Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Negro Leagues

Starting point is 00:00:00 In the first half of the 20th century, racial segregation was ramped across much of the United States. But perhaps nowhere was it more evident in public than in the sport of baseball. Despite being denied a place in the major leagues for several decades, some of the greatest players of the era could play for the public on black-owned and operated teams. Learn more about the Negro leagues and how some of the greatest players in baseball history were kept out of the majors on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

Starting point is 00:00:51 It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. The story of the Negro Leagues is one of the most important stories in the history of baseball, as it covers some of the greatest players ever to have played the game. And it was also a microcosm of the social problems that the United States faced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Almost as soon as baseball was invented as a game, it was being played competitively by teams of African Americans. In 1859, the first recorded game occurred between two black amateur clubs.

Starting point is 00:01:33 On November 15th of that year, the Henson Baseball Club of Jamaica Queens defeated the unknowns of Weeksville, Brooklyn, to 43. The rules were very different back then. Black baseball clubs grew in popularity in the North after the Civil War. However, it didn't take very long at all for black players to be excluded from organized competitions, reflecting the segregationist attitudes of the era. One of the hotbeds for black baseball in the United States was the city of Philadelphia. One of the top clubs in Philadelphia was the Pithian Baseball Club. The club's promoter, Octavius Caddo applied for membership in the National Association of Baseball Players, something which was normally just a formality. But in 1867, the National Association of Baseball Players decided

Starting point is 00:02:20 to reject any and all applications from clubs with black players. This was one of the first of many events which led to the creation of baseball's color barrier. When the professional game started in 1876 with the launch of the National League, the team owners made an informal agreement to keep black players out of the league. There were other professional leagues with similar policies. The first black professional baseball player at any level was Bud Fowler, who played for the Lynn Live Oaks of Lynn, Massachusetts, in the International League in 1878.

Starting point is 00:02:53 One of the top and most influential players of the era was Cap Anson of the Chicago White Stockings. And these white stockings were the team that later became the Chicago Cubs, not the current Chicago White Sox. In addition to being a successful player and manager, Cap Anson was also a staunch segregationist and a bigot. In 1883, Chicago was playing the exhibition game against the Toledo Blue Stockings, who had a black man named Moses Fleetwood Walker on their roster. Anson threatened that the Chicago white stockings would not take the field if Walker played,

Starting point is 00:03:25 but eventually backed down when threatened with losing their half of the ticket sales. He begrudgingly took the field but used racial epitats throughout the game and swore that he would never do so again. The next year in 1884, Toledo joined the American Association, which was considered to be one of the major leagues at the time, thus making Moses Fleetwood Walker, the first black major league baseball player ever. He and his brother Wedley Wilberforce Walker were also the last black major league baseball players for 63 years. In 1887, the lower level internationally voted six to four to ban the signing of black players. The vote was split based on which clubs had black players. The vote was split

Starting point is 00:04:03 based on which clubs had black players on their roster. Cap Anson continued his threats to keep black players off the field in any exhibition games where the white stockings were playing. His influence spread to other teams. In September of 1887, eight players on the St. Louis Browns, now known as the St. Louis Cardinals, refused to take the field against the New York Cuban Giants, the first all-black professional baseball team. And by the early 1890s, there were no black players at any level of organized

Starting point is 00:04:33 professional baseball. Professional teams like the Cuban Giants mostly just played exhibition games. By the turn of the century, the agreement amongst team owners not to sign black players was an informal gentleman's agreement. It was never actually written down anywhere. As such, there were always constant attempts to try to sneak black players onto teams. In 1901, John McGraw, manager of the Baltimore Orioles, then a minor league team, tried to sign a second baseman named Charlie Grant. McGraw tried to pass him a off as a Cherokee Indian named Charlie Tokohama, but the ruse quickly failed. In May of 1916, Jimmy Claxton broke the color barrier briefly when he played two games for

