Celebrating the Legacy of the Negro Leagues: A Century of Change

- [1st Narrator] A Century Of Change, Negro League centennial Celebration. Presented by Husch Blackwell

and Robert and Marlese Gourley. (upbeat music) - The thing that I find

and its very fascinating and sometimes difficult to talk about, is that we asked for integration.

What we wanted was equality. The two are not the same. (Crowd cheering)

So this story is a wonderful rich story on the importance of economic empowerment and unprecedented level of leadership

and then the social advancement of our country, alongside 2600 men and women who could play. They just wanted to play,

they ain't not even doing all this other stuff, they didn't care about that but what they were doing

and the sacrifice that they made in their love of the game of baseball, changed this game

and it changed that country for the better. (upbeat music) - [Coach] Play ball.

(upbeat music) (crowd cheering) - [2nd Narrator] When the Civil War was over, baseball gained great popularity.

Black baseball players and teams competed at all levels of play open to them. (baseball bat cracks)

- There was not a new phenomena for black folks be playing baseball. We've been playing baseball for quite some time

and playing professional baseball at some level for quite some time. There are even some evidences

of us playing baseball as slaves and so the ideology of black folks playing baseball is not new.

Having it have an organized structure, however was. - [2nd Narrator] In the Post War Black Community,

baseball was a natural extension of the growing cultural and social networks that included schools, churches, theaters and newspapers.

(upbeat light music) - First all black team was the Philadelphia Pythians, made a black professionals out of Philadelphia

and they played for about three or four years. - So when we start going back and looking at those who played

and we start talking about the likes of Moses Fleetwood Walker, who was the first known black to play

on what we would consider to be a Major League Baseball Team, this is the late 1800s about 1883.

- [2nd Narrator] Baseball has been an arena for racial issues in America since the Civil War.

In 1867, white owners and managers of organized baseball made a gentleman's agreement to keep dark skinned people out of their league.

- It was essentially a way of just basically polarizing our sport. The thing that strikes me

is that there was no written doctrine. It was just a verbalized agreement amongst players, managers and owners,

that essentially said, "If you allow blacks to play with you, you can't play with us".

- [2nd Narrator] The unwritten gentleman's agreement was strong enough to prevent most blacks

from playing integrated professional baseball. For the remainder of the 19th century. - The problem with establishing

strong black teams or black league was the lack of economic power. So we were handicapped

and that we had to rely on white owners and their ballparks to play and we had to pay them a fee.

- [2nd Narrator] Local promoters who control ballparks charge 10% of the gate for games played in their parks,

scheduling and organizing league games required far more planning than barnstorming. - The Negro Leagues were hereotive barnstormers.

They took baseball into Canada. They were oftentimes the first Americans to play in many Spanish speaking countries.

Believe it or not, it was a touring team of Negro leaguer's that introduced professional baseball

to the Japanese going all the way back to 1927. The tool was so successful

that several years later Babe Ruth and his All Stars would get invited over and see they've been commonly credited

with having taken professional baseball to the Japanese but it's not true. No, it was that team called the Philadelphia Royal Giants.

- [2nd Narrator] In the 1920s, Negro League teams played only about 33% of their games

against other league teams. The rest they played on the road, barnstorming in distance cities

to make extra money and to help make ends meet. - More times or not, it was these guys going into towns,

playing the local town team, or whomever they could strike up a game and then split the purse kind of thing.

- Barnstorming tour, it was outstanding in voice, money making and soon,

we're making a hundred dollars a night. My wife was like, "man, you must be stealing". (laughing hysterically)

- And when they're going through and barnstorming these different towns, especially the small Western towns

where in a period, when cinema was still in its infancy, there wasn't really radio yet,

there certainly wasn't television, it was things like the circus and the carnival

and these road shows coming to town, that was everybody's entertainment. So it wasn't just a baseball game,

the players also played musical instruments or wrestled or put on comedy routines. This was a three act show,

that the baseball game was just part of. (plane engine roaring) - [2nd Narrator] In April 1917,

the United States entered World War 1. The need for men and women to work in factories, accelerated the migration of blacks from the south.

Within three years, around half a million blacks had moved northward to perform essential war related jobs.

In theory, the view that democracy could not be unconditional abroad and conditional at home made sense

but in reality, racism continued and blacks met even greater hostility after the war.

Northern labor unions which refused to accept blacks stood by, as industry cast them out of their wartime jobs

by the thousands. In 1919, the year the world made say for democracy,

there were at least 25 race riots in America. - We had some great independent black teams before 1920. Indianapolis ABCs, Philadelphia Giants,

the Smart Set out of Paterson New Jersey, Rube Foster could see that they were drawing a lot of people.

