Unsung History29 Apr 2024

Negro League Baseball

In its earliest years, the National League was not segregated, and a few teams included Black ballplayers, but in 1887 major and minor league owners adopted a so-called “gentlemen’s agreement” that no new contracts would be given to Black players. In 1920, pitcher and manager Rube Foster founded the first of the Negro Leagues, the Negro National League, to organize professional Black baseball, which was played at a very high level. Other professional Negro leagues followed, and for decades the stars of the game played in the Negro Leagues, until the National League and American League began to slowly accept Black players, starting with Jackie Robinson in 1947.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Leslie Heaphy, Associate Professor of History at Kent State University at Stark, Vice President of the Society for American Baseball Research, founding editor of Black Ball, and author of The Negro Leagues, 1869-1960.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Boogaboo (Fox Trot),” composed by Jelly Roll Morton and performed by Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers Camden, New Jersey, on June 11, 1928; the music is in the public domain and available via Wikimedia Commons.The episode image is from the fourth Negro League East-West All-Star Game at Comiskey Park in Chicago on August 23, 1936; the photograph is in the public domain and available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

“The History Of Baseball And Civil Rights In America,” National Baseball Hall of Fame.
“Bud Fowler’s Life Blazed A Trail From Cooperstown,” by Isabelle Minasian, National Baseball Hall Of Fame.
“6 Decades Before Jackie Robinson, This Man Broke Baseball’s Color Barrier: Moses Fleetwood Walker played for a Major League Baseball team in the 1880s,” by Farrell Evans, History.com, Originally published April 27, 2022, and updated January 22, 2024.
“The Great Migration (1910-1970),” National Archives.
“The League [video],” Magnolia Pictures.
“A 20th Century Baseball Institution,” by Matt Kelly, MLB.com.
“The Negro League revolutionized baseball – MLB's new rules are part of its legacy,” by Dave Davies, NPR Fresh Air, July 10, 2023.
“The Souls of the Game: Voices of Black Baseball,” National Baseball Hall of Fame.

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