Negro league, any of the associations of African American baseball teams active largely between 1920 and the late 1940s, when Black players were at last contracted to play major and minor league baseball. This was not to be. JAPHETH KNOPP received a B.S. What year did the color line collapse in baseball? This section of town was perhaps best known for its night life, with patrons packing clubs with colorful names such as the Cherry Blossom, the Chez Paree, Lucilles Paradise, and the Ol Kentuck Bar-B-Q.19 Kansas City was a regular tour stop for many of the biggest names in blues and jazz from this period. In the early 1960s there were only a few teams left and the league disbanded, though some clubslike the Monarchscontinued to barnstorm. It is also worth noting that the final game of one of the most storied franchises in the history of baseball may well be lost to us now. Union Station, which had been the second busiest rail terminal in America after Chicago and employed large numbers of African Americans in various capacities, declined rapidly and fell into disrepair. In 1955 the Philadelphia Athletics moved into Municipal Stadium, where the Monarchs played, and though they were always near the bottom of the American League standings and moved on to Oakland after a number of seasons, this increased competition for entertainment dollars and use of public facilities forced the Monarchs out. They would say I was a pro baseball player in the Negro League and people just did not really think that the Negro Leagues was a pro league, said Perron, who now has his own memorabilia business. Many Negro League players were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame based on later major league performances, but 18 made it in based on their careers in the "Negro Majors": Satchel Paige (1971), Josh Gibson (1972), Buck Leonard (1972), Monte Irvin (1973), Cool Papa Bell (1974), Judy Johnson (1975), Oscar Charleston (1976), John Henry Lloyd Outman's first homer of the day came in the second inning, a solo shot off Cubs starter Hayden Wesneski on an 80 mph sweeper that stayed out over the middle of the plate. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Also, Kansas City is unique in that it was the westernmost major metropolis in a border state, straddling the line between North and South and taking on aspects of both.1 However, in most respects the setting for this essay could have been any urban Black area in the United States in this period, with Kansas City being quite representative of the time. ", "There's not an American in this country free until every one of us is free. In this unit, students will explore American history from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement. While issues involving economic and legal inequality dominated the front page, there were many more stories celebrating success stories from the Black community. Hearing racist taunts from fans and players prior to a game, Dodgers teammate Pee Wee Reese is said to have put his arm around Robinson on the field to indicate that he was accepted by those wearing a Brooklyn uniform. . Nobody wants to quit when he's losing; nobody wants you to quit when you're ahead., "Life is not a spectator sport. While Kansas City may have been somewhat unusual in the variety of activities available and the prominence of its Black celebrities, these themes can be found in urban Black communities throughout the North during this period. Following the death of another older brother, Frank, in a motorcycle accident, Jackie decided to honor his memory by enrolling at UCLA in 1939. Provide a detail that shows Josh Gibson's skill as a hitter. This was again the case in Kansas City. He accepted a job as an athletic administrator, but his dreams remained focused on the field of play. By the 1940s shifting demographics placed Municipal Stadium squarely in the African American area of town and would remain the home of the Monarchs for the rest of their tenure in Kansas City.22. Negro League Baseball got its start thanks to the increasing popularity of two things after the Civil War: baseball and segregation.The National Association of Amateur Base Ball Players rejected . How much did Negro League players get paid per day? Vol. Throughout the 1920s Black teams continued to make money, and while paid substantially less than their White counterparts, African American players earned about twice the national median income.28, However, by the end of the decade Black baseball was in steep decline. Manager of Chicago American Giants who organized black baseball's first viable league. Give an example of how a rookie Negro League player was treated. February 10, 2011. The headlines of the Kansas City Call, the local Black newspaper, were still filled with post-war optimism but also with trepidation over continuing economic and civic issues in the months following the end of the war. Vol. Vol. The fact remains, however, that in spite of discrimination and disadvantage, many Black entrepreneurs were able to find a niche market and achieve financial success. Local girl Yolanda Meek had been awarded a $5,000 scholarship by the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.7 Op-ed columnist Lucia Mallory wrote about the importance of continuing to support the government by buying bonds even after the war had ended, and appealed