BOYD

BOSTON — For each of the last five years, the Red Sox have hosted a midwinter event at Fenway Park honoring Jackie Robinson.

They were also one of the initiators of a drive to have a Congressional Gold Medal, Congress’ highest civilian honor, awarded posthumously to Robinson in 2005.

Call it the purging of original sin. For the real curse afflicting the Red Sox over the decades between World Series championships was not the sale of Babe Ruth, but their shameful racial practices . . . practices that, after spotty efforts at progress in the 1960s and ’70s, began to change in the ’90s under John Harrington. Those changes accelerated after the 2002 sale of the team to John Henry and Tom Werner.

Robinson was present at the very beginning.

On April 16, 1945 — under pressure from Isadore Muchnick, a Boston city councilman, and Wendell Smith, sports editor of the weekly Pittsburgh Courier, an African-American newspaper — the Red Sox held a tryout at Fenway Park for three black players: Robinson, outfielder Sam Jethroe and second baseman Marvin Williams. The Boston Globe’s Clif Keane insisted that during the tryout, an unidentified person in the back of the grandstand shouted to get the players off the field, using the well-known derogatory term for blacks.

The Red Sox’ racial practices from then on would only get worse. Not only did they not sign Robinson — or Jethroe, who would win the National League Rookie of the Year award in 1950 for the cross-town Boston Braves — but they wouldn’t add a black player to their roster until 1959, the last major-league team to integrate.

Robinson never forgot, and he never forgave.

In January of 1959, he told the Chicago Defender newspaper that had Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey signed black players, “maybe he would have won another pennant or two.” (The fact that Pumpsie Green, the Sox’ first African-American, joined the team in ’59 led some to question whether the Sox were influenced by Robinson’s remarks.) In 1967, Robinson said he wanted the Red Sox to lose the four-team American League pennant race because of Yawkey, whom he called “probably one of the most bigoted guys in baseball.”

Yawkey’s friends, and many of his employees, vigorously defended him against the charges. They shifted the blame to others within the organization, particularly former manager and general manager Mike “Pinky” Higgins. Higgins, one of the most powerful figures on the Red Sox in the 1950s and early ’60s, was described by virtually all who knew him as a virulent racist; when he died in 1969, Earl Wilson, who joined the Sox as their second black player in late ’59, remarked, “Good things happen to bad people.”

After Higgins was fired and the enlightened Dick O’Connell was installed as GM in 1965, the Sox began promoting more and more blacks. At one point late in the ’67 season, for the first time, they fielded an in-game lineup in which more than half the players — pitcher John Wyatt, catcher Elston Howard, first baseman George Scott, third baseman Joe Foy and center fielder Reggie Smith — were black.

But problems persisted, some of them sparked by the deteriorating racial climate in Boston in the 1970s. Many of the black players —Smith in particular — had problems coming to grips with playing here; when free agency came to baseball in 1976, few black players would even consider signing with the Red Sox. O’Connell was fired as GM in 1977, his job taken by Yawkey favorite Haywood Sullivan. Coincidentally or not, the team began regressing racially:

•When Jim Rice went on the disabled list during the 1980 season, the Red Sox had no African-Americans on the active roster.

•Tommy Harper, one of the Sox’ best black players in the ’70s and a coach with the team in the early ’80s, was fired less than a year after publicly complaining about the Red Sox accepting invitations — for white players only — to the segregated Elks Club at the team’s spring-training home of Winter Haven, Fla. He filed an anti-discrimination suit against the team, which was eventually settled out of court for a few hundred thousand dollars

•Volatile pitcher Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd had problems throughout his Boston career, problems that various people said were exacerbated by the organization’s inability to relate to an emotional young black man.

•As late as 1990, the Sox had only one black – in this case, Ellis Burks – on the team.

As the years progressed, new Red Sox leaders such as Harrington and general manager Lou Gorman attempted to change the culture. Harrington, though, admitted in an interview with Sports Illustrated in 1991 that it was frustrating.

“It’s almost impossible to shake,” Harrington said of the team’s racist reputation. “I don’t know how to do it. I’ve been told it will take fifty years, generations before this thing is gone.”

In the 1990s, however, the perception did begin to shift. Mo Vaughn became the team’s dominant superstar and he embraced the role of black leader in Boston, something the quieter Rice had consciously shunned in the ’70s and ’80s. Dan Duquette took over as GM in 1994 and he increased the organization’s diversity by expanding the team’s reach into Latin America and Asia. It was telling that when the Red Sox had a bitter parting with Vaughn after the 1998 season, no one, least of all Vaughn, accused them of racism.

The sale to Henry, Werner and Larry Lucchino in 2002 hastened the progress. Harper, who had rejoined the organization in the ’90s, talked of the changes with the Globe’s Gordon Edes in 2006:

“I know where this team has been,” he said. “I know where it is now, and I know in the future where it is going to be. There’s progress being made . . . It’s inclusive. I don’t think a black person could come now to the ballpark and not have a good experience. The total experience.

“As a black person, yes, I do feel a difference. I can’t put a finger on it. But it’s not because they hired this guy or that guy. No, it’s not that. It’s not numbers. It’s how well you’re treated.”

Perhaps the biggest symbol of change came early last week, when Smith returned to Boston for the Opening Day ceremony honoring the 1967 American League pennant winners. It was the first time he’d been back since his trade after the 1973 season.

“To be standing in center field in Fenway Park,” he said, “and wearing this uniform again for the first time in 34 years . . . it’s very special.”

amartone@projo.com