The Rise and Fall of the Negro Baseball League Essay

The Negro Leagues flourished from 1920 to 1951, with the first all-pro African American team actually being formed in 1885.1 From that time period, a handful of players made their way to stardom. Of those players, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and Jackie Robison among others had a monumental

Baseball has always been more than just a sport to the American people. For many, it is a way of life, teaching not just brute skills but life lessons and morals. In the wake of World War I, racism and bigotry abounded in the United States. Even though the integration of schools had recently been instated, Jim Crow laws severely limited the activity of African Americans in society, resulting in baseball teams being limited to whites. Jackie Robinson made an important step in gaining rights for African Americans when he broke the color barrier of baseball in 1947. He did this by making civil rights his ambition even before the protests began (Coombs 117). Jackie Robinson’s fame as a baseball player and determination to defeat adversity

Before there were players such as Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Barry Bonds, Major League Baseball was strictly white players only. The color line of Major League Baseball excluded black players until the late 40’s. This didn’t stop the colored men of America from playing the beloved American sport. The creation of the Negro Leagues in 1920 by Rube Foster gave colored men a chance to play in their own professional league, similar to the Major Leagues, but for African-American men. The creation of the Negro Leagues was a result of the Jim Crow Laws, state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Enacted after the Reconstruction period in the U.S., these laws continued in force until 1965. These laws created

The game of baseball evolved immensely during the 1900’s. There were new rules and rule changes, new teams in new states, and then there was Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson was a true legend from the day he was born in 1919. Baseball had it all in the first half of the 1900’s, fans filled the stadiums day after day, even during the war times. There was a big-name player on almost every team, children and adults admired these professional baseball players. The only thing professional baseball didn’t have during these times were African American players. Learning about the hardships that he had to overcome as a young boy, and the accomplishments he made from his college days at UCLA, to becoming the first African American professional baseball player, Jackie made it known that he was an American hero.

     "Over the decades, African American teams played 445-recorded games against white teams, winning sixty-one percent of them." (Conrads, pg.8) The Negro Leagues were an alternative baseball group for African American baseball player that were denied the right to play with the white baseball payers in the Major League Baseball Association. In 1920, the first African American League was formed, and that paved the way for numerous African American innovation and movements. Fences, and Jackie Robinson: The Biography, raises consciousness about the baseball players that have been overlooked, and the struggle they had to endure simply because of their color.

As baseball grew, so did the African American ambitions to play against other white teams. Moses “Fleetwood” Walker,

The Negro League players were the best at entertaining the crowd. They would impress the audience by playing an upbeat, fast, and daring game. Players often stole bases on risky terms, but successfully stealing a base meant a roar from the crowd. Negro League players were also often known to talk a lot on the field. The batters would try to make the pitchers nervous by using intimidating talk. The silly phrases such as “we want a pitcher, not a belly itcher” was

The story of Jackie Robinson has become one of America's most iconic and inspiring stories. Since 1947, American history has portrayed Jackie Robinson as a hero, and he has been idolized as a role model to the African American baseball community. It is an unarguable fact that he was the first to tear down the color barriers within professional baseball. The topic of Robinson’s role in integration has long been a point of discussion amongst baseball historians. Researchers have accumulated thousands of accredited documents and interviews with friends and team mates such as short stop, Pee Wee Reese, and team owner, Branch Rickey. However, few journalists have asked why Robinson was selected and what was Branch

In Buck O’Neil’s book, I Was Right on Time, he mentions a phrase that was common for Negro League ball players to hear back in the day. O’Neil writes, “John McGraw said he’d give 50,000 dollars for Donaldson if he’d been white…we heard that a lot about a lot of players through the years” (O’Neil 78). But unfortunately for many of the ballplayers at that time, they weren’t white. And as a result of their skin color and the Jim Crow laws of the time, African American, including ballplayers like Buck O’Neil, had to endure troubling times and unjust hardships. On the surface, I Was Right on Time is a memoir, a story about O’Neil’s time spent navigating through black baseball and his stories of some of the greatest to play the game, but underneath the tales of a great American sport, is a great American travesty; a real look into the days of segregation and the harshness of racial problems in 20th century America.

