Today is the second and concluding section of our look at the history and legacy of the Negro Leagues, which began play one hundred years ago in 1920. In August 1945, just weeks after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the Second World War, former Negro Leaguer and veteran Jackie Robinson signed a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers that ultimately signaled the beginning of the end of Negro League baseball.

If you have not already, read part one here.

Baseball declined in talent during the Second World War when many players traded their baseball uniform for a military one and substandard replacements took their place. Returning players, black and white, resumed play in the summer of 1945 and baseball quickly regained its popularity. Major League Baseball remained strictly segregated however, despite the deep pool of African-American talent. White and black players were nonetheless familiar with each other because they played frequently in exhibition games. These might be games between two teams from different leagues or contests between collections of black and white all-stars. There is consensus among baseball historians that the best Negro players would have been stars in Major League Baseball. Calls to integrate baseball in the years just prior to the Second World War stalled once America joined the conflict. Demands for integration became more intense after the war as African-Americans demanded equal access not just within baseball but across society.

Larry Doby 1951 Bowman Gum card

African-American Jackie Robinson had been a standout in baseball, football, basketball and track at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) before serving in the Army as a second lieutenant during the Second World War. He played briefly for the Kansas City Monarchs after his return before signing a contract with Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers on August 28, 1945. Robinson played for the minor league Montreal Royals in 1946 and led the team to the International League title. He made his Major League debut at Ebbets Field the following season on April 15, 1947 against the Boston Braves. Larry Doby became the first African-American to integrate the American League, when he appeared for the Cleveland Indians on July 5, 1947. Robinson, Doby, and the two other African-American players who broke baseball’s color barrier that season endured cheap shots from opposing players, taunts from fans, and even death threats over the course of the season. Baseball teams continued integrating and African-Americans, many of them former Negro League players, quickly became standouts. An African-American won the National League Most Valuable Players award eight out of ten times in the 1950s.

By the 1960s both the American and National Leagues were fully integrated and African-Americans were making major contributions to the game. Retired Boston Red Sox outfielder Theodore “Ted “ Williams used his July 1966 National Baseball Hall of Fame induction speech to express his hope that someday ballplayers like Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson might be added to the Hall “as a symbol of the great Negro players that are not here only because they were not given the chance.” Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn formed a Negro League Committee to determine what players to induct. One month later Satchel Paige became the first Negro League player inducted into the Hall. The committee continued its work until 1977 and inducted several additional players. In 2006 the Hall of Fame created a committee of historians to examine the cases of other Negro players, owners, and executives who might also merit inclusion.

Curt Flood

African-Americans contributed off the field as well. Star player Curt Flood sued Major League Baseball for refusing a trade from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1969. The case eventually went all the way to the Supreme Court in 1972, and while Mr. Flood lost the decision his trial helped end the “reserve clause” system that kept players contractually tied to one team at the owners’ discretion. The Flood Decision helped bring about arbitration and free agency. African-American participation in professional baseball waned in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries as other sports grew in popularity. While blacks comprised over 25% of major league players in 1975, the percentage is today less than 15%. Conversely, players from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia comprise a larger percentage of players than previously. Major League Baseball has spurred interest in the game through such programs as the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program, which began in 1989.

Paseo YMCA, Kansas City Monarchs mural

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM), located in Kansas City, Missouri, was founded in 1990 and opened to the public in a modest space one year later. Today the NLBM shares a state-of-the-art facility with the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City’s historic district. The Paseo YMCA, two blocks from the Negro Leagues and Jazz Museums, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. It was at The Paseo, in the heart of Kansas City’s bustling African-American community, that Rube Foster and others founded the Negro National League in 1920. The Paseo is now the home of the Buck O’Neil Education and Research Center (BOERC). Mr. O’Neil (1911-2006) was a star player for the Kansas City Monarchs and later a coach and manager in the Negro and Major Leagues. He was integral to the founding and growth of the NLBM.

(images from top: Love of the Game Auctions, Bowman Gum, St. Louis Cardinals/MLB, Mwkruse via Wikimedia Commons)

Tomorrow, Sunday August 16, Major League Baseball is observing the 100th anniversary of the Negro Leagues. Part of that observation will include the wearing of throwback uniforms, which I love. In July 2018 I wrote an encyclopedia article on Negro baseball for a project that eventually got cancelled. For two years I have been waiting to find a spot for it somewhere, and that tine has come. Today is part one, which brings the story up to 1945; tomorrow will cover the succeeding seventy-five years. I hope you enjoy reading the piece as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it.

