Leagues Apart: The History and Legacy of the Negro Leagues

By William Webb

Delve into the rich and complex history of the Negro Leagues in this enlightening exploration that captures the spirit, struggles, and profound influence of African American baseball from its inception to its enduring legacy. This book traces the origins of the leagues, beginning with the early days of African American baseball, set against a backdrop of the harsh social and racial climates of the era.

From the founding of the first major league by Rube Foster in 1920, through the highs of the legendary players like Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson, to the pioneering efforts of integration before Jackie Robinson and beyond, these narrative weaves a detailed tapestry of the leagues' pivotal moments. It not only highlights the triumphs and challenges on the field but also the cultural resonance of the leagues in the arts and their role in the civil rights movement.

Discover the stories of iconic teams like the Kansas City Monarchs and Homestead Grays, and learn about the lesser known, yet equally compelling, tales of female players who defied gender norms to play the game they loved. As the leagues faced the impacts of the Great Depression, World War II, and the eventual decline post-integration, this book examines the broader implications of these events on players' lives and the community.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SD
• Release date: Apr 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224971053

Book preview

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origins of african american baseball

The history of African American baseball starts well before Rube Foster gathered the owners together to form the Negro National League in 1920. The pre-league era is a gold mine of teams, players, and events that foreshadow the formation of the Blue and Black circuits and reveal the passion that African Americans had for playing baseball on their own terms.

As the second half of the 19th century began, baseball was taking off in America. Clubs were forming in every big city and in many small ones. African American players were always welcome to play baseball, but they were frequently prohibited from entering the professional ranks. Segregation and biased booking practices played a large part in keeping Blacks out of white leagues.

Many Black players and fans were very passionate about forming clubs for their own enjoyment, and this lead singles teams forming and then being followed by entire leagues. One of the first known African American clubs was the Pythian Base Ball Club. Founded in 1867 in Philadelphia, Jacob C. White, Jr. and Octavius Catto, lawyers and civil rights activists, formed the club to provide young Black players a team to join. At first, the Pythians played other Black clubs. In 1869, they began to take on white clubs and at times they were victorious. In 1869, the Pythians reportedly went on a 15-1 win streak.

As more black teams began to appear, they organized more formally. Among the first black baseball teams to pay their players, the Cuban Giants formed in 1885. They helped prove that black baseball could be commercially viable. They were not from Cuba. The name was just a part of the marketing ploy at the time to make black teams sound more exotic.

The success of the Cuban Giants led to other teams, like the Page Fence Giants, the Philadelphia Giants, and the Chicago Unions. These teams were also social and political institutions. They were a source of pride for black communities, an avenue through which black men could resist racial oppression. The teams traveled throughout the country, and the black papers reported on their games. Sometimes black teams would play against white teams. White newspapers printed box scores of these games. Sometimes thousands of white and black fans would attend.

By the turn of the 20th century, black baseball was an institution. The clubs played baseball at a professional level. Many of these organizations sent talent scouts to watch the best players from other teams. Players like Rube Foster, who would go on to find the Negro National League, were already garnering national attention with their undeniable skill.

The Madison Stars were joined by other barnstorming teams such as the Indianapolis ABCs, the Cuban Giants, and the St. Louis Giants, both of whom counted John Pete Hill among their players. Hill was one of the greatest stars of the early years of Black baseball, a superb outfielder with a powerful bat, swift feet, and a keen baseball mind.

To make ends meet, all of these teams played anyone and everyone they could find to play -- local white teams, local semiprofessional African American teams, and other professional African American teams. By turning in outstanding performances on the field, African American players like Rube Foster and his contemporaries had already caught the attention of southern African American newspapers.

Although Foster believed that these papers and a scattering of fans were the only people who knew about him and his team, he was wrong. Foster's small role in baseball history would help lead to the future. Barnstorming was one way that baseball players could show that they deserved to play in the same profession as whites.

While many people today might believe that barnstorming was just a matter of getting on a train, playing a game, and getting paid with a little extra money for a total of $10-20 a week, this was hardly the case. Barnstorming teams had to travel thousands of miles just to find a game in which a promoter had promised them travel expenses, an advance to cover personal expenses, and a guarantee of at least a nominal share of the door.

In other words, Rube Foster and his contemporaries were able to maintain themselves on what amounted to a livable stipend, money Bernard Malamud described as rake-offs one could live on, even though these men only made $10 - $20 per game for a season that was, at the most, five months long and more likely four. Even prior to the creation of the Negro Leagues, the ante-bellum period was a stunning prologue to the deep layer of American social history that was soon delivered.

These early players, organizers and teams rejected the notion that baseball was a white man's game, creating the platform for future generations not only to dream of playing in the Major Leagues but to eventually occupy them. The earliest days of Black baseball weave a tale of ingenuity, endurance and an unyielding love for the sport in the face of a segregated society entrenched against them.

The players of those opening days of Black baseball assumed the role of visionaries and begetters, sowing the seeds of athletic splendor and community service that would carry over into the Negro Leagues. Their influence still permeates not just to what the structured Negro Leagues achieved but to those who would lift up their names, their story, and their contributions to our national pastime. But as the tales of these pioneer teams and stars reveal, baseball had already offered a symbolic battleground for African American aspiration - a motif that would resonate loudly in the annals of American sports history.

Though future years saw the crystallization of a distinctly segregated game, to glance back on these formative early days is to regard far more than the stirring birth of a segregated sport, and the closed-door policies that soon came to characterize it. What emerges is the story of a crusade that was slowly launched, and ultimately waged, to disrupt and alter the racial hierarchy of American baseball.

social and racial environment of the era

Traveling back in time to the social and racial landscape that bore the earliest Black baseball clubs allows us to revisit the America of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a time of great social ferment, with accompanying highs and lows in race relations. As we reconstruct this world, we reflect on the social conditions in which Black baseball first took root and the hardships that pioneering athletes faced.

The era following the Civil War saw the rapid growth of American cities. Thousands of people migrated from the countryside to the city, pulled by the promise of work in the nation's new factories and mills. Black Americans, too, moved in great numbers, seeking an escape from the poverty and limited opportunity of the South.

Expectantly, their arrival caused great social tumult. In the South, to be sure, measures were enacted to prevent social mixing. Through Jim Crow laws, the South institutionalized segregation--in practice, if not on paper. In the North, the racial climate wasn't much better. Urban northern neighborhoods overflowed with immigrants, creating intense competition for jobs, housing and social position. In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation was constitutional as long as separate but equal facilities were provided. But the South's facilities, in fact, were anything but equal. Public facilities, including ballparks, were affected.

In the North, racial segregation was not always legally mandated, but racism frequently resulted in a de facto separation of races in most aspects of public life. Baseball was no exception to the rule which divided the races. America's national pastime had been integrated in the late 1800s, with a few Black players winding up on professional white teams. By the 1880s, however, a gentlemen's agreement had been reached among team owners that kept them off the field.

From the late 19th century until Jackie Robinson broke major league baseball's color line in 1947, those Black players who wanted to play ball for a living could do so only in the separate Negro major and minor leagues.

These leagues, however, were not just proving grounds for Black players, they were the stage upon which Black men and women could act out their right to be themselves; to demonstrate to the world that, as human beings and American citizens, they had every right to be proud of their race and its ability to produce people worthy of celebration.

The leagues came into being at a time when African Americans were going through a significant cultural and intellectual revival. Known as the Harlem Renaissance, after the New York Community in which it was centered, the movement which influenced African American art, literature and music is probably best understood as the