Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow

Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow (2007) is a young adult graphic novel, written by American author James Sturm and illustrated by Rich Tommaso. Set in the Jim Crow era, the novel follows black sharecropper and former baseball player Emmet Wilson as he struggles to raise his son Emmet Jr. in the face of brutal oppression. Bookending his narrative are two encounters with the legendary black pitcher Satchel Paige: as a young batter in the Negro Leagues, Wilson managed to score a run against Paige, receiving a career-ending injury in the process. Later, Wilson takes his son to see Paige humiliate an all-white baseball team. Through Wilson’s story, Sturm captures Paige’s achievement and provides an introduction to the Jim Crow era for younger readers. Tommaso won an Eisner Award for his illustrations.

The book opens with an extensive introduction, explaining the “color bar” in baseball and the all-black “Negro Leagues” which arose as a result.

The story proper opens as the narrator, Emmet Wilson, takes the field as a rookie batter in the Negro Leagues for what will prove his last game, although he doesn’t know it yet. He finds himself up against pitcher Satchel Paige, already a legend in black baseball, though not yet permitted to play in the Major Leagues. To his own amazement, Wilson manages a one at-bat, resulting in a run—but also resulting in a busted knee that ends Wilson’s playing career.



Having few alternative options, Wilson becomes a sharecropper, farming land owned by the wealthy, white Jennings twins. We learn about the sharecropping system as Wilson does: Black farmers rent land from white landowners and pay their rent from their produce, often leaving the farmers little to live on themselves.

The Jennings brothers know nothing about farming, but that doesn’t stop them from condescending to their black tenant. Nor do they bother to prevent their livestock from grazing his crops.

Wilson wants a better life for his son Emmet Jr., so he sends the boy to school. The Jennings tell him to keep the boy at home, so he can work on the farm and increase the yield from the land, but Wilson continues to send Emmet to school. One day, the Jennings catch Wilson working alone again; that day they jump Emmet on his way home and beat him viciously.



All Wilson can do is “humble down.” After all, “What else was I to do? Cry about my rights? Tell them I am bein’ mistreated? You do that and you die no different than Lucas Crutchfield.” The illustration shows us how Lucas Crutchfield died: the silhouette of a man hanging from a noose.

Wilson and Emmet’s daily struggle with threats, violence, and injustice demonstrates that Jim Crow was not only a legal but a social institution, taking place within small communities of people who knew one another well. The racial divide in their town is stark, tense, and growing. It is against this backdrop that we come to understand the significance of Satchel Paige.

We learn about Paige through Wilson’s admiring narrative, focusing on his career in baseball and his style of pitching. Wilson tells us about Paige’s control, the range of weapons with which he could befuddle a batsman. We learn that he was one of the first black players to be signed when the color bar was broken, even though he was already in his forties, becoming the oldest Major League rookie ever. In the context of Wilson’s struggle, he finds it understandably awe-inspiring to think that Paige is, at the time, the highest-paid athlete in the world.



Even the Jennings twins and the Wilsons’ other white neighbors can’t help but respect Satchel Paige’s pitching. The whole town is awhirl with excitement when it is announced that Paige’s team will be playing the local, all-white team—the Tuckawilla All Stars—at home.

The Jennings brothers are both on the team. Wilson and his son are in the stands, praying to see them humiliated by the great black player. At first, Paige doesn’t take to the mound, and the game is close and tense. However, it’s almost as if Paige were simply waiting for the tension to build: when he takes the mound, he strikes out batter after batter, including both Jennings boys. His bravura performance causes an emotional outpouring of support from black and white spectators alike.

For Wilson, it prompts a revelation: Overcoming his bitterness, he tells Emmet the story of his baseball career. The moral is that Emmet still has options in life. Wilson gifts Emmet a baseball, which Paige gave him after their first encounter: “I hope it reminds him of who he can be.”



The story is illustrated by Rich Tommaso in a subdued palette of sepia tones, in the simple style of 1940s illustration. He draws each character in isolation, especially Paige, who is seen at a distance on the mound.

The book includes discussion topics for home and classroom.