to her readers to donate clothes and other supplies to the relief effort for victims of war-torn Europe.8 Even though the local office was being closed, the FEPC was scheduled to hold a meeting October 14 at Municipal Auditorium called An Industrial Job for all who Qualify, focusing on retaining Black employment in the industrial sector after shifting to a peace-time economy.9. Through the United States League, Ricky played both ends against the middle, attempting to gain a slice of the profits from Jim Crow baseball, while . With new public accommodation laws came increased competition with other businesses outside of the traditional Black section of the city, and many African American owned shopswhich generally had less access to capital, and prohibitive conditions attached when it could be foundwere in most cases no longer able to operate profitably.54 By 1964, only two large buildings anchored the area, with the Kansas City Call still operating in the same space since 1922 on the east end, and the Lincoln Building housing several professional offices to the west. Did you like this story? Vol. degree in Religious Studies and M.A. The first blow came under the guise of reform, when a number of new blue laws made it increasingly difficult for the night clubs to operate profitably. Robinson got his start with the Kansas City Monarchs, a team in the Negro National League, a few years before he broke Major League Baseballs color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. He covered the Nationals/Expos from 2002-2016. Of the 73 players who would jump from the Negro Leagues to the majors, eight would be inducted into the Hall of Fame. 32 Peter Golenbock, The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns (HarperCollins; New York, 2000), 352. By the early 1920s, with a booming economy generally, and a fast growing and racially aware Black population in Northern and Midwestern urban centers, the stage was set for professional African American baseball leagues to successfully develop, and this was certainly the case in the Kansas City community. : The Negro Leagues Are Major Leagues: Essays and Research for Overdue Recognition, Baseball-Reference and SABR, Phoenix, AZ, 2021, pp. His eulogy was delivered by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who declared, When Jackie took the field, something reminded us of our birthright to be free.. The league folded after its first season. What year did the color line collapse in baseball? Similarly to many other inner-city areas, urban renewal projects that were intended (at least in theory) to help revitalize the area had the exact opposite effect. So the Negro Leagues represented the highest level of professional baseball available at the time to Blacks. For many, these exhibitions were a highlight of the yearly social calendar.25. Some teams were assessed as being as valuable as major-league franchises.36 As the postwar period of economic prosperity set in and all sectors of the population saw rising income levels and standards of living, indications were Black businesses, including the Negro Leagues, were finally about to fulfill their potential. The primary reason given for moving the Athletics to Oakland was Kansas Citys lack of commitment to building a new ballpark.56 According to owner Charles O. Finley, the neighborhood had become too dangerous for night games, and he blamed the aging and inadequate facility for low attendance numbers (though one might argue that the club being at the bottom of the standings for more than a dozen years contributed more to low turnout). The change began in earnest in the early 1950s with the decline of the railroad industry, chiefly due to competition from automobile and air travel. 16, August 31, 1945, 9. However, even with diversification of business types owned by African Americans, these businesses continued to depend almost exclusively on Black customers. In this story: Jackie Robinson Bill Ladson has been a reporter for MLB.com since 2002. It also called for another league in the East with clubs in New York City; Philadelphia; Baltimore, Maryland; Washington, D.C.; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Cleveland, Ohio. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. 23 Buck ONeil, I Was Right on Time: My Journey from the Negro Leagues to the Majors (Simon & Schuster; New York, 1996), 7576. Home, Education, and Unemployment in Neighborhoods; Kansas City, Missouri, January 1963. "Are you looking for a Negro who is afraid to fight back?" 16, August 31, 1945, 3. A total of 37 former Negro League players and executives are now enshrined in Cooperstown. 1950 United States Census of Population Report; Kansas City, Missouri (U.S. Govt. Phone: 602.496.1460 In 1997, 50 years after Robinson integrated baseball, his number, 42, was permanently retired by every team in Major League Baseball. The ECL succumbed to financial weakness in the spring of 1928. Paige was the first (1971), while Gibson was inducted posthumously a year later along with first baseman Buck Leonard. At the height of the war the firm had employed some 245 Black workers.4 In the same issue it was announced that the local office of the Federal Employment Practices Commission (which sought to provide more fair hiring and employment standards for minorities, especially in heavy industry and manufacturing) had been closed and was being incorporated in the St. Louis office.5 The writer had some concerns for what this meant for the Black workers in the area. In addition to recognizing other trailblazers in sports, the foundation awards the Jackie Robinson Foundation Scholarship to minority students. 