{"id":19632,"date":"2020-02-13T23:08:10","date_gmt":"2020-02-13T23:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=19632"},"modified":"2020-02-14T08:07:32","modified_gmt":"2020-02-14T08:07:32","slug":"on-the-100th-anniversary-of-the-negro-leagues-a-look-back-at-what-was-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/on-the-100th-anniversary-of-the-negro-leagues-a-look-back-at-what-was-lost\/","title":{"rendered":"On the 100th anniversary of the Negro Leagues, a look back at what was lost"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rob Ruck<\/a>, University of Pittsburgh<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

During the half century that baseball was divided by a color line, black America created a sporting world of its own.<\/p>\n

Black teams played on city sandlots and country fields, with the best barnstorming their way across the country and throughout the Caribbean<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A century ago, on Feb. 13, 1920, teams from eight cities formally created the Negro National League. Three decades of stellar play followed, as the league affirmed black competence and grace on the field, while forging a collective identity that brought together Northern-born blacks and their Southern brethren. And though Major League Baseball was segregated from the 1890s until 1947, these teams played countless interracial games<\/a> in communities across the nation.<\/p>\n

After World War II, Jackie Robinson hurdled baseball\u2019s racial divide. But while integration \u2013 baseball\u2019s great experiment \u2013 was a resounding success on the field, at the gates and in changing racial attitudes, Negro League teams soon lost all of their stars and struggled to retain fans. The teams hung on for a bit, before eventually folding.<\/p>\n

Years ago, when I worked on a documentary about the Negro Leagues<\/a>, I was struck by how many of the interviewees looked back longingly on the leagues\u2019 heyday. While there was the understanding that integration needed to happen, there was also the recognition that something special was forever lost.<\/p>\n

A league of their own<\/h2>\n

Given the injustices of the 1890s \u2013 sharecropping, lynchings, disenfranchisement and the Supreme Court\u2019s sanctioning of segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson \u2013 exclusion from Major League Baseball was hardly the most grievous injury African Americans suffered. But it mattered. Their absence denied them the chance to participate in a very visible arena that helped European immigrants integrate into American culture<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While the sons of white immigrants \u2013 John McGraw, Honus Wagner, Joe DiMaggio \u2013 became major leaguers lionized by their nationalities, blacks didn\u2019t have that opportunity. Most whites assumed that was because they weren\u2019t good enough. Their absence reinforced prevailing beliefs<\/a> that African Americans were inherently inferior \u2013 athletically and intellectually \u2013 with weak abdominal muscles, little endurance and prone to cracking under pressure.<\/p>\n

The Negro Leagues gave black ballplayers their own platform to prove otherwise. On Feb. 13, 1920, Chicago American Giants owner Rube Foster convened a meeting at the Paseo YMCA<\/a> in Kansas City to organize the Negro National League. A Texas-born pitcher, Foster envisioned a black alternative to the major leagues.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Members of the Chicago American Giants pose for a team portrait in 1914. Rube Foster is seated in the center of the first row wearing a suit.<\/span>
\nDiamond Images\/Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Northern black communities were exploding in size<\/a>, and Foster saw the league\u2019s potential. Teams like the American Giants and the Kansas City Monarch regularly competed against white teams, drew large crowds and turned profits. Players enjoyed higher salaries<\/a> than most black workers, while black newspapers trumpeted their exploits, as did some white papers.<\/p>\n

Other leagues cropped up; the Negro National League was soon joined by the Negro American League<\/a> and the Negro Southern League<\/a>. Some years, the Negro National and Negro American Leagues played a Negro League World Series. The leagues also sent their best players to the East-West All-Star Classic<\/a>, an annual exhibition game in Chicago.<\/p>\n

But the Negro National League\u2019s ascent was stunted after Foster was exposed to a gas leak<\/a>, nearly died and suffered permanent brain damage. Absent his leadership and hammered by the Great Depression, the league disbanded in 1931.<\/p>\n

