th inning of game four of the ALCS 2007 championship, there's no score, and I like most of what I'm seeing on the field-- Boston versus Cleveland is a truly worthy match. But the TV continually flashes the two teams logos: a red letter "B" -- and a red grinning "Indian" head. Cleveland's cartoon makes me wince every time. I thought some of the other readers of Policy Matters might want to learn more about this curious hold-over from the 1950's.
Cleveland's baseball team went through a list of names over forty years before landing with "the Indians" by a press vote in 1914. (Read the official team history.)
The logo is called "Chief Wahoo," but the team's official history refers to him as Chief Sockalexis. This refers to Louis Sockalexis - believed to be the first person of Native American ancestry to play major league baseball. He was an outfielder for the Cleveland team for three seasons (1897 - 1899) and a representative of the Penobscot people. When he played, opposing team fans would shout racial slurs, and imitate war whoops and war dances in front of him.
The team's name changed to "the Indians" a year after Sockalexis' death, but no mention of him was made at the time of the name change. Whether or not the press writers who chose the name intended to honor him remains a question.
The look of "Chief Wahoo" was last updated in 1951, when the nose was shortened and the face went from brown to bright red.
The image is called a Red Sambo by activists - referring to the literary character "Sambo" which was charicatured by the restaurant now known as Denny's (800 Denny's restaurants were "Sambo's" before a 1984 acquisition). I remember Sambo's decor - it was blatantly racist. (And let's not mention Denny's troubles along these lines.) In fact, the story of Sambo is set in India. An East Indian story character was transformed into an African and a racist cartoon, while a real life American Indian hero is transformed into a racist cartoon. But only the former is forbidden fare.
Read a 1999 article about a logo burning that led to arrests outside of the Cleveland baseball stadium in 1997, and again in 1998. For more information about the arrests, read the 2001 press release by AIM (the American Indian Movement) on the occasion of the related civil suit for wrongful arrest.
Also, read a 2001 briefing by the NCRSM (National Coalition on Racism in Sports and the Media) about the use of Native American / American Indian names, logos and mascots as identities for sports teams. Learn more at the NCRSM homepage.
It's the top of the seventh now, and it's a truly brilliant game, Cleveland leading Boston 7 to 3 and both teams going the full range of their abilities. (Boston just hit back-to-back-to-back home runs-- the first time that's ever happened in a league championship!).
My teams, with supremely inoffensive logos either mythical (Giants) or orthographical (A's), weren't good enough this year to get here-- so I'll just have to bear the Cleveland fans' war whoops and faux "Indian" drumming, and grinning logo. I hope that someone, anyone, in that stadium is thinking of Lou Sockalexis, both how he was treated and how proud he'd be of his team.