- [2nd Narrator] Rube Foster dominated the black baseball scene. He beefed up the Chicago American Giants

by raiding the rival ABCs and other teams off their best players. - He thought that he could create a league

that would be so dynamic, that he would essentially force Major League Baseball's hand to expand.

- [2nd Narrator] Foster was ready to carry out his vision of a national Negro League.

He wanted to force whiteness promoter's out of the black game and to force to white major leagues,

to accept some manner of integration. - He thought if he organized the players, the National League would take a black team

and the American League would take a black team. - And there had been some efforts to create a Negro Leagues

but they failed until 1920. - [2nd Narrator] On February 13 1920, the owners of the top black clubs in the Midwest

gathered at the Paseo Y.M.C.A. in Kansas City at the invitation of Rube Foster for the purpose of forming a league.

- The original meeting was supposed to take place in Indianapolis and the meeting was canceled.

Thankfully. - [2nd Narrator] Rube Foster was elected president and the constitution

for the National Association of Color Professional Baseball Clubs was written. - And it's not surprising that it happens in Kansas City.

Kansas City would have been a very important market, it would have been important for them to have had a franchise placed here.

J.L. Wilkinson, the owner of the Kansas City Monarchs, he was is unique in that, he was the only white owner

of the original charter members. - J.L. Wilkinson was a 2000 man in the 1900s and when I say that,

is the fact that J.L. Wilkinson really did not see color. He saw these great ballplayers. He made his entire living in black baseball.

- But he was good to the team, it wasn't just this was a good business thing but I won't I don't wanna socialize with players.

- J.L. Wilkinson probably was the second man that I've ever known without prejudice, first was my dad, and then J.L.Wilkinson.

- So Rube kept hearing these great things about Wilkinson but the other thing that Rube needed, that Wilkinson had,

was access to stadiums and so Rube relented, Wilkinson would become secretary of the Negro Leagues,

bring in his Kansas City Monarchs, who would then go on to become one of the greatest baseball franchises,

not in Negro Leagues history, but in baseball history. - [2nd Narrator] J.L. Wilkinson

was able to keep his Kansas City Monarchs alive by cultivating the widespread corridor of the game venues that ran from Minnesota and the Dakotas,

down to Oklahoma and Texas, as well as in Canada and Mexico. - Certainly, the Monarchs are going to become

a cultural symbol of the community. By the 1930s and 40s, Opening Day is practically a holiday.

I mean, businesses in the black community shut down. - [2nd Narrator] The Kansas City Monarchs set a standard of excellence for the Negro Leagues.

The monarchs, who had a special relationship with their home community, were looked to as leaders

and role models for the urban youth. - Even when the gate receipts weren't great, during the Depression,

the Monarchs were always a solid club. If they weren't gonna win the pennant that year, they were in contention.

- [2nd Narrator] In 1934, a black All Star team, built around the Kansas City Monarch players, was sent to the Orient for 13 months,

on a baseball extravaganza, that took the team to Hawaii, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Japan.

- Where ever you had successful black baseball, you had thriving black economies. - It wasn't just players that were being hired

or really employed, you have the ticket takers and the concessionaires

and the bus drivers and grounds crew and all these other attendant jobs.

You also have the restaurants and the taverns and so forth in the neighborhood, that on game days

would see their business picked up considerably. - [2nd Narrator] By the end of the decade, black owners had created a successful business

that employed about 500 people. About 75% of that income flowed back into the black community.

Baseball was established as a profession for blacks as a parallel institution to the white major leagues.

For the black community, the Negro Leagues were a source of pride and a model of achievement

for the world to see. - This area was jumping but this was a cultural crossroads,

where jazz and baseball intersected and here were these great stars who were a major influence on this

and so what Negro Leagues baseball did for those black businesses, was it brought it a built in clientele

that helped on black home businesses flourish. - I do think there may be some tendency to think of this as being small businesses

and that was certainly true. I mean, there was all sorts of that. We're also talking about medium and large scale business,

insurance firms, law firms, we're talking about publishing houses, kind of filling all sections

of an internal parallel economy. - My dollar was spent here and this is the only place I could spend a dollar

'cause if I went downtown, they wouldn't let me try and close. They wouldn't let me eat in the restaurant.

So why deal with that, when I can just stay right here, everything's within walking distance

and not have to deal with the atrocities of racism. - [2nd Narrator] Many of the same people who cheered the talented players on the field,

refused to serve their food or pump their gas between games. Lodging became so difficult,

that the Monarchs gave up hotels and relied on black boarding houses and private homes.

- The baseball field was their sanctuary, I get to show you what I can do but it was the traveling the highways

and byways of our country, that where the difficulty became in not knowing where you could stop

and get something to eat or have a place to stay. - [2nd Narrator] Early in the decade,

teams traveled almost exclusively by trains. Some were forced to travel in segregated railroad coasts. Others rented or purchased their own pull make cars.

