The Negro leagues were United States professional
baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball sport played between two team sport, teams of nine players each, taking turns batting (baseball), batting and Fielding (baseball), fielding. The game occurs over the course of several Pitch ...
leagues comprising teams of
African American
African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...
s. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the
seven relatively successful leagues beginning in 1920 that are sometimes termed "Negro Major Leagues".
In the late 19th century, the
baseball color line developed,
excluding African Americans from play in major baseball leagues and affiliated minor leagues (collectively known as
organized baseball). The first professional baseball league consisting of all-black teams, the
National Colored Base Ball League, was organized strictly as a minor league but failed in
1887 after only two weeks owing to low attendance. After several decades of mostly independent play by a variety of teams, the first
Negro National League was formed in 1920 by
Rube Foster. Ultimately, seven Negro major leagues existed at various times over the next thirty years. After
integration of organized baseball began in the late 1940s, the quality of the Negro leagues slowly deteriorated; the
Negro American League's
1951 season is generally considered the last Negro league season, although the last professional club, the
Indianapolis Clowns, operated as a humorous sideshow rather than competitively from the mid-1960s to the 1980s.
In December 2020,
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (baseball), National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB i ...
announced that based on recent decades of historical research, it classified the seven "Negro major leagues" as additional major leagues, adding them to the six historical "major league" designations it made in 1969, thus recognizing statistics and approximately 3,400 players who played from 1920 to 1948. On May 28, 2024, Major League Baseball announced that it had integrated Negro league statistics into its records, which among other changes gives
Josh Gibson the highest single-season major league
batting average at .466 (1943) and the highest career batting average at .372.
Etymology
During the formative years of black baseball, the term "
colored
''Colored'' (or ''coloured'') is a racial descriptor historically used in the United States during the Jim Crow era to refer to an African American. In many places, it may be considered a slur.
Dictionary definitions
The word ''colored'' wa ...
" was the established usage when referring to African-Americans. References to black baseball prior to the 1930s are usually to "colored" leagues or teams, such as the
Southern League of Colored Base Ballists (1886), the
National Colored Base Ball League (1887) and the
Eastern Colored League (1923), among others. By the 1920s or 1930s, the term "
Negro
In the English language, the term ''negro'' (or sometimes ''negress'' for a female) is a term historically used to refer to people of Black people, Black African heritage. The term ''negro'' means the color black in Spanish and Portuguese (from ...
" came into use which led to references to "Negro" leagues or teams. The black World Series was referred to as the
Colored World Series from 1924 to 1927, and the
Negro World Series from 1942 to 1948.
The
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American civil rights organization formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du&nbs ...
petitioned the public to recognize a capital "N" in negro as a matter of respect for black people. By 1930, essentially every major US outlet had adopted "Negro" as the accepted term for black people. By about 1970, the term "Negro" had fallen into disfavor, but by then the Negro leagues were mere historic artifacts.
History of the Negro leagues
Amateur era
Because black people were not being accepted into the major and minor baseball leagues due to
racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race or ethnicity over another. It may also me ...
which established the
color line, they formed their own teams and had made professional teams by the 1880s. The first known baseball game between two black teams was held on November 15, 1859, in New York City. The Henson Base Ball Club of
Jamaica, Queens, defeated the Unknowns of
Weeksville, Brooklyn, 54 to 43.
Immediately after the end of the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
in 1865 and during the
Reconstruction
Reconstruction may refer to:
Politics, history, and sociology
*Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company
*''Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Union ...
period that followed, a black baseball scene formed in the East and Mid-Atlantic states. Comprising mainly ex-soldiers and promoted by some well-known black officers, teams such as the Jamaica Monitor Club,
Albany Bachelors, Philadelphia Excelsiors and Chicago Uniques started playing each other and any other team that would play against them.
By the end of the 1860s, the black baseball mecca was
Philadelphia
Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
, which had an African-American population of 22,000. Two former
cricket
Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball game played between two Sports team, teams of eleven players on a cricket field, field, at the centre of which is a cricket pitch, pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two Bail (cr ...
players, James H. Francis and Francis Wood, formed the
Pythian Base Ball Club. They played in
Camden, New Jersey
Camden is a City (New Jersey), city in Camden County, New Jersey, Camden County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is part of the Delaware Valley metropolitan region. The city was incorporated on February 13, 1828.Snyder, John P''The Story of ...
, at the landing of the Federal Street Ferry, because it was difficult to get permits for black baseball games in the city.
Octavius Catto, the promoter of the Pythians, decided to apply for membership in the
National Association of Base Ball Players, normally a matter of sending delegates to the annual convention; beyond that, a formality. At the end of the 1867 season, "the National Association of Baseball Players voted to exclude any club with a black player." In some ways ''Blackball'' thrived under
segregation, with the few black teams of the day playing not only each other but white teams as well. "Black teams earned the bulk of their income playing white independent 'semipro' clubs."
Professional baseball
Baseball featuring African American players became professionalized by the 1870s. The first known professional black baseball player was
Bud Fowler, who appeared in a handful of games with a
Chelsea, Massachusetts club in April 1878 and then pitched for the
Lynn, Massachusetts
Lynn is the eighth-largest List of municipalities in Massachusetts, municipality in Massachusetts, United States, and the largest city in Essex County, Massachusetts, Essex County. Situated on the Atlantic Ocean, north of the Boston city line ...
team in the
International Association.
Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother,
Welday Wilberforce Walker, were the first two recognizably black players in the major leagues. They both played for the 1884
Toledo Blue Stockings in the
American Association, which was considered a major league at the time. Then in 1886 second baseman
Frank Grant joined the
Buffalo Bisons of the
International League
The International League (IL) is a Minor League Baseball league that operates in the United States. Along with the Pacific Coast League, it is one of two leagues playing at the Triple-A (baseball), Triple-A level, which is one grade below Major ...
, the strongest minor league, and hit .340, third highest in the league. Several other black American players joined the International League the following season, including pitchers
George Stovey and Robert Higgins, but 1888 was the last season blacks were permitted in that or any other high minor league.
The first nationally known black professional baseball team was founded in
1885 when three clubs, the Keystone Athletics of Philadelphia, the Orions of Philadelphia, and the Manhattans of Washington, D.C., merged to form the
Cuban Giants.
The success of the Cubans led to the creation of the first recognized "Negro league" in 1887—the
National Colored Base Ball League. It was organized strictly as a minor league and founded with six teams:
Baltimore Lord Baltimores,
Boston Resolutes,
Louisville Fall City,
New York Gorhams,
Philadelphia Pythians, and
Pittsburgh Keystones. Two more joined before the season but never played a game, the
Cincinnati Browns and
Washington Capital . The league, led by Walter S. Brown of
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...
, applied for and was granted official minor league status and thus "protection" under the major league-led
National Agreement. This move prevented any team in organized baseball from signing any of the NCBBL players, which also locked the players to their particular teams within the league. The reserve clause would have tied the players to their clubs from season to season but the NCBBL failed. One month into the season, the Resolutes folded. A week later, only three teams were left.
Because the original Cuban Giants were a popular and business success, many similarly named teams came into existence—including the
Cuban X-Giants, a splinter and a powerhouse around 1900; the Genuine Cuban Giants, the renamed Cuban Giants, the
Columbia Giants, the
Brooklyn Royal Giants, and so on. The early "Cuban" teams were all composed of African Americans rather than Cubans; the purpose was to increase their acceptance with white patrons, as
Cuba
Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...
was on very friendly terms with the United States during those years. Beginning in 1899 several
Cuban baseball teams played in North America, including the
All Cubans, the
Cuban Stars (West), the
Cuban Stars (East), and the
New York Cubans. Some of them included white Cuban players, and some were Negro league players.
The few players on the white minor league teams were constantly dodging verbal and physical abuse from both competitors and fans. The
Compromise of 1877
The Compromise of 1877, also known as the Wormley Agreement, the Tilden-Hayes Compromise, the Bargain of 1877, or Corrupt bargain, the Corrupt Bargain, was a speculated unwritten political deal in the United States to settle the intense dispute ...
removed the few remaining obstacles from the South enacting
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were U.S. state, state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, "Jim Crow (character), Ji ...
, allowing legal discrimination against blacks. On July 14, 1887,
Cap Anson
Adrian Constantine Anson (April 17, 1852 – April 14, 1922), nicknamed "Cap" (for "Captain"), "Pop", and "Baby" (early in his career) was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) first baseman. Including his time in the National Association ...
's
Chicago White Stockings were scheduled to play the Newark Giants of the International League, which had Fleet Walker and
George Stovey on its roster. After Anson marched his team onto the field in military style as was his custom, he declared that his team would not play unless Walker and Stovey were barred from the field. Newark capitulated, and later that same day, league owners voted to refuse future contracts to blacks, citing the "hazards" imposed by such athletes.
In 1888, the
Middle States League was formed and it admitted two all-black teams to its otherwise all-white league, the Cuban Giants and their arch-rivals, the
New York Gorhams. Despite the animosity between the two clubs, they managed to form a traveling team, the Colored All Americans. This enabled them to make money
barnstorming while fulfilling their league obligations. In 1890, the Giants returned to their independent, barnstorming identity, and by 1892, they were the only black team in the East still in operation on a full-time basis.
Frank Leland
Also in 1888,
Frank Leland got some of Chicago's black businessmen to sponsor the black amateur
Union Base Ball Club. Through Chicago's city government, Leland obtained a permit and lease to play at the
South Side Park, a 5,000-seat facility. Eventually, his team went pro and became the
Chicago Unions.
After his stint with the Gorhams, Bud Fowler caught on with a team out of
Findlay, Ohio. While his team was playing in
Adrian, Michigan
Adrian is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Lenawee County, Michigan, Lenawee County. The population was 20,645 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Adrian lies in Michigan's 5th congressional district. The c ...
, Fowler was persuaded by two white local businessmen,
L. W. Hoch and
Rolla Taylor to help them start a team financed by the Page Woven Wire Fence Company, the
Page Fence Giants. The Page Fence Giants went on to become a powerhouse team that had no home field. Barnstorming through the Midwest, they would play all comers. Their success became the prototype for black baseball for years to come.
After the 1898 season, the Page Fence Giants were forced to fold because of finances.
Alvin H. Garrett, a black businessman in Chicago, and
John W. Patterson, the
left fielder
In baseball, a left fielder, abbreviated LF, is an outfielder who plays defense in left field. Left field is the area of the outfield to the left of a person standing at home plate and facing towards the pitcher's mound. In the numbering system ...
for the Page Fence Giants, reformed the team under the name the
Columbia Giants. In 1901, the Giants folded because of a lack of a place to play. Leland bought the Giants in 1905 and merged it with his Unions (despite the fact that not a single Giant player ended up on the roster), and named them the
Leland Giants.
