Satchel Paige

Children's Literature

One has the impression that it was hard not to like Satchel Paige. He was tall and slender and had a genius for throwing a baseball. At twelve he was sent to the Industrial School for Negro Children at Mount Meigs, Alabama. It was a reform school. He'd been stealing. Paige said it was the best thing that ever happened to him. "I was running around with the wrong crowd." He learned to play baseball at Mount Meigs and he learned to play it very well. He is considered by many to be the greatest pitcher of his era, but he was African American and, for most of his long career, he was kept out of the white leagues. He lived in what has come to be called the "Jim Crow" years in American history, the years in which people of color were expected to defer to whites in every way. That it lasted as long as it did is a national disgrace. That people like Satchel Paige found a way to thrive in it is a triumph. This book tells his story. Part of the "Great African Americans" series. 2002, Enslow Publishers,
— Michael Chabin