Segregation

During baseball’s infancy, a color barrier was put up by the first formal organization of baseball clubs, the National Association of Base Ball Players, which decreed in 1867 that clubs "which may be composed of one or more coloured persons" should not be permitted to compete with its teams of gentlemen amateurs. When the first professional league was formed four years later, it had no written rule barring Black players, but it was tacitly understood that they were not welcome.

The colour line was not consistently enforced, though, during the early years of professionalism. At least 60 Black players performed in the minor leagues during the late 19th century—mostly in all-Black clubs. In 1884 two African Americans played in a recognized major league, the American Association. They were Moses Fleetwood (“Fleet”) Walker, a catcher for the Association’s Toledo team, and his brother Welday, an outfielder who appeared in six games for Toledo.

The number of Black players in professional leagues peaked in 1887 when Fleet Walker, second baseman Bud Fowler, pitcher George Stovey, pitcher Robert Higgins, and Frank Grant, a second baseman who was probably the best Black player of the 19th century, were on rosters of clubs in the International League, one rung below the majors. At least 15 other Black players were in lesser professional leagues. Although they suffered harassment and discrimination off the field, they were grudgingly accepted by most of their teammates and opponents.

A League of Colored Base Ball Clubs, organized in 1887 in cities of the Northeast and border states, was recognized as a legitimate minor league under organized baseball’s National Agreement and raised hopes of sending Black players to big league teams. The league’s first games, however, attracted small crowds, and it collapsed after only one week. While no rule in organized baseball ever stated that Black players were banned, a so-called “gentlemen’s agreement” to exclude Blacks eventually prevailed.

There were other disturbing signs of exclusion for Black players in 1887. The Syracuse (New York) Stars of the International League suffered a mutiny when pitcher Douglas (“Dug”) Crothers refused to sit for a team portrait with his Black teammate Robert Higgins. In Newark, New Jersey, Black pitcher Stovey was kept out of an exhibition game with the major league Chicago White Stockings at the insistence of Cap Anson, Chicago’s manager and one of the most famous players of baseball’s early days. And the St. Louis Browns, American Association champions, refused to play an exhibition game against the all-Black Cuban Giants. The night before the scheduled game, eight members of the Browns handed a message to the team’s owner that read: "[We] do not agree to play against Negroes tomorrow. We will cheerfully play against white people at any time."

In midseason that year the International League’s board of directors told its secretary to approve no more contracts for Black players, although it did not oust the league’s five Blacks. The Ohio State League also wrestled inconclusively with the colour question. It was becoming clear that the colour bar was gradually being raised. Black players were in the minor leagues for the next few years, but their numbers declined steadily. The last Black players in the recognized minor leagues during 19th century were the Acme Colored Giants, who represented Celoron, New York, in the Iron and Oil Leagues in 1898.

As the 20th century dawned, separation of the races was becoming the rule, especially in the South. The U.S. Supreme Court had written segregation into national law in 1895 in Plessy v. Ferguson, which approved separate schools for Black and white children. In the South, state laws and local ordinances placed limits on the use of public facilities by African Americans and forbade athletic competition between Blacks and whites. In the North, African Americans were not usually segregated by law, but local custom dictated second-class citizenship for them.

Nevertheless, the idea of Black players in the major and minor leagues was not yet unthinkable. In 1901 John J. McGraw, manager of the Baltimore Orioles in the new American League, tried to sign a Black second baseman named Charlie Grant by saying that he was a Native American named Tokohama, a member of the Cherokee tribe. The effort failed when rivals correctly identified Grant instead as a member of the Chicago Columbia Giants, a Black team. Five years later there was an aborted attempt to bring African American William Clarence Matthews, Harvard University’s shortstop from 1902 to 1905, into the National League.

Increasingly, Black players who wanted to play professionally had to join all-Black teams. (Several swarthy players in the big leagues were widely assumed to be Black, although they claimed to be white Latin Americans. No admitted Black men played in the white leagues at the time.) Ninety percent of the country’s African American citizens lived in the South, but migration to Northern states was increasing. With the growing base of potential fans in the North, top-quality Black teams appeared in the Northeast and Midwest. Among them were the Genuine Cuban Giants and Cuban X Giants of New York City (both made up of African Americans despite their names), the Cuban Stars and Havana Stars (both with real Cubans), the Lincoln Giants of New York City, the Philadelphia Giants, the Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City (New Jersey), the Homestead (Pennsylvania) Grays, the Hilldale Club of Philadelphia, and the Norfolk (Virginia) Red Stockings. In the Midwest the leaders were the Chicago American Giants, the Columbia Giants, Leland Giants, and Union Giants of Chicago, the Kansas City (Missouri) Monarchs, and the Indianapolis ABCs. Especially noteworthy was the All Nations team, composed of African Americans, whites, a Japanese, a Hawaiian, an American Indian, and several Latin Americans. On its roster at various times before World War I were two of the greatest Black pitchers, John Donaldson and Jose Mendez.

These teams vied for the mythical "colored championship of the world" and also played white semipro and college teams. Salaries were modest. Journeymen players earned $40 to $75 a month, while a star might command more than $100. Some Chicago teams played in the city’s semipro league on weekends, occasionally competing against big leaguers from the Cubs and White Sox who played under assumed names. During the week they played white clubs in nearby towns.

Major league teams often played Black teams during spring training trips to Cuba and sometimes had postseason games against Black clubs in the United States. In 1909, for example, the Chicago Cubs won three close games in a series with the Leland Giants. In 1915, eastern Black teams won four of eight games against big league teams, including a five-hit shutout of the National League champion Philadelphia Phillies by Smokey Joe Williams of the Lincoln Giants. In the late 1920s Commissioner Landis forbade big league clubs from competing in toto in the off-season. Partisans of Black baseball believed it was because Black teams often beat the major leaguers.

In the Midwest a few teams barnstormed all season long. The Kansas City (Kansas) Giants, for example, were on the road all summer, traveling mostly by railroad. Their opponents were white semipro teams throughout the Midwestern states and southern Canada. Although a Black face was a novelty in the small towns, the players remembered that by and large they had little trouble finding food and lodging in the rural areas.

Formed in 1920 and 1921, respectively, the Negro National League and the Negro Eastern League played in New York City, Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City (Missouri), Detroit, and other cities that had absorbed a large influx of African Americans from the South during and after World War I. In the 1920s a Negro World Series was begun and was held annually until the Negro leagues failed in the 1930s. A second Negro National League was founded late in that decade, and the Negro American League, formed in 1936, ultimately had Eastern and Western divisions that in 1952 played a Negro East-West game. Among the most famous players in the various Negro leagues were Josh Gibson (who was credited with hitting 89 home runs in one season), Satchel Paige, Bill Yancey, John Henry Lloyd, Andrew (“Rube”) Foster, and James Thomas (“Cool Papa”) Bell. After World War II, attendance at Negro league games declined as outstanding players were lost to formerly all-white teams. (For more in-depth information on this topic, see Negro leagues.)