History of Black Baseball in America

This is the continuation of a series about Baseball in America and Buffalo by Michael J. Billoni, former Vice President/General Manager of the Buffalo Bisons; award winning sportswriter for The Tonawanda News, Buffalo Courier-Express, and Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, author, and assistant editor of The Seasons Buffalo Base ball 1857-2020. He is president of Billoni Associates LLC (www.billoniassociates.com).

Part Two is entitled The National Baseball Hall of Fame’s newest exhibit, “The Souls of the Game: The Voices of Black Baseball” and Part Three is entitled Inner City Base ball in Buffalo. Part One, “Baseball Hall of Fame’s Henry Aaron’s Connection to Buffalo, New York.” which has appeared the past three weeks, entitled You can find these stories online at www.thebuffalocriterion.com.

Baseball’s Hall of Fame Opens New Exhibit “The Souls of the Game: The Voices of Black Baseball

By Michael J. Billoni Continued from last week

COOPERSTOWN, NY—Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) in Kansas City for the past 13 years, has had quite a month beginning with the unveiling of a statue of Hall of Famer Henry “Hank” Aaron in this 50th anniversary of him replacing Babe Ruth as the game’s home run leader to the Hall of Fame opening a new exhibit showcasing the history of Black Baseball to Major League Baseball finally accepting the statistics of Negro League baseball players to this past Thursday’s national broadcast of an major league baseball game at the legendary Negro League ballpark, Rickwood Field in Alabama.

Hall of Famer John Jordan “Buck” O’Neil Jr., a player and manager in the Negro American League with the Kansas City Monarchs and the first African American coach in Major League Baseball played a significant role establishing the NLBM 1990. It is now the world’s only museum dedicated to preserving and celebrating the rich history of African American baseball and its profound impact on the social advancement of America.

Five years ago, it was that rich history of Black base ball in America that led Jane Forbes Clark, the extremely active and dedication chair of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s Board of Directors, to create an advisory committee of 26 Hall of Famers, former Major League Baseball players, historians and members of the baseball family along with five curatorial consultants to highlight and address the subject of Black baseball in America from a ground breaking new perspective. Ms. Clark’s grandfather, Stephen, founded the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936 when he converted an old gym on Main Street in this quaint Central New York village into the National Baseball Museum. Her family’s financial fortune dates to 1851 when her great-great grandfather helped start the Singer Sewing Machine Company.

“In reality, this is just the beginning of a great new chapter at the Hall of Fame Museum,” Ms. Clark said when “The Souls of the Game: The Voices of Black Baseball” was unveiled on May 24 in the museum’s second floor Yawkey Gallery during a private ceremony with 15 Hall of Famers, including Willie Mays, its oldest member at 93. Billye Aaron, the widow of Hall of Famer Henry “Hammerin’ Hank” Aaron, members of his family and friends from Atlanta were present for this Hall of Fame Classic Weekend. The evening before, on May 23, the HOF unveiled a bronze statue of Aaron, “Keep Swinging” which will stand permanently at the base of the Grand Staircase on the first floor, a short distance from the statue of Buck O’Neil. Mrs. Aaron threw out the ceremonial first pitch when HOFer Ken Griffey Jr. accompanied her to the mound in Doubleday Field on Saturday, May 25 for the first East West Classic baseball game, which re-enacted the Negro League’s East-West All-Star Classic. “It will,” Kendrick said of the new exhibit to the national media, “be an awakening.” Kendrick was awakened in San Francisco with the revolutionary news M LB’s official statistics would now include those from the Negro League players, culminating the work of a 15-person Negro Leagues Statistical Review Committee’s the past several years.

“I could not be more excited to see these Negro League players take their rightful place next to the greats of the game,” Kendrick said after he witnessed former Negro League star, Josh Gibson, a baseball Hall of Famer, now become the leader of several MLB records, including its all-time career leader in batting average at .466 in 1943.

Gibson, who died 77 years ago in 1947, has long been called one of the best hitters in baseball history. He is also MLB’s career leader in Batting Average (.372), Slugging Percentage (.718) and On Base Plus Slugging Percentage OPS (1.177) and he holds the single season record in Batting Average (.466) and Slugging Percentage (.974).

Commissioner of Baseball Robert D. Manfred Jr. said: “We are proud the official historical record now includes the players of the Negro Leagues. This initiative is focused on ensuring that future generations of fans have access to the statistics and milestones of all those who made the Negro Leagues possible. Their accomplishments on the field will be a gateway to broader learning about this triumph in American history and the path that led to Jackie Robinson’s 197 Dodger debut.”

