Baseball Hall of Famer Larry Doby grew up in Paterson and raised his five children with his wife in Montclair. Photo: Alamy Photo
Larry Doby, who broke baseball’s color barrier in the American League in 1947 and spent most of his life in New Jersey, was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously at a ceremony in the U.S. Capitol this week.
The award, the nation’s highest civilian honor, was accepted by his son Larry Doby Jr., who lives in the Montclair house which his parents had built in 1960; the Brookdale Garden State Plaza rest stop was recently renamed after the barrier-breaking baseball player. “This means the world to my family,” the younger Doby said. “He would be extremely proud and humbled by this.”
Doby senior led the Cleveland Indians to a World Series title a year after he started, fresh off the train from New Jersey, where he was a star for the Newark Eagles of the Negro Leagues, who played at the iconic Hinchcliffe Stadium in Paterson. It was just three months after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the National League and Doby experienced much of the same ill treatment.
Despite the racism he encountered, he went on to play for the Indians and then the Chicago White Sox, was a seven time All-Star and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. After retiring as a player, he became Major League Baseball’s second Black manager when he was hired by the White Sox in 1978.
Doby and his wife, Helen Curvy Robinson, met as freshmen at Paterson’s Eastside High School and married in 1946 after he returned from three years serving in the Navy in World War II. The couple lived in Paterson, but moved to Montclair, one of the state’s first integrated suburbs, after Paterson brokers refused to sell to them, and raised their five children there.
Despite all his professional accolades, it was his high school years that seemed to give Doby the most joy, says his son. He was a five-sport athlete at Paterson’s Eastside High School, but football, not baseball, was his favorite.
“My father would talk about how the whole town [of Paterson] shut down and there would be 10,000 fans at the football games against Passaic and Central,” said Larry Jr. “That was some of his fondest memories. I’d hear those stories till they were coming out my ears.”
No one knows New Jersey like we do. Sign up for one of our free newsletters here. Want a print magazine mailed to you? Purchase an issue from our online store.