As more roads were built across the country, automobiles and later buses, provided teams with greater flexibility,

smaller communities became more accessible. - Travel conditions for the ballplayers, for the most part,

were difficult but not impossible. They knew how to navigate through Sundown Towns, as they're called

and so they would take sack lunches and fix a thermos of Kool Aid, they'd drive up to a stream,

wash the clothes out, hang them out the window of the bus and keep moving to the next town.

So you always find a way to navigate through the hatred no matter where you are, because all you want to do is play baseball.

That was it. That was Jim Crow. What can we do?

We were a minority, we had no power, no economic power,

no political power. You had to know when to shut up and make those baby steps

and show white America on the field how professional that you really were. - and to me,

that's the transcending story of what the liberal leagues represented. They've never cry about social injustice.

They went out and did something about it. The great Hilton Smith, legendary pitcher Hall of Fame pitcher

for the Kansas City Monarchs had recommended Jackie Robinson to J.L. Wilkinson. This is 1945,

Robinson makes the team, little did J.L. Wilkinson know that he just signed a man

that was gonna put him out of business because by the end of the year, Robinson is gone. He's gone. He had literally vanished.

His teammates had no idea where he was. Honestly Robinson goes to meet with Branch Rickey. He really got to know the real reason that he's there

and that's when Rickey springs on him that he wants him to be the chosen one, the guy to break the color barrier

in Major League Baseball. - You were brought here to play with the Brooklyn Organization,

Montreal to start with. - Think about this psychological barrier of a dark skinned black man,

just not anybody but dark skinned black man who puts on a white uniform, He goes a batter's box,

picks a bat made a white ash, he stays in a white chalk batter's box, standing over a white plate,

to hit a white baseball from the white pitcher between two white foul lines

and he rose to a white first base, eight white fielders, through the ball to first base,

a white emperor calls you, safe route and white fans boo or cheer.

Talk about Babe Ruth, Yeah, Babe Ruth changed baseball, Jackie Robinson changed America.

- But you couldn't reduce this to just having a guy who was a great baseball player. You had to have a guy who could play

but you also had to have a guy who could handle the social aspect of this. - Most of the ballplayers,

African American ballplayers are from the South, from the segregated South. Whereas you get Jackie Robinson

who grew up in an integrated community in Pasadena, California. He went to a predominantly white college.

He was a lieutenant in the US Army. So he'd already had this comfort zone of Interacting with whites

where 90% of the other Negro League Players had never interacted with whites because they grew up like me

never seen a white face, except on TV. So he had the perfect blend of character and personality

to integrate the game. - And so Robinson holds the distinction of having broken the color barrier

in what we deemed to be the modern era of Major League Baseball. - [2nd Narrator] The impact of black baseball players

in the major leagues was felt immediately. After Jackie Robinson

received the newly created Rookie of the Year award in 1947, black players won eight of the next 11 Awards.

Furthermore, nine of the 11 men voted the national League's Most Valuable Player between 1949 and 1959 were former Negro League stars.

- Baseball would not be baseball without these Negro League products. That's the bottom line.

- If you're going to look at any one single solitary event that kind of triggered the movement

to integrate Major League Baseball, World War II. Here you had the sentiment

of these young black soldiers who died, fighting the same racism essentially in another country that we were being asked to accept here at home

and that is what started the sentiment. Well, if they can die fighting for their country, why can't they play baseball in this country.

- Until the Civil Rights Movement came along, the movement was Negro League Baseball. Jackie integrated in '47,

military integrated in 1948 and then you got Brown versus The Board of Education in 1954,

So this happens before Rosa Parks sits on that bus in Montgomery, Alabama and justice stood up in 1955,

before Daisy Bates integrates Central High School in 1957, before the Civil Rights march in '63,

the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Major League Baseball integrated before America was legally integrated.

That's why it's so important. - [2nd Narrator] The Negro Leagues were successful in their quest to bring racial equality

to the game of baseball. The victory was, however bittersweet. Although Negro League managers wanted

to continue their operations, they like the players under contract with them, desired integration into the majors.

To help bolster their clubs dwindling financial situations, owners sold off some of their better players to the big league franchises

for what little money the white owners offered, usually no more than several thousand dollars. - So for that older black player,

they had no chance now. So now the Negro League didn't want them because I can't sell you to the major leagues.

Major League didn't want to cast you home. - At the same time that integrations occurring and the wonderful aspects that,

you're also removing assets from the black community and we see other examples of that.

As more businesses are hiring black workers, as more schools are accepting black students, as there are more black forminet plants,

there becomes less of a societal imperative within the black community, to only buy local.

It had been, don't shop where you can't work. We also see this happen at the same time

that white flight is starting to take place, as white folks are moving out of these urban areas and into the suburbs

and delivered towns and so forth and African Americans are not allowed to and other racial minorities are kept in the inner cities.