The History of Black Baseball on Full Display

Any concern the new exhibit inside the National Base ball Hall of Fame and Museum would gloss over the reality of what Black baseball players have experienced and suffered for more than 100 years ended as you entered and saw this quote from Bud Fowler. The earliest known African American player in organized baseball who learned to play baseball during his youth here in Cooperstown and who was enshrined into baseball’s Hall of Fame in his hometown in 2022, said: “My skin is against me. The race prejudice is so strong that my Black skin barred me.”

The son of a hop-picker and barber, Fowler was christened John W. Jackson. In 1859, his father had escaped from slavery and migrated to Fort Plain, New York before settling here. He was nicknamed “Bud” because he called the other players by that name.

Fowler first played for a largely white professional team based out of New Castle, Pa. in 1872 when he was 14 and six years later he reportedly became the first Black player to appear in an organized baseball game when he pitched for the Picked Nine, who defeated the Boston Red Caps, champions of the National League in 1877. Supporting himself as a barber, he continued to play for teams in New England and Canada for the next four years before moving to the Midwest. In 1885 while playing for the Keokuk Hawkeyes, a professional team in Keokuk, Iowa, Fowler became its most popular player generating much media attention. He was not afraid to speak his mind about what he saw going on in the game, commenting to the local newspaper on issues with the “reserve clause,” the contractual mechanism that allowed teams to hold on to players for their entire career. Fowler stated that “when a ball player signs a league contract, they can do anything with him under its provisions but hang him.” According to baseball historian James A. Riley, Fowler played 10 seasons of organized baseball, “a record [for an African American player] until broken by Jackie Robinson in his last season with the Brooklyn Dodgers.”

While Fowler was primarily the only player of color on many of his teams, baseball continued to struggle with racial issues from its beginnings. In the book, The Sea sons of Buffalo Baseball 1857-2020, edited by Dr. James H. Overfield, Ph.D. and me, Dr. Overfield authored a story entitled, “July 14, 1887: Baseball’s Color Line Is Drawn at Buffalo’s Genesee Hotel.” In the story, he wrote that in 1867 at the annual meeting of the National Association of Base Ball Players, the issue of accepting all black teams arose. “The decision was crystal clear,” Dr. Overfield wrote, “No team with African American players would be admitted. Similar bans were adopted by the New York Association and the Chicago Baseball com munity in 1870. As a result, baseball clubs were all-white or all-black and, with few exceptions, did not play one another.

“With the advent of professionalism, the National As sociation of Professional Base Ball Players (1871-75), the National League (founded in 1876), the American Association (1882-1891), and the Players’ League (1890) had no rule barring Black players, but a “gentlemen’s agree ment” among owners had the same effect.”

Exceptions were rare, Dr. Overfield wrote. Included among the few Black ballplayers was Fowler, William E. White, the son of a plantation owner and one of his slaves, was the first black in the majors. He played one game in 1879 for the National League Providence Grays. Five years later, Moses Fleetwood Walker played for the Toledo Blue Stockings for one season in the American Association, which was a major league back then, and Walker’s brother, Weldy, played five games with Toledo in 1884.” The Walkers were the last African Americans to play in the majors until Jackie Robinson was the first Black base ball player to break the color barrier in 1947. A few years ago, a friend, Dr. Toni L. Gaiter Vazquez, Ed.D, an entrepreneur and philanthropist and co-founder of G-Health Enterprises with her husband, Dr. Raul Vazquez, MD., corrected me on that terminology.

Quoting Robin DiAngelo in her book, White Fragility, Dr. Toni Vazquez, Ed.D. told me: “Imagine, if instead, the story went something like this: ‘Jackie Robinson, the first Black man whites allowed to play major-league base ball.’” I agreed with Ms. DiAngelo’s comment and told Dr. Vazquez I would add one word and change it to read: “The first Black man white owners allowed to play major-league baseball.”

Segregation was slower to take hold in the minors back then and by 1886, there were seven Black players in the International League, including the Buffalo Bisons future Hall of Famer Frank Grant, who, with the blessing of owner Cassius Candee, was signed by manager Jack Chapman, according to Dr. Overfield’s story. The Bisons played that season in Olympic Park, located at Richmond and Summer Street in Buffalo’s Allentown community. The following season, in what amounted to a players’ revolt over race in the International League causing the owners to come to Buffalo for an emergency league meeting on July 14, 1887 in the Genesee Hotel downtown “to consider the league’s stance on Black players.” Buffalo and Newark offered a compromise that would have limited each club to no more than two Black players, but it was voted down, according to the story in The Seasons of Buffalo Baseball book. In its place, by a 5-3 vote with Syracuse, Newark, and Buffalo casting no votes, owners instructed the league secretary not to approve new contracts for Black players. They did agree that Black players currently under contract could remain with their clubs. Frank Grant played the 1888 season with the Bisons before leaving to play for the all-black Cuban Giants in 1889. In several instances, African American teams represented towns in otherwise all-white minor leagues and that included a team outside of Jamestown, the Celeron Acme Colored Giants in the Iron and Oil League in 1898.

