Unemployment and Urban Black Workers during the Great Depression in The Journal of Economic History (Vol. 22, September 3, 1965, 1. Those players already wearing the number were allowed to keep it. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Muehlebach Field, which opened in 1923 and would go through a number of name changes before settling on Municipal Stadium in 1955, was shared by the Monarchs and the Kansas City Blues, the top minor league club in the Yankees farm system. Wilkinson, who had long sponsored integrated (both by race and sex) barnstorming teams based out of Kansas City. 1 overall pick in last June's . Foster was a visionary who dreamed that the champion of his Black major league would play the best of the white league clubs in an interracial world series. 26 Tiffany Gill, Beauty Shop Politics: African American Womens Activism in the Beauty Industry (University of Illinois Press; Chicago, 2010), 2. A few weeks later the Negro Southern League was organized with clubs in the large cities of the South; however, it was regarded as a minor circuit during its on-again, off-again life over the next 30 years. With perennially winning teams built around future Hall of Famers like Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, and Jackie Robinson, as well as Buck ONeil, whose bronze image stands near the Cooperstown shrines entrance, the Monarchs were consistently one of the top drawing teams in baseball (Black or White) and nearly always in championship contention. And it took another 50 years, and Mitchell's noble persistence, before MLB finally acknowledged its complicity and debt to players still toiling in the post-1947 Negro Leagues by providing. The manner in which integration in baseballand in American businesses generallyoccurred was not the only model which was possible. 59 United States Department of Labor. Having weathered the Great Depression with unemployment and business failure rates much higher than their White counterparts, businesses were booming in the early postwar period. CNN Sans & 2016 Cable News Network. But 1947 was only Robinson's MLB "rookie year." His professional debut came in the Negro Leagues in 1945 for the Kansas City Monarchs, where he signed for $400 a month. In the case of the 18th and Vine district in Kansas City, these efforts have been largely successful; however, other cities have met with more limited success. There was a small writeup about the antics of legendary pitcher and showman Satchel Paige, who was equally famous both for his abilities as a player and for his on-field theatrics that dazzled the crowd and added to his already mythic persona. By early June its Detroit team had dropped out, the schedule was curtailed, and salaries were slashed. Civil Rights: Before You Could Say "Jackie Robinson" - Baseball Hall of Again, this is in keeping with what happened in other large-scale Black-owned businesses such as banks, newspapers, and insurance companies.41 As events unfolded, the best Black players were cherry-picked by major-league clubs, leaving the Negro Leagues to try to compete for fan dollars with fewer quality players and less cultural significance. Apr 28, 2023. The question becomes why, then, if social and economic conditions were improving exponentially in the African American community some ten years before what is nominally considered the beginning of the Civil Rights Era, were circumstances at the culmination of this period (and to an extent, today) practically unchanged, if not worse? Updates? Baseball Reference. Robinson was an All-Star every year from 1949-1954. The sports page is no less bleak. Vol. Former Negro League players Russell Patterson and James Atterbury along with Cam Perron at Myrtle Beach Pelicans minor league game in August 2010. Thats the biggest lie Ive been told, the 77-year-old added. He became the first Black player to win the National League Most Valuable Player Award in 1949, when he led the league in hitting with a .342 average, most stolen bases (37) and achieving a career-high 124 RBI. Perhaps the most troubling news item from this issue was the case of Seaman First Class Junius Bobb, a Black sailor arrested for allegedly starting an altercation with a White Marine at Union Station rail depot. There are no mentions of scholarships being awarded, mass meetings for employment opportunities, or patriotic calls for donations and privation here. While most Black businesses struggled to survive from year to year, professional baseball teams and leagues operated for decades, representing a major achievement in Black enterprise and institution building. Did you like this story? 27 Leslie Heaphy, The Negro Leagues, 18691960 (McFarland & Co; Jefferson, North Carolina, 2003), 224. They had to ride all night and had nowhere to stay. Some teams were assessed as being as valuable as major-league franchises.36 As the postwar period of economic prosperity set in and all sectors of the population saw rising income levels and standards of living, indications were Black businesses, including the Negro Leagues, were finally about to fulfill their potential. Local girl Yolanda Meek had been awarded a $5,000 scholarship by the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.7 Op-ed columnist Lucia Mallory wrote about the importance of continuing to support the government by buying bonds even after the war had ended, and appealed to her readers to donate clothes and other supplies to the relief effort