(Chicago Defender, August 24, 1918)
While researching the other day’s post on black baseball and the 1918 flu pandemic I ran across this photo montage in my files, showing several of the Chicago American Giants in 1918: Dick Whitworth and Rube Foster in the top photo, and George Dixon, José Méndez, and Frank Wickware across the bottom. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone post or reprint this anywhere.
In that post I mentioned how the “work or fight” rule led players like Bruce Petway and Pete Hill to find work in an “essential” industry, in their cases as civilian employees of the U.S. Army (the Quartermaster Corps), which you can find recorded on their draft cards.
Cubans like José Méndez who were residing in the United States also had to register for the draft. Whether or not the work or fight rule applied to them, I don’t know. In any case Méndez, who was a professional baseball player and had been for more than a decade, listed himself as a cigar maker, with Rube Foster as his employer. Maybe the cigar industry was considered vital to the war effort?
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