Breaking the Color Barrier: The Death of the Negro Leagues

1
Breaking the Color Barrier The Death of the
Negro Leagues
1951 Brooklyn Dodgers

• Artemus Ward
• Dept. of Political Science
• Northern Illinois University
• aeward_at_niu.edu

2
Passing the Buck

• In the 1930s, several newspaper writerswhite and
  blackcalled for baseball integration and even
  organized a letter-writing campaign to
  Commissioner Landis and major league owners. But
  like numerous other major American industries,
  white organized baseball ignored and evaded the
  issue. On July 16, 1942 Landis made his first
  public statement on the issue I have come to
  the conclusion that it is time for me to express
  myself on this important issue. Negroes are not
  barred from organized baseball by the
  commissioner and never have been during the 21
  years I have served as commissioner. That is the
  business of the managers and the club owners. The
  business of the commissioner is to interpret the
  rules of baseball and enforce them. Bill Veeck
  claimed Landis prevented him from purchasing the
  Phillies when Landis learned of Veeck's plan to
  integrate the team.
• In 1943, Landis and the owners finally allowed a
  group of African-Americansmostly journalists led
  by Wendell Smith who had tirelessly campaigned
  for integrationto address them on the topic at
  the annual winter meetings. But once again white
  organized baseball failed to act after a secret
  vote revealed that 15 of the 16 club owners
  opposed it.
• Landis successor, former Senator (D-KY) Albert
  Happy Chandler, said, "For twenty-four years
  Judge Landis wouldn't let a black man play. I had
  his records, and I read them, and for twenty-four
  years Landis consistently blocked any attempts to
  put blacks and whites together on a big league
  field. But Chandler also recognized that Landis
  only reflected the views of the owners Landis
  was doing what the owners wanted him to do, they
  wanted to keep it white and segregated and he
  kept it that way.

Kenesaw Landis
Happy Chandler
3
Move Toward Integration

• Over the years, black baseball stars played white
  major league stars at least 438 times in
  off-season exhibition games. The whites won 129
  of those postseason games. Blacks won 309.
• When long-time New York Giants manager John
  McGraw died in 1934, his wife found among his
  effects a list of all the black players he
  secretly wished he could have hired over the
  decades.
• The often hostile reaction encountered by the few
  white or light-skinned Cuban players in organized
  baseball led some to predict an even harsher
  response to blacks. Although several officials,
  particularly Senators president Clark Griffith,
  had willingly signed Cubans, their presence was
  not without controversy. Nonwhite Cuban major
  leaguers of the 1930s and 1940s such as Roberto
  Estalella and Tomas de la Cruz capitalized on the
  prevalent confusion about Cuban nationality and
  race in the United States. A 1940 account of the
  issue alluded to the rather widespread inability
  on the part of American ballplayers to
  differentiate between Cuban and Negro athletes.
  Estalella and other Cuban players on the
  Washington Senators faced a steady stream of
  insults and beanballs from opponents. Senators
  manager Bucky Harris considered Cuban players
  trash and forced them to lodge apart from their
  American teammates.
• The American Communist Party joined the
  integration fight and even publicized
  discrimination in sports. For example, they made
  a genuine effort to cover black baseball in their
  newspaper the Daily Worker. They would remain an
  important and controversial part of the campaign
  for racial integration for years to come.
• In March 1942, two black ballplayersJackie
  Robinson and Nate Morelandtraveled to the
  Chicago White Sox spring training camp and
  requested a tryout but were turned away. Four
  months later, the Daily Worker announced that
  Pittsburgh Pirates president William
  Benswangerwho had expressed interest in Josh
  Gibson three years earlierwould offer a tryout
  to several black ballplayers. But Benswanger
  never held the tryout, ultimately weakened and
  abandoned his integration plans. Proposed tryouts
  for black players in Cleveland and Philadelphia
  similarly failed to materialize.
• Finally political pressure by the black
  communityincluding pickets outside major league
  ballparksstarted having an effect. In April 1945
  Dave Showboat Thomas and Terris McDuffie were
  granted a tryout by the Brooklyn Dodgers, though
  neither were offered a contract. A week later,
  Jackie Robinson, Sam Jethroe, and Dave Hoskins
  tried out for the Red Sox. But Robinson later
  recalled, not for one minute did we believe the
  tryout was sincere.