18 Urban League of Kansas City. Another item advertised for the upcoming Labor Day doubleheader against the Memphis Red Sox in which ace pitcher and future Hall of Famer Hilton Smith was scheduled to pitch.12 Somewhat surprisingly, there was no mention of star rookie shortstop Jackie Robinson, who was having one of the finest seasons of any player in the league.13 While the official announcement would not be made until October, this was the first issue of the Monarchs local paper following the historic signing of Robinson by Branch Rickey and the Brooklyn Dodgers on August 25, becoming the first Black player in the twentieth century to have signed with a major league team.14, In the immediate wake of World War II, economic prosperity was permeating all levels of society (though admittedly distributed unequally) and Kansas Citys African American community was no exception. 10 Urban League of Kansas City. The gesture was meant to honor Robinsons legacy and the historic impact he had on professional baseball, sports in general and, by extension, American society, and in recognition of the difficulties the athlete faced in breaking Major League Baseballs color barrier. In 1932, there were 103,872 Black owned businesses in the United States. When this was rejected, the possibility of the Negro Leagues becoming a AAA circuit was raised. By Ashley Marshall. His performance both on and off the field earned him a call-up to Brooklyn the following season. 16 Urban League of Kansas City. It was the early 1960s and Fann was playing for the Burlington Bees, a minor league affiliate of the Kansas City Athletics in Burlington, Iowa. For Dixon, the baseball historian, telling the history of the Negro Leagues and Black baseball players is key to the progress of the sport. . ECONOMIC COSTS OF DESEGREGATION ON NEGRO LEAGUE BASEBALL. Following his death, his wife Rachel, by then an assistant professor in the Yale School of Nursing, established the Jackie Robinson Foundation. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Robinson was born in Cairo, Georgia, but raised in Pasadena, California. Jackie Robinson was an African American professional baseball player who broke Major Leagues Baseballs infamous color barrier when he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. At age 54, he was activated by the White Sox in 1980 and pinch-hit in two games vs. the Angels. 15 Urban League of Kansas City. As a teenager, Perron made it his mission to contact players as a way to collect autographs. Nearly full employment due to the war effort once again gave many African Americans disposable income. Did you encounter any technical issues? From the middle 1950s through the 1970s most major-league teams left their inner-city ballparks for new stadiums closer to the predominately White suburbs, which further removed Black fans from the game.43. Decades after Fann retired from baseball, he befriended a White teenage boy from a Boston suburb who collected sports memorabilia. In 1944, Jackie was nearly court-martialed after he boarded a bus at Fort Hood in Texas and refused the drivers order to sit in the back, as segregationist practices in the United States dictated at the time. He also spoke out on civil rights. He became the first Black player to win the National League Most Valuable Player Award in 1949, when he led the league in hitting with a .342 average, most stolen bases (37) and achieving a career-high 124 RBI. Articles with the HISTORY.com Editors byline have been written or edited by the HISTORY.com editors, including Amanda Onion, Missy Sullivan and Matt Mullen. Young Dodger fans reach down to try to get Robinson's autograph during an exhibition game in New York on April 11, 1947. 34 Michael Woodward, Black Entrepreneurs in America: Stories of Struggle and Success (Rutgers University Press; New Brunswick, NJ, 1997), 18. XIII; No. 11. 27; No. Robinson played several positions for the Dodgers: mainly second base but also third base, first base and a little outfield. Banchero, the No. By 1948 only the NAL was still in operation, and it was relegated to minor league status. Matter of Fact: Newsletter of the Urban League of Kansas City, Missouri. While the integration of professional baseball is often seen as a benchmark in the history of civil rights, this did not come without great costfinancial and otherwiseto Black baseball and the African American community broadly. "Somebody told me baseball was a White man's game," he says about a teammate who approached him while he sat on the bench. These workers in turn then patronized local businesses. But don't expect major changes in the record books. Robinson was an All-Star every year from 1949-1954. While most Black businesses struggled to survive from year to year, professional baseball teams and leagues operated for decades, representing a major achievement in Black enterprise and institution building. Who was the first player to break the color line and play for the Major Leagues. Today, April 15th is observed as Jackie Robinson Day throughout MLB franchises, with players wearing the former Dodgers jersey number 42. Robinson poses in the dugout with Dodgers teammates as he makes his historic debut on April 15, 1947. 