Rube Foster
The
Philadelphia Giants, owned by
Walter Schlichter, a white businessman, rose to prominence in 1903 when they lost to the Cuban X-Giants in their version of the "Colored Championship". Leading the way for the Cubans was a young pitcher by the name of
Andrew "Rube" Foster. The following season, Schlichter, in the finest blackball tradition, hired Foster away from the Cubans and beat them in their 1904 rematch. Philadelphia remained on top of the blackball world until Foster left the team in 1907 to play and manage the
Leland Giants (Frank Leland renamed his Chicago Union Giants the Leland Giants in 1905).
Around the same time,
Nat Strong, a white businessman, started using his ownership of baseball fields in the New York City area to become the leading promoter of blackball on the East coast. Just about any game played in New York, Strong would get a cut. Strong eventually used his leverage to almost put the
Brooklyn Royal Giants out of business, and then he bought the club and turned it into a barnstorming team.
When Foster joined the Leland Giants, he demanded that he be put in charge of not only the on-field activities but the bookings as well. Foster immediately turned the Giants into ''the'' team to beat. He indoctrinated them to take the extra base, to play hit and run on nearly every pitch, and to rattle the opposing pitcher by taking them deep into the count. He studied the mechanics of his pitchers and could spot the smallest flaw, turning his average pitchers into learned craftsmen. Foster also was able to turn around the business end of the team as well, by demanding and getting 40 percent of the gate instead of the 10 percent that Frank Leland was getting.
By the end of the 1909, Foster demanded that Leland step back from all baseball operations or he (Foster) would leave. When Leland would not give up complete control, Foster quit, and in a heated court battle, got to keep the rights to the Leland Giants' name. Leland took the players and started a new team named the Chicago Giants, while Foster took the Leland Giants and started to encroach on Nat Strong's territory.
As early as 1910, Foster started talking about reviving the concept of an all-black league. The one thing he was insistent upon was that black teams should be owned by black men. This put him in direct competition with Strong. After 1910, Foster renamed his team the
Chicago American Giants to appeal to a larger fan base. During the same year,
J. L. Wilkinson started the
All Nations traveling team. The All Nations team would eventually become one of the best-known and popular teams of the Negro leagues, the
Kansas City Monarchs.
On April 6, 1917, the United States entered World War I. Manpower needed by the defense plants and industry accelerated the migration of blacks from the South to the North. This meant a larger and more affluent fan base with more money to spend. By the end of the war in 1919, Foster was again ready to start a Negro baseball league.
On February 13 and 14, 1920, talks were held in
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri, abbreviated KC or KCMO, is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri by List of cities in Missouri, population and area. The city lies within Jackson County, Missouri, Jackson, Clay County, Missouri, Clay, and Pl ...
, that established the
Negro National League and its governing body the
National Association of Colored Professional Base Ball Clubs. The league was initially composed of eight teams: Chicago American Giants,
Chicago Giants, Cuban Stars,
Dayton Marcos,
Detroit Stars,
Indianapolis ABCs, Kansas City Monarchs, and
St. Louis Giants. Foster was named league president and controlled every aspect of the league, including which players played on which teams, when and where teams played, and what equipment was used (all of which had to be purchased from Foster). Foster, as booking agent of the league, took a five percent cut of all gate receipts.
Golden age
On May 2, 1920, the Indianapolis ABCs beat Charles "Joe" Green's Chicago Giants (4–2) in the first game played in the inaugural season of the Negro National League, played at Washington Park in Indianapolis. However, because of the
Chicago Race Riot of 1919, the National Guard still occupied the Giants' home field,
Schorling's Park (formerly South Side Park). This forced Foster to cancel all the Giants' home games for almost a month and threatened to become a huge embarrassment for the league. On March 2, 1920, the Negro Southern League was founded in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1921, the
Negro Southern League joined Foster's
National Association of Colored Professional Base Ball Clubs. As a dues-paying member of the association, it received the same protection from raiding parties as any team in the Negro National League.
Foster then admitted John Connors'
Atlantic City Bacharach Giants as an associate member to move further into
Nat Strong's territory. Connors, wanting to return the favor of helping him against Strong, raided
Ed Bolden's
Hilldale Daisies team. Bolden saw little choice but to team up with Foster's nemesis, Nat Strong. Within days of calling a truce with Strong, Bolden made an about-face and signed up as an associate member of Foster's Negro National League.
On December 16, 1922, Bolden once again shifted sides and, with Strong, formed the Eastern Colored League as an alternative to Foster's Negro National League, which started with six teams: Atlantic City Bacharach Giants,
Baltimore Black Sox, Brooklyn Royal Giants, New York Cuban Stars, Hilldale, and
New York Lincoln Giants. The National League was having trouble maintaining continuity among its franchises: three teams folded and had to be replaced after the 1921 season, two others after the 1922 season, and two more after the 1923 season. Foster replaced the defunct teams, sometimes promoting whole teams from the Negro Southern League into the NNL. Finally Foster and Bolden met and agreed to an annual
World Series
The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB). It has been contested since between the champion teams of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). The winning team, determined through a best- ...
beginning in
1924.