4
Branch Rickey

• Initially Rickey was known for his seemingly
  pious personal qualities and strong religious
  conviction. An exponent of clean living, Rickey
  refused to play or manage on Sunday, refrained
  from cursing, and had been an ardent
  prohibitionist in h is youth.
• He spent 25 years with the St. Louis Cardinals
  organization and invented the major league farm
  system whereby major league teams owned and
  operated their own lower-level teams in order to
  develop future major league players.
• After the 1942 season, Rickey became the
  president and general manager of the Brooklyn
  Dodgers. He recognized the inevitability of
  integration in baseball and quietly undertook a
  plan to integrate his new team. With war-time
  player shortages and the Dodgers perennial
  losers, Rickey shrewdly recognized that black
  players offered an undeveloped yet fertile ground
  for cheap talent and might provide the Dodgers
  with a competitive edge for years to come. The
  bottom line was that Rickey saw blacks as an
  opportunity to make money.
• He sent his scouts to start evaluating black
  players in the United States and abroad. He
  supported Gus Greenlees creation of a new black
  baseball leaguethe United States Baseball League
  (USL)and allowed the USLs Brooklyn Brown
  Dodgers to play in Brooklyns Ebbets Field.

5
Integration

• The signing of the first black ballplayer in the
  modern era, Jackie Robinson, came less than a
  year after Commissioner Landis' death on
  Chandler's watch and was engineered by one of
  Landis' old nemeses, Branch Rickey. Rickey asked
  only one thing of Robinson that he not respond
  for three years to the racial epithets and
  taunting that he would surely receive. Robinson
  agreed.
• On October 23, 1945 Robinson signed a contract
  with the Montreal Royals, the Dodgers top
  minor-league affiliate in the International
  League. Rickey drew the ire of Robinsons former
  teamthe Kansas City Monarchswhen they received
  no compensation for Robinsons signing. Rickey
  claimed that he had not signed a player from
  what I regard as an organized league. But
  Rickeys stance had earned him the unanimous and
  virtually permanent support of African American
  fans and liberal whites.
• Robinsons signing prompted the Negro Leagues to
  adopt much-needed reforms including a new league
  constitution, standardized player contracts, team
  roster limits, an expanded schedule, incentive
  bonuses, awards to league leaders, and the
  creation of a league publicity office. In 1946
  Negro League officials met with Commissioner
  Chandler and other organized baseball officials
  to discuss a formal agreement of affiliation with
  organized baseball, but baseball did nothing
  toward that end and ultimately rejected a formal
  proposal in December 1947. To further bolster
  their profile, Negro League Baseball finally
  hired a non-affiliated commissioner in 1947
  Reverend John Howard Johnson.
• But Robinsons debut as a Dodger on April 14,
  1947 signaled the beginning of the end for Negro
  League Baseball. Robinson excelled, despite
  enduring tremendous pressure and verbal abuse
  from opponents. Black baseball fans turned out in
  the thousands for Robinsons appearances and
  black baseball games suffered. The Robinson-led
  Dodgers won the National League pennant and
  though they lost to the Yankees in the 1947 World
  Series, television coverage of the games
  heightened black interest in major league
  baseball. Further developments in mass
  communication via radio and television made it
  easier than ever for black fans to follow
  Robinson and other African Americans in the major
  leagues.

6
Jackie Robinson

• Born in 1919 in Georgia, Robinson was the
  grandson of a slave and the fifth child of a
  sharecropper. His family relocated to Pasadena,
  California in 1920, paralleling the increasing
  out-migration pattern of southern blacks during
  the first quarter of the twentieth century.
• Inspired by his brother Mack, and outstanding
  sprinter who competed along with Jesse Owens in
  the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin, Robinson became
  interested in athletics at an early age and
  excelled in baseball, basketball, football, and
  track while attending Pasadena Junior College and
  UCLA from 1937 to 1941.
• By the early 1940s, Robinson was a nationally
  known black athlete, particularly celebrated for
  his exploits on the football field.
• Drafted in 1942, Robinson was commissioned as a
  lieutenant but later faced court martial
  proceedings following his refusal to sit in the
  back of a bus in Texas. Robinson wrote I had
  learned that I was in two wars one against a
  foreign enemy, the other against prejudice at
  home. Exonerated by a military court, Robinson
  joined the Kansas City Monarchs in early 1945
  after his discharge.
• During his year with the Monarchs, he earned
  selection to the East-West game as the NALs
  starting shortstop.

