What Whites Like Myself Can Learn about Racism in America from the History of Leap Day

Some milestones in the history of Black America occurred on Feb. 29, but what on the surface seemed to be signs of great racial progress obscured deeper strains of racism in American society

Happy Leap Day, the day that comes around once every four years where those born on Feb. 29 actually get to celebrate a real birthday. It’s also the last day of Black History Month, so I decided to do a little research on the history of this date for Black Americans.

What I found was telling, both in terms of the accomplishments of great Black Americans in overcoming the hurdles of living in a racist society that did all it could to hinder their progress; and how misleading those accomplishments were in giving Americans (especially White Americans such as myself, who never had to experience the pain of racism) a false sense that America had overcome this stain, or at least was in the process of doing so.

First, on Feb. 29, 1940, Hattie McDaniel became the first Black actor to win an Academy Award, for her supporting role as “Mammy” in “Gone with the Wind.” At a time of rampant Jim Crow racism in America, it surely was taken as a sign that, in Hollywood at least, institutionalized racism was falling by the wayside.

But appearances were deceiving.

During the Oscar ceremony, McDaniel and her escort were forced to sit at a segregated table at the far wall of the room. The hotel where the ceremony was held had a strict no blacks policy but let McDaniel in as a “favor,” according to her Wikipedia post. After the ceremony, her co-stars celebrated at a “Whites-only” club where McDaniel was denied entry.

Even before the Oscar ceremony, the racism rampant in America was on full display. Neither McDaniel, nor any of her Black co-stars, were allowed to attend the premiere of the film, and their faces were omitted from posters advertising the film (which largely glorified the evil slave-plantation system that led to the Civil War) in the South.

Well into the 2000s, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards the Oscars, continued to come under scrutiny for the lack of Black representation among award nominees. What on the surface in 1940 seemed to be a triumph in Black progress in America was largely an illusion that likely contributed to White America convincing itself that racism wasn’t quite the problem it clearly was.

Second, on Feb. 29, 1972, baseball great Hank Aaron signed a contract with the Atlanta Braves making him the highest-paid player in Major League Baseball at the time. Twenty five years after Jackie Robinson had broken the baseball color barrier, Aaron’s contract seemed to prove that Black baseball players had achieved true equity in the sport.

But it was an illusion.

Two years later, as he successfully chased Babe Ruth’s career home run record, Aaron was subjected to a torrent of racist hate and threats by Americans who could not stomach the idea of a Black player eclipsing the sport’s greatest White icon and his sacred record. The hate and threats were so great that the sports editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution secretly had an obituary of Aaron written and ready to be published in case he was murdered.

As Sports Illustrated put the situation at the time:

Is this to be the year in which Aaron, at the age of thirty-nine, takes a moon walk above one of the most hallowed individual records in American sport ...? Or will it be remembered as the season in which Aaron, the most dignified of athletes, was besieged with hate mail and trapped by the cobwebs and goblins that lurk in baseball's attic?

Those goblins would continue to haunt the sport and American society in the years to come. In 1987, baseball executive Al Campis would gain infamy for a national television interview, coinciding with the 40th anniversary of Robinson’s breaking of the color barrier, saying that Blacks “may not have some of the necessities” to thrive in leadership positions in the game. In the years that followed, the number of Black Americans playing the sport has steadily dwindled; today, it is dominated by White and Latin American players.

The stories of McDaniel and Aaron are cautionary tales, especially to White people such as myself, about how misleading such milestones can be. We all want to believe that America is conquering the demons of its past, but too often, such milestones obscure the deeper cancers still eating away at American society, and, indeed, may allow such cancers to grow through the illusions they provide.

The events of the past several years in America show that, long after McDaniel’s historic Oscar and Aaron’s historic contract, our nation is still stained by strains of racism that Black Americans know as well today as those of the generations that gave us McDaniel and Aaron knew then.

Leap Day gives us another day every four years to celebrate the achievements of great Black Americans such as McDaniel and Aaron, who triumphed over the racist hurdles that stood in their way. But the danger is in allowing those triumphs to take us on a leap of faith that the sins of the past have no bearing on the present. For those of us who haven’t been harmed by those sins, it’s a leap all too easy to take.