Starting point is 00:05:14 the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League. However, when it was found out that he was actually black, he was immediately fired. A turning point for black baseball in the United States took place in 1920. There were two events that took place, one positive and one negative. The negative event was the hiring of United States federal judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis as the first commissioner of baseball. Landis was given dictatorial control over the game. Despite publicly stating there was no color barrier, not a single black player was ever signed during his tenure, and he discouraged clubs from playing exhibition games against black teams. The positive development in 1920 came from a former player named Rube Foster. Foster was arguably the best black pitcher of the 1910s, and in

Starting point is 00:06:01 In 1911, he founded a team called the Chicago American Giants. In 1920, he and several other owners of black baseball teams announced the founding of the Negro National League, with Foster as its commissioner. If they couldn't play in the major leagues, then they would create a major league of their own. Professional black teams had existed for decades, and there was even a championship game for them as early as 1906, but there was no formal organization, and most games were just scheduled on an ad hoc basis. The founding members of the Negro National League were the Chicago American Giants,

Starting point is 00:06:34 the Kansas City Monarchs, the Detroit Stars, the Indianapolis ABCs, the Cuban Stars, the St. Louis Giants, the Dayton Marcos, and the Chicago Giants. Here I should note that there wasn't a single Negro League. There were actually several of them. The term is used to describe all of the organized leagues of black baseball teams from the period of approximately 1920 to 1950. In 1921, the Negro Southern League was established, and in 1923, the Eastern Colored League was established. This led to the creation of the Colored World Series in 2024, which featured the champions of the Negro National League and the Eastern Colored League.

Starting point is 00:07:13 The first winner of the series was the Kansas City Monarchs, who defeated the Hillsdale Athletic Club of Darby, Pennsylvania. The 1920s were considered the golden age of the Negro leagues. There was a problem, however. many of the teams were barely financially viable. There were teams coming in and out of the leagues every year, and this made the leagues themselves financially unstable. In 1927, the Eastern Colored League folded to re-replaced by the American Negro League, which itself only lasted one year.

Starting point is 00:07:42 In 1932, the original Negro National League went out of business, leaving only the Negro Southern League in 1932. A new Negro National League was established in 1933, using the same name as the previous league. Some successful teams, notably the Kansas City Monarchs and the Homestead Grays, were entirely independent of any league and created their own schedules. Gus Greenlee, owner of the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the man behind the new Negro National League, also launched the East-West All-Star game in 1933.

Starting point is 00:08:13 Players were selected by voting through the largest black newspapers of the era, the Chicago Defender, and the Pittsburgh Courier. Almost all of the games ended up being played in Chicago's Kamisky Park. The All-Star game was actually a huge hit, often drawing crowds larger than that of the Major League All-Star game. While the structure and organization of the various Negro leagues were important, the most important thing about them was the players. The Negro leagues were home to some of the greatest baseball players to have ever played the game. And this is in no way an exaggeration, and even the white players at the time all knew it. The list is long, but among those who would be considered some of the very best players in the best players in baseball,

Starting point is 00:08:53 baseball history include Satchel Page, Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, Buck Leonard, Oscar Charlton, and Monty Irvin. Several of them have stories that are interesting enough for their own future episodes. Many people have wondered what the Major League record books would look like if the color barrier hadn't existed. While there's no way to know that, we don't have to speculate about how they would have performed against major leaguers because they in fact did. While black players couldn't play in the major leagues that didn't stop them or white professional players from playing against each other in exhibition games in the offseason. For example, after Babe Ruth's incredible 1921 season, he went on a barnstorming tour where he played several Negro League teams, including the Kansas

Starting point is 00:09:37 City Monarchs. In 1922, despite a direct order from Kennesaw Mountain Landis not to play in barnstorming games, Babe Ruth played a game against Oscar Charlton's colored all-stars. Landis ended up suspending Ruth for 39 games in 1922 for playing in these games. The black teams would more often than not beat their white Major League opponents, because to them it was more than just an exhibition game. It was a chance to prove just how good they really were. The peak of the Negro Leagues probably occurred around 1942. The war had led to a spike in employment and income for black Americans,