7
Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers, running
the bases against the New York Giants at Polo
Grounds on May 26, 1956.
8
Following Robinson

• In January 1946, pitcher John Wright became the
  second African American to sign a contract with
  the Dodgers. In April 1946 Rickey signed catcher
  Roy Campanella and pitcher Don Newcombe. Though
  Rickey insisted all were free agents and failed
  to compensate their former teams, he did pay
  1,000 to the Philadelphia Stars for his next
  signingpitcher Roy Partlowand 15,000 for Dan
  Bankhead who became the first black pitcher in
  the major leagues.
• Following Robinson other professional and college
  sports teams took small steps toward integration
  including the NFLs Los Angeles Rams signing of
  Kenny WashingtonRobinsons former teammate at
  UCLAending the leagues twelve-year unofficial
  ban on black players. College football teams
  became increasingly integrated and two National
  Basketball League teams signed black players.
• Eleven weeks after Robinson's debut with the
  Brooklyn Dodgers, Bill Veeck became the first
  American League owner to break the color line
  with the signing of Larry Doby by Veecks
  Cleveland Indians.
• Veeck then signed 42-year-old (or more) MLB
  rookie Satchel Paige the next year. Paige had
  been upset that it was Jackie Robinson and not
  he who broke the color line. Veeck paid 30,000
  for Paige and he helped the Indians to their
  first pennant in 28 years. In his debut against
  the Chicago White Sox he demonstrated masterful
  control and shut them out. One week later he did
  it again. An August 13 night game at Comiskey
  Park drew 51,013 fans to see Paige again face the
  White Sox. That year, the Indians won the World
  Series.
• The St. Louis Browns became the next team to
  integrate when in July 1947 they signed infielder
  Hank Thompson and outfielder Willard Brown from
  the Kansas City Monarchs who were compensated for
  the transaction.
• Other teams slowly followed suit. For example, in
  November 1947 catcher John Ritchey signed with
  the Pacific Coast League (PCL) San Diego Padres
  and became the first African American player on a
  PCL club.

9
Veeck helped to break the color barrier in the
American League by acquiring Larry Doby, a
23-year-old outfielder, to play for Cleveland.
Veeck compensated Dobys former teamthe Newark
Eagleswith an unprecedented payment of 15,000.
10
Bill Veeck, Jr.

• Veecks fatherBill Veeck, Sr.was a sportswriter
  who became President of the Chicago Cubs. Bill
  Jr. worked in various positions at Wrigley Field
  and was responsible for planting the ivy along
  the outfield brick walls and installing that
  hand-operated scoreboard.
• As owner of the Cleveland Indians, Veeck not only
  integrated the American League, but also brought
  a unique brand of promotion to the game. For
  example, he hired rubber-faced Max Patkin, the
  "Clown Prince of Baseball", as a coach. Patkin's
  appearance in the coaching box delighted fans and
  infuriated the front office of the American
  League.
• Ultimately, he was forced to sell the Indians to
  pay for his first divorce. But he returned as
  owner of the St. Louis Browns. He signed blacks
  for all levels of his organization and engaged in
  more memorable stunts such as the famous
  appearance on August 19, 1951, by midget Eddie
  Gaedel who was told that a man in the stands was
  standing at the ready with a high-powered rifle
  should Gaedel swing at a pitch. Gaedel walked on
  four straight pitches. Veeck was ultimately
  forced out by the owners and the Browns moved to
  Baltimore to become the Orioles.
• Veeck was back in 1959 when he purchased the
  Chicago White Sox. He installed the famous
  exploding scoreboard at Comiskey Park where
  fireworks went off every time a White Sox player
  hit a HR. He put names on the backs of players
  jerseys, now a common practice for nearly every
  team. Due to poor health, he sold his share of
  the team in 1961 but returned to run the White
  Sox in 1975. He testified in court in favor of
  Curt Flood and against the reserve clause system
  and continued his wacky promotions including
  having his players play in shorts, having
  announcer Harry Cary sing Take Me Out to the
  Ball Game during the 7th inning stretch, 10-cent
  beer night in 1974, bringing back former star
  Minnie Minoso (who was the first black player to
  play for the Sox in 1951) to play in 1976 (he got
  a hit at age 50) and again in 1980 at age 54, and
  the notorious disco demolition night where a
  box of disco records was blown up in center field
  during the middle of a twi-night doubleheader and
  the fans tore the stadium apart resulting in a
  forfeit to the Detroit Tigers.
• Fans still visit Veecks Corner at Millers Pub
  around the corner from the Palmer House in the
  loop, downtown Chicago where Veeck regularly held
  court. The walls are covered with photographs of
  Veeck with the players and celebrities who knew
  him.