A proving ground<\/h2>\n

Gus Greenlee, who ran the popular lottery known as the numbers game, revived the league<\/a> in Pittsburgh in 1933 after a sandlot club called the Crawfords, which included the young slugger Josh Gibson<\/a>, approached him for support. He agreed to pay them salaries and reinforced their roster with the addition of flamethrower Satchel Paige<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Satchel Paige.<\/span>
\nTranscendental Graphics\/Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Greenlee went on to build the finest black-owned ballpark in the country, Greenlee Field<\/a>, while headquartering the Negro National League on the floor above the Crawford Grill, his renowned jazz club in Pittsburgh\u2019s Hill District.<\/p>\n

Pittsburgh soon became the mecca of black baseball. Sitting along America\u2019s East-West rail lines, the city was a requisite stop for black entertainers, leaders and ball clubs, which traveled from cities as far away as Kansas City<\/a>. Its two teams, the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords, won a dozen titles. Seven of the first 11 Negro Leaguers eventually inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame \u2013 stars like Cool Papa Bell, Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard and Satchel Paige \u2013 played for one or both squads.<\/p>\n

The sport, meanwhile, became a major source of black pride.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe very best,\u201d Pittsburgh-born author John Wideman noted<\/a>, \u201cnot only competed among themselves and put on a good show, but [also] would go out and compete against their white contemporaries and beat the stuffing out of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Satchel Paige and the Crawfords famously defeated St. Louis Cardinals ace Dizzy Dean in an exhibition game in Cleveland<\/a> \u2013 just two weeks after the Cardinals had won the 1934 World Series. Overall, Negro League teams won far more games against white squads than they lost<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was so much [negativity] living over [us] which we had no control [over],\u201d Mal Goode, the first black national network correspondent, recalled<\/a>. \u201cSo anything you could hold on to from the standpoint of pride, it was there and it showed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sacrificed on integration\u2019s altar<\/h2>\n

For Major League Baseball, no moment was more transformative than the arrival of Jackie Robinson, who, in 1947, paved the way for African Americans and darker-skinned Latinos to reshape the game<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But integration destroyed the Negro Leagues, plucking its young stars \u2013 Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Roy Campanella and Ernie Banks \u2013 who brought their fans with them. The big leagues never considered folding in some of the best black teams, and its owners rejected<\/a> the Negro National League owners\u2019 proposal to become a high minor league.<\/p>\n

Like many black papers, colleges and businesses, the Negro National League paid a price for integration: extinction. The league ceased play after the 1948 season. Black owners, general managers and managers soon disappeared, and it would be decades before a black manager would get a chance to steer a major league ballclub<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Major League Baseball benefited from talent cultivated in the Negro Leagues and on the sandlots that sustained the sport<\/a>, especially in inner cities. But when those leagues crumbled, prospective black pros were relegated to minor league teams, often in inhospitable, southern cities<\/a>. Many Negro League regulars simply hung up their cleats or played in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n

The playwright August Wilson set his play, \u201cFences<\/a>,\u201d which tells the story of an ex-Negro Leaguer who becomes a garbageman in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n

\u201cBaseball gave you a sense of belonging,\u201d Wilson said in a 1991 interview<\/a>. At those Negro League games, he added, \u201cThe umpire ain\u2019t white. It\u2019s a black umpire. The owner ain\u2019t white. Nobody\u2019s white. This is our thing \u2026 and we have our everything \u2013 until integration, and then we don\u2019t have our nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story of African Americans in baseball has long been portrayed as a tale of their shameful segregation and redemptive integration. Segregation was certainly shameful, especially for a sport invested in its own rhetoric of democracy.<\/p>\n

But for African Americans, integration was also painful. Although long overdue and an important catalyst for social change, it cost them control over their sporting lives.<\/p>\n

It changed the meaning of the sport \u2013 what it symbolized and what it meant for their communities \u2013 and not necessarily for the better.<\/p>\n

[ You\u2019re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation\u2019s authors and editors.<\/em> You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter<\/a>. ]\"The<\/p>\n

Rob Ruck<\/a>, Professor of History, University of Pittsburgh<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rob Ruck, University of Pittsburgh During the half century that baseball was divided by a color line, black America created a sporting world of its own. Black teams played on city sandlots and country fields, with the best barnstorming their way across the country and throughout the Caribbean. A century ago, on Feb. 13, 1920, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":19633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[501,179,1921,101,502,7664,1538,203],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19632"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19632"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19638,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19632\/revisions\/19638"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}