26 Tiffany Gill, Beauty Shop Politics: African American Womens Activism in the Beauty Industry (University of Illinois Press; Chicago, 2010), 2. The championship game pitted two Black teams against each other and attracted 10,000 fans to the stadium of the Philadelphia (now Oakland) Athletics. This would happen in Kansas City, where the aging Municipal Stadium was abandoned and the Truman Sports Complexwith stadiums for both the new Kansas City Royals and Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League (NFL)was built near the interstate many miles away from the citys downtown area and much closer to the then predominately White suburbs. This article was written byJapheth Knopp, This article was published in Spring 2016 Baseball Research Journal. Baseball Reference. Citing a lack of proper contracts (which is to say, contracts that had been approved for use in the White major and minor leagues), teams simply ignored the vested interests of Black clubs and signed the many of the best players outright without any financial consideration of Negro League owners.44 Denouncing Black-owned businesses as being illegitimate and therefore ethical to deal with in an inequitable manner had long been a common practice among White business owners. More than 200 local Black-owned businesses provided hundreds of jobs and an average weekly salary of $23.81, which was still below the national median, but much improved from just a few years prior.15 Returning veterans were taking advantage of the Servicemens Readjustment Act of 1944 and other benefits to open new businesses and purchase their own homes.16 Employment opportunities for African American women had improved in this area to such an extent that there was a shortage of domestic workers available to work for wealthy White households.17, Increased economic opportunities and a sense of empowerment from wartime achievements (combined to a smaller degree with new government programs) fostered a zeitgeist of activism more commonly ascribed to the Civil Rights Movement of a decade later. Large-scale Black-owned businesses, unable to find new clients, sources of revenue, and at a competitive disadvantage for the patronage of their traditional customers, failed. In both . In the end desegregation happened on what were essentially the terms of the White majority, which in many ways benefited economically from the new arrangement, rather than honest assimilation combining the best qualities of both communities and building a more just and equal society. Commemoration of the day comes as the nations racial reckoning continues in the wake of the shooting of Daunte Wright. Jackie ultimately left college in the spring of his senior year, just a few credits short of his graduation. Robinson was a formidable athlete in college, lettering in four sports at UCLA. The story, titled New Study Tells Why Riots Occur, examined fifty years of data and concluded that riots occur when Whites feel economically threatened and local authorities, particularly the police, are not adequately trained to properly handle the situation.51 Clearly, racially related violence had by the middle 1960s become a pervasive issue, and other concerns seemed secondary. After playing a game in Huntsville, Alabama, Patterson told CNN that he and his teammates had to stay overnight and slept with the bats on our chests because the Ku Klux Klan was supposed to have seen us playing that day., The players are not household names like Robinson or the late Hall of Fame baseball star Hank Aaron, Perron told CNN, but their experiences paved the way for baseball now.. That year another Black circuit, called the East-West League, was started for eastern teams by Cumberland W. Posey, veteran manager of the Homestead Grays, a ball club based in Pittsburgh. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Treated like heroes in Latin America, in the United . It is known that the team played most of the 1965 season and folded near the end of the year. When some teammates wanted to boycott Robinson's addition to the team, Reese refused to sign the petition. For the first time, MLB The Show will insert some of the greatest Negro League players, from Satchel Paige to Jackie Robinson, into the 2023 edition of the video game as playable characters. All Rights Reserved. He can be contacted at [email protected]. The current face of American society would have been almost unimaginable at the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. 1, January February, 1992, 3. The Indianapolis Clowns were the last Negro League team in business and played their final game in 1988.39, WHITE FLIGHT, DECAPITALIZATION, AND THE AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY. The message was clear; produce more than the average White player or leave. In the mid-fifties the Monarchs were sold, and while they retained the name Kansas City Monarchs, this was a device used as a draw at the gate. Again, Kansas City serves as a model, with several large industries leaving the center-city area in the 1950s and relocating to suburban areas where most White workers continued to be employed while laying off most of the Black workforce.