11
Shifting Postwar Attitudes

• The integration of Organized Baseball in 1946 was
  only one of a series of important postwar legal
  and political developments facilitating the
  gradual yet perceptible movement of blacks into
  he mainstream of American life.
• Following aggressive challenges by the NAACP, the
  Supreme Court struck down the whites-only party
  primary in Smith v. Allwright (1944), declared
  restrictive housing covenants unconstitutional in
  Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), struck down
  segregation in law and graduate school in Sweatt
  v. Painter (1950) and McLaurin v. Oklahoma
  (1950), declared unconstitutional segregation on
  interstate railroad cars in Henderson v. United
  States (1950), and outlawed racial segregation in
  public education in Brown v. Board of Education
  (1954).
• At the same time, federal elected officials
  became increasingly receptive to African American
  protest, recognizing not only the growing
  importance of the urban black vote but the
  potentially damaging effects of the oppression of
  minorities within the context of the ideological
  struggle of the Cold War. Reflecting the
  heightened awareness, President Harry Truman
  issued an executive order in 1948 requiring
  nondiscrimination in the hiring of federal
  employees. Perhaps more significantly, the same
  year Truman subsequently ordered an end to
  segregation in the armed forces.

12
The Ruin of a Black Institution

• The success of Robinson, Campanella, Paige, and
  Doby in the major leagues led to declining press
  coverage, attendance, and interest in black
  organized baseball.
• Negro League teams hung on as long as they
  couldmostly by continuing to sell players to the
  major leagues such as the Birmingham Black Barons
  sale of Willie Mays in 1950 to the New York
  Giants for 15,000, the Indianapolis Clowns 1952
  sale of Hank Aaron to the Boston Braves for
  10,000, and the Kansas City Monarchs 1953 sale
  of Ernie Banks to the Chicago Cubsthe teams
  first African American player.
• Negro League teams also signed some white players
  and its first female playerinfielder Toni
  Stoneby the Indianapolis Clowns in 1953. The
  next year, Stone moved to the Monarchs and the
  Clowns signed two more female players Connie
  Morgan and Mamie Johnson.
• In the early 1950s, talented black players like
  Maury Wills, John Roseboro, and Frank Robinson
  bypassed the Negro League altogether and
  proceeded directly from high school or college
  into organized baseball.
• Branch Rickey left the Dodgers after the 1950
  season for the Pittsburgh Pirates and began
  signing black players as he had done in Brooklyn.
  After failing to sign a single black player in
  the previous five years, the Pirates organization
  under Rickey featured twelve by May 1952.
• Attendance at Negro League ballparks steadily
  declined, salaries were cut, players left for
  Mexico, and one-by-one Negro League teams were
  sold, moved, and ultimately folded. Some teams
  like the Clowns went back to independent,
  barnstorming baseball and their mix of comedy and
  athleticism allowed them to continue as late as
  1984. But Negro League baseball officially ended
  in 1963, a development that concerned few African
  American fans, many of whom were unaware of the
  leagues continued existence!

Willie Mays
13
Full Integration?

