Negro Leagues

– Black BaseBall Life Essay, Research Paper

The Color BarrierDue to the color of their skin and their past history, blacks were unfairly denied the privilege to play Major League Baseball; it has remained a period of shame for baseball. Not only did the white players not accept Blacks as equals, on or off the field, the public did not either. Because of the determination and strong perseverance, the blacks were able to overcome what many thought was not achievable. The events that took place during the early 1900s changed the history of baseball forever.

Americans started playing baseball on relaxed teams, using local rules, in the early 1800s. By the 1860s baseball jumped in popularity, some people said it was America’s “national pastime.” In 1869 the Cincinnati Red Stockings became the first paid team and are considered the first professional team. In 1871 the first professional baseball league, the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, was started. Then in 1876 the first major league, the National League, was formed.

African Americans played baseball during the 1800s. By 1860s some popular black amateur teams were Colored Union Club in Brooklyn, New York, and the Pythian Club, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. All the black professional teams started in the 1880s. Some of the teams were the St. Louis Black Stockings and the Cuban Giants (of New York). This really showed how the public felt; amateur and professional baseball were mainly segregated.

One of the few black players on an integrated professional league team was Moses Fleetwood “Fleet” Walker, a catcher for the minor league Toledo Blue Stockings. In 1883, the Chicago White Stockings did not take the field against the Blue Stockings because of Walker being on the team. The Blue Stockings manager said that the game be played, and Anson gave in. When the Blue Stockings joined the American Association in 1884, Walker became the first African-American major leaguer. In July 1887, the International League banned future contracts with black players, even though it allowed black players already under contract to stay on its teams. These are two of the events that helped form the color line, which segregated baseball until the 1940s.

During the 1890s, most professional black players were only allowed to play in exhibition games on colored teams on the barnstorming circuit. Players on major league teams also barnstormed in cities and towns after the regular season was over. In some places black teams and white teams played each other. In amateur baseball, some athletes played on integrated teams like the Navy baseball team.

Some baseball owners and managers of major league teams tried to hire African Americans by describing the players as Hispanic or Native American, this was there way of trying to sound the least discriminate as possible. In 1901, John McGraw, manager of the Baltimore Orioles, tried to get black second baseman Charlie Grant into the game by calling him a Cherokee named Tokohama. The bulk of owners and managers did not even try things like that. Baseball also did not like interracial barnstorming and white players were in the long run banned from wearing their major league uniforms in these games.

In parts of Latin America, baseball was not segregated. A lot of blacks played baseball there in the winter as well as in Negro Leagues in the United States in the summer. The most popular of the Negro Leagues started in 1920, the Negro National League. The Negro American League started in 1937 and then took in the Negro National League teams.

By the 1940s, organized baseball had been racially segregated for a lot years. The black writers and some of the white writers had long wanted integration of baseball. Wendell Smith of The Pittsburgh Courier was very active in the fight. World War II experiences forced more people to question segregation. Though several people in major league baseball tried to end segregation, no one succeeded until Brooklyn Dodger’s general manager Branch Rickey took action. In 1945, the Jim Crow policies of baseball changed when Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson of the Negro League’s Kansas City Monarchs agreed to a contract that would bring Robinson into the major leagues in 1947. Jackie Robinson joined the Kansas City Monarchs and played with baseball greats like Satchel Paige and Martin Dihigo. Negro League competition featured speed, surprise, and more action than in organized baseball. Written contracts to keep players with teams through a season were unusual and schedules were weird.

As with racial prejudice, economic and other factors contributed to segregation in baseball. Many owners of major league teams rented their stadiums to Negro League teams when their own teams were on the road. Team owners thought if baseball were integrated, the Negro Leagues would probably not survive losing their best players to the majors, major league owners would lose important rental income, and many Negro League players would lose their job. Some owners also thought that a white crowd would not want to attend games with black players. Others thought the addition of black players as a way to attract larger white as well as black fans and sell more tickets. Looking back on this time, Rickey described the problems he faced and the events that influenced his decision in a speech to the One Hundred Percent Wrong Club