When asked to describe a baseball the first word generally voiced is white, and before April 15, 1947 that is exactly what the game of baseball was, white. “There is no law against Negroes playing with white teams, or whites with colored clubs, but neither has invited the other for the obvious reason they prefer to draw their talent from their own ranks” (‘42’). These were the feelings of people living in 1947, that blacks and whites were not meant to play baseball together. Then, why decades earlier, had there been an African American in the league? In 1887, an African American Pitcher, George Stovey, was expected to pitch a game with Chicago, however, the first baseman, Cap Anson, would not play as long as Stovey was on the field. Other

In the biography Jackie Robinson and the American Dilemma by John R. M. Wilson, it tells the story of racial injustice done after world war II and explains how Jackie Robinson was pioneer of better race relations in the United States. The obstacles Jackie Robinson overcame were amazing, he had the responsibility to convert the institutions, customs, and attitudes that had defined race relations in the United States. Seldom has history ever placed so much of a strain on one person. I am addressing the importance of Jackie Robinson’s trials and triumphs to American racial dynamics in the post war period to show how Robinson was a prominent figure in the civil rights movement and brought baseball fans together regardless of race.

The start of the game of baseball is unknown, but some people believe they know when it started. The game of baseball believes to start in England. The start of baseball was around 1760, the game was called Rounder. Rounder had the same rules as baseball today, but it had its difference. The biggest difference was that a fielder had to throw the ball at the runner to get them out. The game changed in 1845. A group of people got together to talk about the game. They wanted to make the game safer. They changed the rules of the fielder. He would not throw at the baserunner anymore; they must tag the baserunner with the ball. The equipment changed as well when they made the rule change. They started to use a harder ball.

Since the abolition of slavery in the USA in 1883 and through the first half of the 20th Century, African Americans had been in a constant struggle to try and gain an equal footing in society. Like many aspects of American life, black sportsmen were segregated, and no African American had played professional baseball since 1884. For this reason, the integration of Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers as the first African American to play Major League baseball in the modern era had a grand impact on the entire country. From the moment that Dodgers owner, Branch Rickey decided that Robinson would break the colour lone, the history of sport and the history of African Americans would not be the same again. The importance of his integration and the effect it had on civil rights can be looked at in many different ways. It had great effect on the African American community, instilling pride and belief once again in the American Dream for many who had once thought it impossible. It also had significant importance for civil rights groups, and brought about a figure who would fight his peoples quest for equal rights until the day he died. It was a significant risk taken by both Rickey and Robinson, professionally and personally. But it was a risk that both in the short term for African American sport, and in the long run for African American civil rights, was ultimately well worth taking.

On Friday June 19, 1846 the first officially recorded baseball game in American History was played. Six months before this event slavery was abolished on December 18, 1865. Just because African Americans were free from slavery did not mean they were free. Almost all things in America were segregated between whites and blacks, including the game of baseball until one day an African American man by the name of Jackie Robinson broke the color line of American baseball.

The Negro Leagues, baseball leagues for merely black players, allowed urban communities to “pass down the tradition of ‘their’ game 25.” As the Negro leagues ended, baseball’s popularity diminished because it no longer acted as a unique and individualized aspect of African-American culture. The Negro Leagues and the black baseball movement inspired hope as a part of the larger civil rights movement of the 20th century and the black community utilized baseball “as a means of collective identity and civic pride 26.” African- American’s racial advances in baseball signaled the long term success of the larger civil rights movement of the 20th century. As a result, baseball became essential in identifying the progress and identity of African-American culture. Baseball lost its social prevalence after the African-American civil rights movement due to the emergence of other