• While full integration remained remote, the
  civil rights strides of the 1940s through the
  1960s took an inevitable toll not only on black
  baseball but on other once valued separate
  organizations. Like the NAL and NNL, black
  institutions that had fulfilled a vital role
  during segregation found themselves functioning
  in a vastly transformed environment, often with
  predictable results. Many black hospitals,
  businesses, hotels, banks, and insurance
  companies went out of business while some like
  Parks Sausage and Motown Records survived by
  marketing to a broad interracial customer base.
  Still others survived by continuing to offer
  unique services unavailable in the white world
  such as black churches, historically black
  colleges, and some black media outlets.
• Despite the presence of blacks on several rosters
  in the 1950s, the task of full integration of
  the major leagues was nowhere near complete.
• As late as 1952, only 6 of the 16 major league
  teams featured a black player on their roster.
  Ten years after Jackie Robinsons debut with the
  Dodgers, the last three teams to finally place
  African Americans on their rosters were the
  Philadelphia Phillies in 1957, the Detroit Tigers
  in 1958, and the Boston Red Sox in 1959.
• By 1961, 77 of 450 major league players were
  black (17).
• Yet unlike in black baseball, front office and
  managerial positions were virtually unavailable
  for years and even today remain predominantly
  occupied by whites. This disparity was
  highlighted in 1987 when Los Angeles Dodger
  General Manager Al Campanis appeared on ABC News
  Nightline to discuss the 40th anniversary of
  Robinson breaking the color barrier. Campanis had
  played alongside Robinson and considered him a
  friend. Anchorman Ted Koppel asked him why there
  were so few black managers and no black general
  managers in Major League Baseball. Campanis'
  reply was that blacks "may not have some of the
  necessities to be, let's say, a field manager,
  or, perhaps, a general manager" for these
  positions. Elsewhere in the interview he said
  that blacks are often poor swimmers "because they
  don't have the buoyancy." Koppel tried to give
  Campanis several opportunities to clarify ("Do
  you really believe that?") or back down on his
  remarks but Campanis confirmed his views with his
  replies. A protest erupted the next morning and
  he resigned two days later.

14
Void in the Community

• Although desegregation theoretically rendered
  black baseball and other separate institutions
  superfluous, many African Americans still remain
  far from integrated in fact, geographical
  isolation and joblessness of blacks in major
  cities has remained disturbingly high. Yet some
  of the moderating institutional supports that
  once alleviated the plight of blacks have
  disappeared, leaving a void in the community.
• Despite enabling individual black athletes to
  grow enormously wealthy, integrated organized
  baseball has never approached the importance of
  the Negro Leagues in black communities.
• During the 1960s, black interest in baseball
  began to wane, perhaps a product of the stronger
  attachment of most fans to individual players
  rather than to teams. A lack of recreational
  facilities in the inner cities further dampened
  interest among blacks, many of whom turned to
  basketball, a game that requires less equipment
  and playing space.
• Finally, the ambivalence of organized baseball
  contributed to the disengagement of black fans.
  While accepting black players, the industry had
  never fully resigned itself to black patrons, and
  as late as 1991, several teams admitted fearing
  the impact of black fans on white attendance. Not
  surprisingly, the percentage of black major
  league attendance by the late 1980s fell to below
  7, and to as low as 3 in communities such as
  Chicago and Philadelphia that had once
  enthusiastically supported black baseball.
• Black Americas disengagement from baseball has
  only worsened in recent years, reflected by the
  decline in the number of African Americans on
  major league rosters. In July 2003, African
  Americans occupied only 10 of roster spots,
  compared to 27 in 1975. Also in 2003, only 2
  black major leaguers emerged from the
  once-flourishing black baseball hotbeds of New
  York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.
• With football and basketball both offering more
  opportunities for athletic scholarships and a
  quicker path to professional play, the trend
  appears unlikely to shift in the near future.
  Frank Robinson, the first black manager in major
  league baseball history, said that baseball is
  now third, maybe fourth in the inner-city
  household.
• While baseball has attempted to stimulate black
  interest in recent years through such ventures as
  the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI)
  program, many feel that the escalating costs of
  simply attending a game is the real problem.

15
Conclusion

• While the Negro Leagues failure to formally
  address the issue of integration in a timely
  fashion may have played a part in their demise,
  it was the larger societal shift in postwar
  attitudes toward integration and the rise of mass
  media that ultimately doomed black organized
  baseball and other racial enterprises.
• Still, along with other black institutions, black
  baseball facilitated integration by providing
  invaluable experience and training otherwise
  elusive in a still highly segregated nation.
  Because of this institution-building in the black
  community, a pool of talented African American
  athletes developed who were able to take full
  advantage of the greater opportunities that
  became available with desegregation.
• Despite the strides made by African Americans in
  baseball, front-office and managerial positions
  continue to remain relatively elusive and the
  number of African Americans in baseball continues
  to decline as other sports gain in popularity
  with the community.

16
Bibliography

• Lanctot, Neil. 2004. Negro League Baseball The
  Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution
  (Philadelphia, PA University of Pennsylvania
  Press).
• Ward, Geoffrey C. and Ken Burns. 1994. Baseball
  (PBS Home Video).