Although this was a strong beginning to the
Negro Leagues, throughout the 1920s the leagues were very unorganized, having teams play uneven numbers of games. Teams would skip official games for non-league matchups which would be more lucrative for the team. Players would jump from franchise to franchise, looking for the highest pay, causing imbalance within the leagues.
1925 saw the
St. Louis Stars come of age in the Negro National League. They finished in second place during the second half of the year due in large part to their pitcher turned center fielder,
Cool Papa Bell, and their shortstop,
Willie Wells. A gas leak in his home nearly asphyxiated Rube Foster in 1926, and his increasingly erratic behavior led to him being committed to an asylum a year later. While Foster was out of the picture, the owners of the National League elected
William C. Hueston as new league president. In 1927, Ed Bolden suffered a similar fate as Foster, by committing himself to a hospital because the pressure was too great. The Eastern League folded shortly after that, marking the end of the World Series between the NNL and the ECL.
After the Eastern League folded following the 1927 season, a new eastern league, the
American Negro League
The American Negro League (ANL) was one of several Negro league baseball, Negro leagues established during the period in the United States in which organized baseball was segregated. The ANL operated on the East Coast of the United States in 1929. ...
, was formed to replace it. The makeup of the new ANL was nearly the same as the Eastern League, the exception being that the
Homestead Grays
The Homestead Grays (also known as Washington Grays or Washington Homestead Grays) were a professional baseball team that played in the Negro league baseball, Negro leagues in the United States.
The team was formed in 1912 in sports, 1912 by Cum ...
joined in place of the now-defunct Brooklyn Royal Giants. The ANL lasted just one season. In the face of harder economic times, the Negro National League folded after the 1931 season. Some of its teams joined the only Negro league then left, the Negro Southern League. Only strong independent clubs were able to survive the hard economic turn that affected the country, such as the
Kansas City Monarchs. During this time, strong clubs would build teams that had potential to beat the teams in the major leagues with new players and tactics that many have never seen before.
On March 26, 1932, the Chicago
''Defender'' announced the end of Negro National League.
Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and Gus Greenlee
Just as Negro league baseball seemed to be at its lowest point and was about to fade into history, along came
Cumberland Posey and his Homestead Grays. Posey, Charlie Walker, John Roesnik, George Rossiter, John Drew, Lloyd Thompson, and L.R. Williams got together in January 1932 and founded the
East–West League. Eight cities were included in the new league: "Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, Newark, New York, and Washington, D.C.". By May 1932, the Detroit Wolves were about to collapse, and instead of letting the team go, Posey kept pumping money into it. By June the Wolves had disintegrated and all the rest of the teams, except for the Grays, were beyond help, so Posey had to terminate the league.
Across town from Posey,
Gus Greenlee, a reputed gangster and
numbers runner, had just purchased the
Pittsburgh Crawfords. Greenlee's main interest in baseball was to use it as a way to
launder money from his numbers games. But, after learning about Posey's money-making machine in
Homestead, he became obsessed with the sport and his Crawfords. On August 6, 1931,
Satchel Paige made his first appearance as a Crawford. With Paige on his team, Greenlee took a huge risk by investing $100,000 in a new ballpark to be called
Greenlee Field. On opening day, April 30, 1932, the pitcher-catcher battery was made up of the two most marketable icons in all of black baseball: Satchel Paige and
Josh Gibson.
In 1933, Greenlee, riding the popularity of his Crawfords, became the next man to start a Negro league. In February 1933, Greenlee and delegates from six other teams met at Greenlee's Crawford Grill to ratify the constitution of the
National Organization of Professional Baseball Clubs. The name of the new league was the same as the old league
Negro National League which had disbanded a year earlier in 1932. The members of the new league were the Pittsburgh Crawfords, the
Columbus Blue Birds, the Indianapolis ABCs, the Baltimore Black Sox, the Brooklyn Royal Giants, Cole's American Giants (formerly the
Chicago American Giants), and the Nashville Elite Giants. Greenlee also came up with the idea to duplicate the
Major League Baseball All-Star Game
The Major League Baseball All-Star Game, also known as the "Midsummer Classic", is an annual professional baseball game sanctioned by Major League Baseball (MLB) and contested between the all-stars from the American League (AL) and National ...
, except, unlike the big league method in which the sportswriters chose the players, the fans voted for the participants. The first game, known as the
East–West All-Star Game, was held September 10, 1933, at
Comiskey Park in Chicago before a crowd of 20,000.
World War II
With the Japanese
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Empire of Japan on the United States Pacific Fleet at Naval Station Pearl Harbor, its naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Territory of ...
on December 7, 1941, the United States was thrust into World War II. Remembering World War I, black America vowed it would not be shut out of the beneficial effects of a major war effort: economic boom and social unification.
Just like the major leagues, the Negro leagues saw many stars miss one or more seasons while fighting overseas. While many players were over 30 and considered "too old" for service,
Monte Irvin,
Larry Doby and
Leon Day of
Newark;
Ford Smith,
Hank Thompson,
Joe Greene,
Willard Brown and
Buck O'Neil of
Kansas City;
Lyman Bostock of
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...