Starting point is 00:10:13 which resulted in greater attendance at games. The total attendance for Negro League games at year was over 3 million. In the 1940s, cracks were starting to develop in baseball's color barrier. The thing which marked the beginning of the end of the color barrier was the death of Kennesaw Mountain Landis in 1944. His replacement was a former senator and governor of Kentucky named Happy Chandler. Chandler supported integrating baseball and was willing to do so at the cost of his own job. He later said that he couldn't in good faith keep men out of the Major League. who had fought for their country in the war.

Starting point is 00:10:48 On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson finally broke baseball's color barrier by taking the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. And three months later, Larry Dobie became the first black player in the American League when he took the field for the Cleveland Indians. The story of exactly how Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier and what he had to go through will be the subject of a future episode. Despite this being the very thing that black players had always wanted, it also spelled the end of the Negro leagues. It was a bittersweet loss, as while the black players got what they

Starting point is 00:11:20 desired, it resulted in the loss of an important institution in the black community. The trickle of black players into the majors soon turned into a flood. The attention of black baseball fans quickly turned to where the best players from their community were now playing. Young stars, such as Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Erin, Ernie Banks, and Roy Campanella, who had all briefly played for Negro League teams, were now the stars of the major leagues. Even Satchel Page, the greatest pitcher in Negro League history, signed with the Cleveland Indians. On July 9, 1948, at the age of 42, he became the oldest rookie in Major League history, a record that still stands today. On August 3rd of that year, he started a night game against the Washington Senators that had 72,562 people in attendance.

Starting point is 00:12:07 The highest attendance ever for a night game at that time. The Negro leagues did continue for several more years, but as a shadow of its former self. The last official league was the Negro American League, which operated at a minor league level until it folded in 1958. The last surviving Negro League team were the Indianapolis Clowns. They continued to play until the 1980s as an independent barnstorming team that was the baseball equivalent of the Harlem Globetrotters. While the teams and the leagues eventually folded, it wasn't the end of the game. the story. The legacy of the Negro Leagues and its players still wasn't recognized by the Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1966, Ted Williams made a plea at his Hall of Fame induction ceremony

Starting point is 00:12:52 for the inclusion of the great players from the Negro leagues. At first, the Hall of Fame was simply going to create a separate but equal section of the Hall of Fame, which wasn't going to be a full induction. However, after widespread criticism from pretty much everyone, they eventually relented and created a special commission in 1971 for the induction of Negro League players. The first inductees included Satchel Page, Cool Papa Bell, Oscar Charlton, Martin DeHigo, Josh Gibson, Monty Irvin, Judy Johnson, Buck Leonard, and John Henry Lloyd. To date, there have been 37 players, managers, and executives from the Negro leagues and pre-Negro leagues who have been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Starting point is 00:13:34 In addition to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, there is also the private Negro Leagues baseball museum in Kansas City, Missouri. In 2006, the Negro Leagues were recognized by Major League Baseball as a historic Major League. And in 2010, there was a U.S. postage stamp that honored the Negro leagues. Today, many Major League teams will wear the uniforms of Negro League teams on their turnback the clock nights. The Negro leagues were something that should never have existed. But so long as black players had to suffer from the prejudice and segregation of their era, the Negro Leagues did offer these players as an outlet to professionally play the game

Starting point is 00:14:11 that they loved. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I have two short reviews for you today, both from Apple Podcasts in the United States. The first is from listener, I'm engineering. They write, love it. I like daily podcast, and this is a really good podcast. The next is from Collie Bill, who says, neat show, well worth a listen. Thank you both. Even the shortest of reviews are appreciated.

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Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Negro Leagues

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