Joseph Caldwell Sr., the pioneering Chicago businessman who ran the first Black-owned company to clean Major League Baseball (MLB) jerseys, passed away last week at the age of 92.
Per Block Club Chicago, Caldwell founded TailoRite Complete Clothing Care in Chicago’s South Side in 1956. The company also has two other branches in the city.
Caldwell started cleaning the Chicago White Sox’s jerseys and rendering other services to them in the early 1990s, and his company continues to have a working relationship with the baseball franchise.
Caldwell, in a 2022 interview with the news outlet, recalled rendering services to the White Sox for the first time, saying that he stayed up all night to clean, repair, and press the team’s uniforms.
And though he attended the team’s 1992 opening day game and sat behind home plate, Caldwell fell asleep before the game ended.
“I needed to do a perfect job,” Caldwell said in reference to staying up all night to work on the team’s uniforms on the eve of the match. “There was a lot of pressure, being the first Black American to do it: ‘If I mess this up, Major League Baseball is going to know about it.’ I had to make a good impression.”
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Caldwell said that his contract with the White Sox enabled TailoRite to expand and also opened the doors for other Black-owned vendors to land deals with the baseball franchise.
Prior to landing the deal, White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf had set his sights on supporting minority-owned vendors through baseball’s Equal Opportunity Committee, Block Club Chicago reported. An architect who designed Caldwell’s building knew a pastor who had connections with Reinsdorf, and that was how he was linked to the deal.
“I had not talked to a major corporation like that before,” Caldwell recalled. “But I looked at the care label and realized right away we can do this. [We’d] been cleaning for 35 years; if anyone can clean them, we know how to clean them.”
Besides the White Sox, Caldwell has also rendered services to notable personalities, including Rev. Jesse Jackson and the late Harold Washington, CBS News reported. The deceased businessman was also remembered for prioritizing quality, with Vogue magazine featuring him about six months ago.
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