; and
Lick Carlisle and
Howard Easterling of
Homestead all served. But the white majors were barely recognizable, while the Negro leagues reached their highest plateau. Millions of black Americans were working in war industries and, making good money, they packed league games in every city. Business was so good that promoter
Abe Saperstein (famous for the
Harlem Globetrotters
The Harlem Globetrotters is an American Exhibition game, exhibition basketball team. They combine athleticism, theater, entertainment, and comedy in their style of play. Over the years, they have played more than 26,000 exhibition games in 124 ...
) started a new circuit, the
Negro Midwest League, a minor league similar to the Negro Southern League. The
Negro World Series was revived in 1942, this time pitting the winners of the eastern
Negro National League and midwestern
Negro American League. It continued through 1948 with the NNL winning four championships and the NAL three.
In 1946, Saperstein partnered with
Jesse Owens
James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913 – March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete who made history at the Athletics at the 1936 Summer Olympics, 1936 Olympic Games by becoming the first person to win four gold meda ...
to form another Negro league, the
West Coast Baseball Association (WCBA); Saperstein was league president and Owens was vice-president and the owner of the league's
Portland (Oregon) Rosebuds franchise.
The WCBA disbanded after only two months.
Integration era
Judge Kenesaw M. Landis, the first
Commissioner of Baseball, was an intractable opponent of integrating the white majors. During his quarter-century tenure, he blocked all attempts at integrating the game. A popular story has it that in ,
Bill Veeck planned to buy the moribund
Philadelphia Phillies and stock them with Negro league stars. However, when Landis got wind of his plans,
he and National League president
Ford Frick
Ford Christopher Frick (December 19, 1894 – April 8, 1978) was an American sportswriter and baseball executive. After working as a teacher and as a sportswriter for the ''New York Journal-American, New York American'', he served as public rela ...
scuttled it in favor of another bid by
William D. Cox.
After Landis's death in 1944,
Happy Chandler
Albert Benjamin "Happy" Chandler Sr. (July 14, 1898 – June 15, 1991) was an American politician from Kentucky. He represented Kentucky in the U.S. Senate and served as its List of Governors of Kentucky, 44th and 49th governor. Aside from his ...
was named his successor. Chandler was open to integrating the game, even at the risk of losing his job as Commissioner. He later said in his biography that he could not, in good conscience, tell black players they could not play baseball with whites when they had fought for their country
lthough they had fought in segregated units
In March 1945, the white majors created the
Major League Committee on Baseball Integration. Its members included
Joseph P. Rainey,
Larry MacPhail and
Branch Rickey. Because MacPhail, who was an outspoken critic of integration, kept stalling, the committee never met. Under the guise of starting an all-black league, Rickey sent scouts all around the United States, Mexico and
Puerto Rico
; abbreviated PR), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is a Government of Puerto Rico, self-governing Caribbean Geography of Puerto Rico, archipelago and island organized as an Territories of the United States, unincorporated territo ...
, looking for the perfect candidate to break the color line. His list was eventually narrowed down to three:
Roy Campanella,
Don Newcombe and
Jackie Robinson.
On August 28, 1945, Jackie Robinson met with Rickey in Brooklyn, where Rickey gave Robinson a "test" by berating him and shouting racial epithets that Robinson would hear from day one in the white game. Having passed the test, Robinson signed the contract which stipulated that from then on, Robinson had no "written or moral obligations" to any other club. By the inclusion of this clause, precedent was set that would raze the Negro leagues as a functional commercial enterprise.
To throw off the press and keep his intentions hidden, Rickey got heavily involved in
Gus Greenlee's newest foray into black baseball, the
United States League. Greenlee started the league in 1945 as a way to get back at the owners of the Negro National League teams for throwing him out. Rickey saw the opportunity as a way to convince people that he was interested in cleaning up blackball, not integrating it. In midsummer 1945, Rickey, almost ready with his Robinson plan, pulled out of the league. The league folded after the end of the 1946 season.
Pressured by civil rights groups, the
Fair Employment Practices Act was passed by the
New York State Legislature
The New York State Legislature consists of the Bicameralism, two houses that act as the State legislature (United States), state legislature of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York: the New York State Senate and the New York State Assem ...
in 1945. This followed the passing of the
Quinn-Ives Act banning discrimination in hiring. At the same time,
NYC Mayor La Guardia formed the
Mayor's Commission on Baseball to study integration of the major leagues. All this led to Rickey announcing the signing of Robinson much earlier than he would have liked. On October 23, 1945,
Montreal Royals president
Hector Racine announced that, "We are signing this boy."
Early in 1946, Rickey signed four more black players, Campanella, Newcombe,
John Wright and
Roy Partlow, this time with much less fanfare. After the integration of the major leagues in 1947, marked by the appearance of
Jackie Robinson with the
Brooklyn Dodgers that April, interest in Negro league baseball waned. Black players who were regarded as prospects were signed by major league teams, often without regard for any contracts that might have been signed with Negro league clubs. Negro league owners who complained about this practice were in a
no-win situation
A no-win situation or lose–lose situation is an outcome of a negotiation, conflict or challenging circumstance in which all parties are worse off. It is an alternative to a win–win or outcome in which one party wins. Arbitration or media ...
: They could not protect their own interests without seeming to interfere with the advancement of players to the majors. By 1948, the Dodgers, along with Veeck's
Cleveland Indians
The Cleveland Guardians are an American professional baseball team based in Cleveland. The Guardians compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) American League Central, Central Division. Since , the team ...
, had integrated.