Well as the people are leaving, so are the plants. - It was difficult for those smaller businesses

to now compete with those mainstream businesses. Yeah, and so all of a sudden that would lead to the decline

of so many African American communities, including historic - The Negro Leagues found it very difficult

to continue operation. - [2nd Narrator] Gimmicks such as clowning and hiring female players

were tried in vain to bolster attendance. - They were own life support and they knew it

because their best players were not in the league anymore. - Once you remove some of this talent

and you remove the fan interest you're scrambling to survive. - [2nd Narrator] It is ironic that the event

that had been only dreamed up for 50 years, would caused the demise of the now famous Negro League Baseball.

The superstars of the Negro League signed with the Major Leagues and took their fans with them.

- And there was a sense like that you didn't have to feel bad about it because it's all of everybody's game now.

We don't have to stick to just our teams. - J.L. Wilkinson, who had Jackie Robinson here

with the Kansas Monarchs sold his Kansas Monarch to his business partner to T.Y. Baird

the year After Robinson takes the field, so I think the sentiment was there. I think everybody understood it wasn't a matter of if,

it was simply a matter of when the Negro Leagues were going to die. - [2nd Narrator] The Negro National League disbanded

after the 1948 season. The Negro American League absorbed some of the remaining franchises

and divided the league into two divisions in an effort to bring back black baseball. - Well, the leagues would go on

to operate for another 13 years. Why? Because it took Major League Baseball 12 years before every major league team had at least

one black baseball player. The Boston Red Sox would become the last team to integrate in 1959

when they signed the guy by the name of Pumpsie Green. Now there was still the team called Kansas City Monarchs and still the team called the Indianapolis Clowns

and they were still out there barnstorming and trying to get a game, however they could get a game

but black baseball in its organized capacity as we know it, by 1960 had ended and was a thing of the past.

- And it certainly ends with a whimper and it's really a shame, given how important a place the Monarchs have

in baseball history, not just black baseball history, but I mean, overall,

they are one of the consistently best teams that any League has ever produced, especially for the fairly limited time of their existence.

of the players that came out of this organization were second to none and not only some of the best players

but some of the most colorful and entertaining and almost legendary ones. Guys like Satchel Paige and Cool Papa Bell

and of course, Jackie Robinson. - [2nd Narrator] Although the league struggled through to 1960 most historians agree

that the 1948 season was the last year that the Negro Leagues were of Major League quality. - The reason why it ends the way it does,

a lot of it has to do with the exploitative nature of how integration came about following World War II and moving into the 1950s.

- Robinson's breaking up the color barrier, essentially sparked the Civil Rights Movement in this country

and it triggered integration in a widespread fashion in this country because that's how popular baseball was.

- [2nd Narrator] Admittance into the Major Leagues brought about the end of a sterling chapter in black history, the Negro Leagues.

- If there is indeed a bittersweet aspect to the overall story of the Negro Leagues, I think it lies directly with the fact that

you can look at the rise and fall of the Negro Leagues or parallel the rise and fall of the Negro Leagues, with the rise and fall of black economy in this country

and to a great extent, black economy never recovered from losing the Negro Leagues. What was good morally,

what was good socially, was devastating economically. There's always a cost for progress, always.

- And it's also important to understand that things like desegregation and race relations aren't static.

It didn't all end at the day when Jackie Robinson got to play or when the Civil Rights Act was signed,

these things are fluid. These things are still happening and we haven't seen the end of the story.

- We have to understand, athletes today, just like back there in the 50s, are truly the social change agents of America.

What I learned from interviewing these great men is they had a pride in their self esteem, didn't make excuses.

They were all always respectful of their spouses. They would do anything for their children. This is what the 2020 should be about,

respecting this history of these men who paved the way for these gangs that we have today and they did it without protest or anger.

They were the bridge over racial waters for Jackie Robinson. - And the way it started,

Horace Peterson, black archives came like "Buck come down to my office, We need to see ya" I said, Okay, I got down.

He said, "I tell you what I want you to do. Let's start a Negro League Hall of Fame". I said, "Oh, no Horace.

We don't need a Negro League Hall of Fame. I think the guys that's qualified should go with the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

What would you suggest" I say, "Negro League Baseball Museum". - And now it is our job to make sure

that this is indeed a transcending history and so as we embark on this Centennial Celebration, it is just that,

an opportunity for us to elevate the awareness of what this history represents again, both on and off the field

and you walk away from this story with nothing other than this. What the Negro League teaches us very simple,

in this great country of ours, if you dare to dream and you believe in yourself,

you can do or be anything you want to be. (upbeat music) - [1st Narrator] A Century Of Change,

Negro League Centennial Celebration. Presented by Husch Blackwell and Robert and Marlese Gourley.