What’s In the Hall of Fame’s New Exhibit

The irony of the Hall’s newest exhibit, which traces 150 years of Black baseball feats, stars, and obstacles is that it comes when the percentage of American-born Black players in Major League Baseball is historically low. About 40 percent of major league baseball players last season were players of color, according to a report by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, but only about six percent were identified as either Black or African American, the lowest since tracking started in 1991.

Sadly, the 2022 World Series, between the Philadelphia Phillies and Houston Astros, featured no Ameri can-born Black players for the first time in 72 years.

The numbers have been improving since MLB has established several programs to encourage, identify and nurture young Black players from youth programs under its Reviving Baseball in the Inner City (RBI) program to improvements at the college level. An increasing number of Black players have been among the top draft picks in recent years — 12 of the first 100 three years ago, 13 of the top 100 in 2022, and 10 of the top 50 in last year’s draft.

“We are going to have to be patient, though, and as a society, we aren’t very patient,” Kendrick said. “This trend did not happen overnight. The solution is not going to occur overnight either.”

Kendrick explained his view of the exhibit in an inter view with The New York Times: “It has been documented that we have been playing baseball going back to the period of being enslaved. Baseball has always been an important part of the African American experience in this country. It is just the fact that it was not documented in the pages of American history books.”

The new exhibit explores Jackie Robinson’s life beyond breaking that barrier, along with other, lesser known thresholds. One item on display is the championship ring that a 19-year-old Hank Aaron received when he integrated the South Atlantic League in 1953, the season after signing his first professional contract with the Boston Braves while playing in the Negro American League for the Indianapolis Clowns, which amazingly, made Buffalo’s Offermann Stadium its home that summer.

Robinson’s story is universally celebrated as the tale of triumph and preservation that it is. But reintegration, as Tom Shieber, the Hall of Fame’s senior curator refers to it, meant the collapse of the Negro leagues and the exhibit clearly tells that story.

“It is absolutely a bittersweet kind of story,” Kendrick said. “Those owners and the older players in the Negro leagues essentially took one for the team. It reminds us that there is always a cost for what is deemed progress. And Black economy paid a dear cost for this progress.” Interestingly, after reintegration, MLB executives were said to have established an unwritten quota system limiting the number of Black players on its rosters, which resulted in trades with comments like “We’ve got enough Black players.”

The Souls of the Game exhibit is part of the Hall’s Black Baseball Initiative that includes additional outreach programs, educational materials, and virtual programming and is made possible by the Yawkey Foundation and others.

The exhibit also has several items from Aaron. Legendary sports broadcaster Bob Costas related a story about how Aaron had skipped school in 1948 and climbed a tree to watch Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers play an exhibition game in Mobile.

“There was no way to know that kid would go on to become, in many respects, the most significant baseball player since Jackie Robinson himself,” Costas told an overflow audience in the church at Aaron’s funeral in 2021. “That that kid would take the baton from his idol and inspiration and carry it so well, so honorably and for so long. Now, that glorious race has been fully run.” Subtitled “Voices of Black Baseball,” the exhibit highlights first-person accounts by the many individuals whose experiences shaped them, their community, baseball, and America at large. The exhibit features historically significant artifacts, documents, and photographs, and utilizes very well audio, video, and interactive elements that tell this extraordinary story of baseball while shining a light on the correcting misconceptions about Black baseball.

Some of the many artifacts used to tell these stories, include:

• A scorecard from a game in 1896 played by the Cuban Giants, the first professional all-Black baseball team.

• Speedy Negro Leagues legend “Cool Papa” Bell’s shoes.

• A 1940 UCLA yearbook featuring four-sport star Jackie Robinson.

• Bats used by Hall of Famers Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, and Eddie Murray.

• The Cleveland Indians jersey worn by Frank Robinson on Day of 1975 when he became the first full-time Black manager in major league history.

• The cleats worn by Joe Carter when he hit his World Series-winning home run in 1993.

“Our entire Hall of Fame institution embraced this project immediately, and from then on it became priority number one,” explained Josh Rawitch, President, National Baseball Hall of Fame, and Museum. “We brought together a robust advisory committee consisting of those who have lived the black baseball experience—Hall of Famers, other ballplayers, baseball executives and media members—to help us along the way and we asked five well-respected historians— Gerald Early, Leslie Heaphy, Larry Lester, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and Rob Ruck—to join our curatorial team and lend invaluable expertise. We take extraordinary pride in how it turned out.”

They should. The exhibit is outstanding and a sad reality of the racism that existed around what some call The National Pastime. I would strongly urge the four-hour drive from Buffalo to Cooperstown to visit the Hall of Fame and Museum. For more information, visit https://www.baseballhall.org