The Negro leagues also "integrated" around the same time, as
Eddie Klep pitched for the
Cleveland Buckeyes during the 1946 season, becoming the first white American to play in the Negro leagues.
These moves came despite strong opposition from the owners; Rickey was the only one of the 16 owners to support integrating the sport in January 1947. Chandler's decision to overrule them may have been a factor in his ouster in 1951 in favor of
Ford C. Frick.
End of the Negro leagues
Some proposals were floated to bring the Negro leagues into "organized baseball" as developmental leagues for black players, but that was recognized as contrary to the goal of full integration. And so, the Negro leagues, once among the largest and most prosperous black-owned business ventures, were allowed to fade into oblivion.
First a trickle and then a flood of players signed with major league baseball teams. Most signed minor league contracts and many languished, shuttled from one bush league team to another despite their success at that level.
The Negro National League folded after the 1948 season when the Grays withdrew to resume barnstorming, the
Newark Eagles moved from
New Jersey
New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...
to
Houston, Texas
Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...
, and the
New York Black Yankees folded. The Grays folded one year later after losing $30,000 in the barnstorming effort. The Negro American League was the only "major" Negro league operating in 1949. Within two years it had been reduced to minor league caliber and it played its last game in 1958.
The last All-Star game was held in 1962, and by 1966 the
Indianapolis Clowns were the last Negro league team still playing. The Clowns continued to play exhibition games into the 1980s, but as a humorous sideshow rather than a competitive sport.
Negro major leagues
While organized leagues were common in black baseball, there were only seven leagues that are considered to be of the top quality of play at the time of their existence. In 2020,
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (baseball), National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB i ...
announced their official determination and designation of Negro Leagues by seasons as "Major Leagues", including the incorporation of applicable player records into the official baseball statistics. None materialized prior to 1920 and by 1950, due to integration, they were in decline. Even though teams were league members, most still continued to barnstorm and play non-league games against local or semi-pro teams. Those games, sometimes approaching 100 per season, did not count in the official standings or statistics. However, some teams were considered "associate" teams and games played against them did count, but an associate team held no place in the league standings.
*
Negro National League (I), 1920–1931.
*
Eastern Colored League, 1923–1928.
*
American Negro League
The American Negro League (ANL) was one of several Negro league baseball, Negro leagues established during the period in the United States in which organized baseball was segregated. The ANL operated on the East Coast of the United States in 1929. ...
, 1929; was created from some of the ECL teams but lasted just one season.
*
East–West League, 1932; ceased operations midway through the season.
*
Negro Southern League, 1932; incorporated some teams from the NNL(I) and functioned for one year as a major league, was otherwise a minor league that played from 1920 into the 1940s.
*
Negro National League (II), 1933–1948.
*
Negro American League, 1937–1960 or so; after 1950, the league and its teams operated after a fashion, mostly as barnstorming units, but historians have a hard time deciding when the league actually came to an end.
Colored and Negro World Series
The NNL(I) and ECL champions met in a World Series, usually referred to as the "Colored World Series", from 1924 to 1927 (
1924,
1925
Events January
* January 1 – The Syrian Federation is officially dissolved, the State of Aleppo and the State of Damascus having been replaced by the State of Syria (1925–1930), State of Syria.
* January 3 – Benito Mussolini m ...
,
1926,
1927
Events January
* January 1 – The British Broadcasting ''Company'' becomes the BBC, British Broadcasting ''Corporation'', when its Royal Charter of incorporation takes effect. John Reith, 1st Baron Reith, John Reith becomes the first ...
).
The NNL(II) and NAL also met in a World Series, usually referred to as the "Negro World Series" from 1942 to 1948 (
1942
The Uppsala Conflict Data Program project estimates this to be the deadliest year in human history in terms of conflict deaths, placing the death toll at 4.62 million. However, the Correlates of War estimates that the prior year, 1941, was th ...
,
1943
Events
Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix.
January
* January 1 – WWII: The Soviet Union announces that 22 German divisions have been encircled at Stalingrad, with 175,000 killed and 137,650 captured.
* January 4 � ...
,
1944
Events
Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix.
January
* January 2 – WWII:
** Free France, Free French General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny is appointed to command First Army (France), French Army B, part of the Sixt ...
,
1945,
1946
1946 (Roman numerals, MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1946th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' (AD) designations, the 946th year of the 2nd millennium, the 46th year of the 20th centur ...
,
1947
It was the first year of the Cold War, which would last until 1991, ending with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Events
January
* January–February – Winter of 1946–47 in the United Kingdom: The worst snowfall in the country i ...
,
1948
Events January
* January 1
** The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is inaugurated.
** The current Constitutions of Constitution of Italy, Italy and of Constitution of New Jersey, New Jersey (both later subject to amendment) ...
).
Five of those years with a World Series at the end also saw a "Championship Series" played to determine the pennant winner that went to the Series. In years without a World Series, leagues would either award a championship to the team that had the best record/percentage at the end of the year or had a "Championship Series" to determine the winner between first half and second half champions. Eleven seasons exist with a postseason series held to determine a pennant winner, although one (1936) was not completed.
Negro minor leagues
Early professional leagues cannot be called major or minor. Until the twentieth century, not one completed even half of its planned season. Two leagues can be considered the prototypes for Negro league baseball:
*
Southern League of Colored Base Ballists, 1886
*
National Colored Baseball League, 1887
Eventually, some teams were able to survive and even profit by
barnstorming small towns and playing local semi-pro teams as well as league games. Two important leagues of this era are:
*
International League of Independent Professional Base Ball Clubs, 1906.