Bud Fowler (top middle) with Keokuk, Iowa professional baseball team, 1885

Baseball originated in America in the decades immediately prior to the Civil War. No one person invented the game. Instead players created different rules independently of each other in different locales. Baseball also evolved from such European games as cricket and rounders. African-Americans too enjoyed playing baseball and were active in the game’s growth. Freepersons and slaves fielded teams during the years of the game’s development. Union and Confederate alike played the game in their respective camps during the Civil War, further spreading and standardizing the game. Black and white squads barnstormed after the war, playing games as they could. In 1869 the first white professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, was founded. The Cuban Giants, formed in 1885, were the first African-American professional team. As the game grew more institutionalized during the Gilded Age black and white players played in a number of predominantly segregated baseball leagues. Some of these now long gone affiliations of clubs are considered major leagues up to the present time.

In 1876 the National League came into being. The American League was founded in 1901. Determining the role of African-Americans in the early years of organized baseball can be difficult given the scarce data and varying criteria. John W. “Bud” Fowler is believed to be the first African-American to break professional baseball’s color barrier, playing for a number of minor league clubs from 1878 to at least 1895. Scholars usually credit Moses Fleetwood Walker, who played the 1884 season for a Toledo team in the American Association, with being the first African-American to play for a major league team.

Rube Foster (right) then of the Chicago American Giants playing against a white Joliet, Illinois team in 1916

Though there were six dozen African-Americans playing minor league or independent ball in the late nineteenth century, major league baseball, like the nation itself, was entirely segregated by this time due to the so-called “gentlemen’s agreement” among owners to exclude blacks. African-American teams and leagues nonetheless remained popular and were common in the early 1900s. African-American baseball began a new era when Andrew “Rube” Foster founded the National Negro League on February 13, 1920. Properly understood, Foster’s creation was the origin of what is today called the Negro Leagues. The Negro National League was initially quite successful with teams primarily in the Midwest fielding such stars as Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige, third baseman William Julius “Judy” Johnson, slick fielding shortstop John Henry “Pop” Lloyd, and center fielders James Thomas “Cool Papa” Bell and Oscar McKinley Charleston. However, organized black baseball faced increasing hardship as African-American communities struggled financially in the late 1920s. The NNL further floundered with Foster’s declining health and eventual death in 1930. The Great Depression hit the Negro National League hard and the organization disbanded in 1931.

A newly reconstituted Negro National League began in 1933 and a competing Negro American League started play in 1937. The new Negro National League now played in the Northeast; the Negro American League was concentrated in the Midwest and South. The champions of these leagues played a Negro World Series from 1942-48. Previous African-American leagues in the 1920s had played what organizers called the Colored Championship of the World. The 1930s and 1940s are considered the golden age for Negro League baseball. Stars of this era included not only many holdovers from the previous era but new standouts such as slugger Walter “Buck” Leonard, Monford “Monty” Irvin, Roy Campanella, and Jack Roosevelt “Jackie” Robinson. The annual East-West All-Star game was an especially popular feature in Negro League baseball. Prominent Negro teams spanning various eras and leagues included the Birmingham Black Barons, Chicago American Giants, Hilldale (PA) Daisies, Homestead (PA) Grays, Indianapolis ABCs, Kansas City Monarchs, Newark Eagles, and Pittsburgh Crawfords.

Meanwhile baseball was growing beyond the borders of the United States as American influence expanded. Cubans had played baseball to a limited degree in the nineteenth century. Esteban Enrique  Bellán of Havana became the first Latino to play major league baseball in the United States when he played the 1871-1873 seasons for the Troy (NY) Haymakers and New York Mutuals of the National Association. Cubans in turn introduced the game in the Spanish-speaking country of the Dominican Republic. The game quickly gained popularity in other Latin American countries, across parts of the Caribbean, and in Mexico as well. Baseball in Cuba was waning by the time of the Spanish-American War. The American presence after the conflict rejuvenated interest in the game, leading to a baseball renaissance on the island that continues up to the present time.

Babe Ruth in Vancouver aboard the Empress of Japan on October 20, 1934 as part of all-star contingent heading to Asia

Baseball also spread across the Pacific. The Japanese began playing the game as early as the 1870s. American teams, usually comprised of all-stars, began visiting in the years shortly after the Russo-Japanese War. The most famous of these goodwill tours was a 22-game visit to the Far East featuring such American players as Jimmie Foxx, Vernon Louis “Lefty” Gomez, Lou Gehrig, and George Herman “Babe” Ruth playing against Japanese and other Asian all-stars in 1934. Many of these countries in the Caribbean, Latin America and the Far East developed their own leagues and built ballparks of professional standards. There were always at least a few Hispanic baseball players in the various major leagues from Bellán’s service in Troy in 1871 up through the full integration of colored players into Major League Baseball after the Second World War.

Click here for part two.

(image: top, National Baseball Hall of Fame, National Baseball Library; middle, RMY Auctions; bottom, Stuart Thomson photographer)