*
National Association of Colored Baseball Clubs of the United States and Cuba, 1907–1909.
Early Negro leagues were unable to attract and retain top talent due to financial, logistical and contractual difficulties. Some early dominant teams did not join a league since they could pull in larger profits independently. The early leagues were specifically structured as minor leagues. With the
integration of Organized Baseball, beginning 1946, all leagues simply lost elite players to white leagues, and historians do not consider any Negro league "major" after 1950.
A number of leagues from the
major-league era (post-1900) are recognized as Negro minor leagues. A rule of thumb was leagues in the
north
North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography.
Etymology
T ...
were major while leagues in the
south
South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both west and east.
Etymology
The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþa ...
were minor, due mainly to population and economic disparities. Below are some of the better-documented leagues:
*
Texas Colored League/Texas–Oklahoma–Louisiana League/Texas–Louisiana Negro League, 1919–1931
*
Negro Southern League (I), 1920–1936 – considered a ''de facto'' major league in 1932 because it was the only league to play a full season schedule due to the
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...
*
Negro Southeastern League, 1921
*
Interstate League, 1926 and 1940 (mixed-race league)
*
Tri State League, 1935
*
Negro American Association, 1939 and 1948–1949
*
Negro Major League, 1942
By default, leagues established after integration are considered minor league, as is the one of two 1940s majors that continued after 1950. Also at this time, leagues began to appear in the
west, just as in other sports, due to the
post-War boom and improved transportation modes. Below are some of the better-documented leagues:
*
Negro Southern League (II), 1945–1951
*
United States League, 1945–1946
*
West Coast Negro Baseball Association, 1946
*
East Texas Negro League, 1946
*
Negro Texas League, 1949
*
Negro American League, 1951–1960 – considered a major league from 1937 until integration diminished the quality of play around 1950/51
*
Arkansas–Louisiana–Texas League, 1951
*
Eastern Negro League, 1954
*
Negro National Baseball Association, 1954
The Negro leagues and the Hall of Fame
In his
Baseball Hall of Fame induction speech in 1966,
Ted Williams made a strong plea for inclusion of Negro league stars in the Hall. After the publication of
Robert Peterson's landmark book ''Only the Ball was White'' in 1970, the Hall of Fame found itself under renewed pressure to find a way to honor Negro league players who would have been in the Hall had they not been barred from the major leagues due to the color of their skin.
At first, the Hall of Fame planned a "separate but equal" display, which would be similar to the
Ford C. Frick Award for baseball commentators, in that this plan meant that the Negro league honorees would not be considered members of the Hall of Fame. This plan was criticized by the press, the fans and the players it was intended to honor, and Satchel Paige himself insisted that he would not accept anything less than full-fledged induction into the Hall of Fame. The Hall relented and agreed to admit Negro league players on an equal basis with their Major League counterparts in 1971. A special Negro league committee selected
Satchel Paige in 1971, followed by (in alphabetical order)
Cool Papa Bell,
Oscar Charleston,
Martín Dihigo,
Josh Gibson,
Monte Irvin,
Judy Johnson,
Buck Leonard and
John Henry Lloyd. Of the nine players selected, only Irvin and Paige spent any time in the integrated major leagues. The Veterans Committee later selected
Ray Dandridge, as well as choosing
Rube Foster on the basis of meritorious service.
Other members of the Hall who played in both the Negro leagues and Major League Baseball are
Hank Aaron,
Ernie Banks,
Roy Campanella,
Larry Doby,
Willie Mays
Willie Howard Mays Jr. (May 6, 1931 – June 18, 2024), nicknamed "the Say Hey Kid", was an American professional baseball center fielder who played 23 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB). Widely regarded as one of the greatest players of ...
, and
Jackie Robinson. Except for Doby, their play in the Negro leagues was a minor factor in their selection: Aaron, Banks, and Mays played in Negro leagues only briefly and after the leagues had declined with the migration of many black players to the integrated minor leagues; Campanella (1969) and Robinson (1962) were selected before the Hall began considering performance in the Negro leagues.
From 1995 to 2001, the Hall made a renewed effort to honor luminaries from the Negro leagues, one each year. There were seven selections:
Leon Day,
Bill Foster,
Bullet Rogan,
Hilton Smith,
Turkey Stearnes,
Willie Wells, and
Smokey Joe Williams.
In February 2006, a committee of twelve baseball historians elected 17 more people from black baseball to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, twelve players and five executives.
; Negro league players (7):
Ray Brown;
Willard Brown;
Andy Cooper;
Biz Mackey;
Mule Suttles;
Cristóbal Torriente;
Jud Wilson
; Pre-Negro league players (5) :
Frank Grant;
Pete Hill;
José Méndez;
Louis Santop;
Ben Taylor
; Negro league executives (4) :
Effa Manley;
Alex Pompez
Alejandro "Alex" Pompez (May 3, 1890 – March 14, 1974) was an American executive in Negro league baseball who owned the Cuban Stars (East) and New York Cubans franchises from 1916 to 1950. His family had emigrated from Cuba, where his father ...
;
Cum Posey;
J. L. Wilkinson
; Pre-Negro league executive, manager, player, and historian (1):
Sol White
Effa Manley, co-owner (with her husband
Abe Manley) and business manager of the Newark Eagles club in the
Negro National League, is the first woman elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The committee reviewed the careers of 29 Negro league and 10 Pre-Negro league candidates. The list of 39 had been pared from a roster of 94 candidates by a five-member screening committee in November 2005. The voting committee was chaired by
Fay Vincent, Major League Baseball's eighth Commissioner and an Honorary Director of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
Table of Hall of Fame players
Players whose careers also included
American League
The American League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the American League (AL), is the younger of two sports leagues, leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada. It developed from the Western L ...
or
National League teams are noted with a dagger(†).
The below players were inducted for their
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (baseball), National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB i ...
career but started their careers in the Negro leagues.
Last Negro leaguers
Hank Aaron was the last Negro league player to hold a regular position in Major League Baseball.
Minnie Miñoso was the last Negro league player to play in a major league game when he appeared in two games for the Chicago White Sox in 1980.
Buck O'Neil was the most recent former Negro league player to appear in a professional game when he made two appearances (one for each team) in the
Northern League All-Star Game in 2006.
2008 Major League Baseball draft
On June 5, 2008,
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (baseball), National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB i ...
held a special draft of the surviving Negro league players to acknowledge and rectify their exclusion from the major leagues on the basis of race. The idea of the special draft was conceived by Hall of Famer
Dave Winfield. Each major league team drafted one player from the Negro leagues.
Bobo Henderson,
Joe B. Scott,
Mule Miles,
Lefty Bell,
James "Red" Moore,
Mack "The Knife" Pride and his brother
Charley Pride
Charley Frank Pride (March 18, 1934 – December 12, 2020) was an American Country music, country singer. Beginning his career as a Negro league baseball player in the early-1950s, he later pursued a career in country music, becoming the gen ...
(who went on to a legendary career in
country music
Country (also called country and western) is a popular music, music genre originating in the southern regions of the United States, both the American South and American southwest, the Southwest. First produced in the 1920s, country music is p ...
) were among the players selected. Also drafted, by the
New York Yankees
The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the Boroughs of New York City, New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Am ...
, was
Emilio Navarro, who, at 102 years of age at the time of the draft, was believed to be the oldest living professional ballplayer.
Museum
The
Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is located in the
18th and Vine District in
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri, abbreviated KC or KCMO, is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri by List of cities in Missouri, population and area. The city lies within Jackson County, Missouri, Jackson, Clay County, Missouri, Clay, and Pl ...
.
Postage stamp recognition
On July 17, 2010, the
U.S. Postal Service
The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or simply the Postal Service, is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the executive branch of the federal governmen ...
issued a
se-tenant pair of 44-cent U.S.
commemorative postage stamp
A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail). Then the stamp is affixed to the f ...
s, to honor the all-black professional baseball leagues that operated from 1920 to about 1960. The stamps were formally issued at the
Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, during the celebration of the museum's twentieth anniversary. One of the stamps depicts
Rube Foster.
See also
*
East–West All-Star Game
*
List of first black Major League Baseball players
*
List of Negro league baseball players
*
List of Negro league baseball teams
*
Negro World Series
*
Negro Leagues Baseball Museum
*
Ted Williams Museum and Hitters Hall of Fame (including "The Negro Leagues" wing)
* ''
The Soul of Baseball'', 2007 book by Joe Posnanski
*
Toni Stone,
Mamie Johnson,
Connie Morgan (the only women to play in the leagues)
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
Histories and encyclopedias
*
*
* 1992 winner of
CASEY Award for best baseball book.
*
*
* 2008 winner of
CASEY Award for best baseball book.
*
*
Biographies and autobiographies
*''Josh Gibson: The Power and the Darkness''. Mark Ribowsky. Biography.
*''Josh and Satch'' by John Holway. .
*''Don't Look Back: Satchel Paige in the Shadows of the Game''. Mark Ribowsky. Biography.
*''Maybe I'll Pitch Forever'' by Satchel Paige. .
*
*''I Was Right On Time'' by
Buck O'Neil. .
*
*
*''Blackball Stars'', as told to John Holway; a collection of first-person accounts of the Negro leagues by the men who played in them. .
*''Some Are Called Clowns'' by Bill Heward & Dimitri Gat (1974). The first white player with the Indianapolis Clowns tells of his 1973 season of barnstorming. .
*''Ruling Over Monarchs, Giants & Stars: Umpiring in the Negro Leagues & Beyond'', by Bob Motley. First-hand account of umpiring in the dying days of Negro league ball. .
*''20 Years Too Soon'', by Quincy Trouppe. Memoir of a longtime Negro League player and manager, who played briefly as a 39-year-old rookie for the Cleveland Indians in 1952. Privately published, 1977; reprinted 1995. .
External links
Black Baseball's Negro Baseball LeaguesNegro League Baseball Players AssociationNegro Leagues Baseball Museum web siteCenter for Negro League Baseball Research*
ttps://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/sports/baseball/01tombstone.html?hp For Negro League Players, a Measure of Recognition, ''The New York Times'', 30 June 2010Black Diamonds: An Oral History of the Negro Leagues (six audio programs)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Negro league baseball
African-American cultural history
African-American sports history
Defunct baseball leagues
History of baseball in the United States