for victims of war-torn Europe.8 Even though the local office was being closed, the FEPC was scheduled to hold a meeting October 14 at Municipal Auditorium called An Industrial Job for all who Qualify, focusing on retaining Black employment in the industrial sector after shifting to a peace-time economy.9. All these early leagues were financially shaky. Following the death of another older brother, Frank, in a motorcycle accident, Jackie decided to honor his memory by enrolling at UCLA in 1939. Predictably, Black-owned firms began to fail and by 1940 the number of Black-owned businesses had declined by 16% to 87,475.34, The situation in Kansas City was different and unique in the league, as the Monarchs had a White owner, J.L. 33 Bill Veeck, VeeckAs in Wreck (University of Chicago Press; Chicago, 1962), 246-247. Cite specific textual evidence from the items in this set to describe some of the positive and negative experiences of African American baseball players in the Negro leagues from 1890 to 1947. Deferred': 100 years on from the Negro Leagues. Hall of Famer Josh Gibson stands far left. Vol. 44 Mitchell Nathanson, A Peoples History of Baseball (University of Illinois Press; Urbana, IL, 2012), 8687. Branch Rickey: A Life. 4 All-Black Company Closes Suddenly, Kansas City Call. At the height of the war the firm had employed some 245 Black workers.4 In the same issue it was announced that the local office of the Federal Employment Practices Commission (which sought to provide more fair hiring and employment standards for minorities, especially in heavy industry and manufacturing) had been closed and was being incorporated in the St. Louis office.5 The writer had some concerns for what this meant for the Black workers in the area. In the middle 1950s five acres of historic buildings were razed in order to make room for new building projects. 60 - 70 a season. 50 NAACP Official Injured in Bombing, The Kansas City Call, Vol. The players were made fun of. Vol. The NAACP had announced that they would be providing legal counsel if Seaman Bobb did not prefer a Navy lawyer.6, On the whole, however, the general tone of the paper was upbeat and optimistic. The championship game pitted two Black teams against each other and attracted 10,000 fans to the stadium of the Philadelphia (now Oakland) Athletics. Negro League Baseball, Black Community, and The Socio-Economic Impact While most of these were small mom and pop shops, there had also been growth during the 1920s in larger-scale operations such as insurance companies, publishing houses, and banks. Again, Kansas City serves as a model, with several large industries leaving the center-city area in the 1950s and relocating to suburban areas where most White workers continued to be employed while laying off most of the Black workforce. It is also important to remember that the failure of the Negro Leagues economically impacted many more people than the players on the field. 29 William Sundstrom, Last Hired, First Fired? This essay will explore the subject of racial and economic integration during the period of approximately 1945 through 1965 by studying the subject of Negro League baseball and the African American community of Kansas City, Missouri, as a vehicle for discussing the broader economic and social impact of desegregation. The primary reason given for moving the Athletics to Oakland was Kansas Citys lack of commitment to building a new ballpark.56 According to owner Charles O. Finley, the neighborhood had become too dangerous for night games, and he blamed the aging and inadequate facility for low attendance numbers (though one might argue that the club being at the bottom of the standings for more than a dozen years contributed more to low turnout). Jackie Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia, to a family of sharecroppers. After playing a game in Huntsville, Alabama, Patterson told CNN that he and his teammates had to stay overnight and slept with the bats on our chests because the Ku Klux Klan was supposed to have seen us playing that day., The players are not household names like Robinson or the late Hall of Fame baseball star Hank Aaron, Perron told CNN, but their experiences paved the way for baseball now.. JAPHETH KNOPP received a B.S. Aaron wrote in the books foreword that the first professional baseball game that he saw was when the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro Leagues played in Mobile, Alabama, and inspired him to compete on a professional level. For these fans, the attraction was perhaps not so much the game itself, but rather the expression of African Americans being treated with something like equality (as in playing on equal terms against White teams) and often demonstrating their ability to compete successfully. When the teams began to struggle and finally collapsed, many people besides the players also lost their livelihoods. Additionally, he would become the last to play in both the Negro Leagues and the Major Leagues. Robinson steals home during Game 1 of the 1955 World Series. Another handicap was the wide disparity in the quality of the teams; two or three clubs would dominate and earn far more money than their weaker brethren. The NNL, bereft of the management acumen and foresight of Foster, who was hospitalized for mental illness in 1926, stumbled on until 1931 before disbanding as the Great Depression deepened and left most fans with empty pockets. Negro Leagues historian Larry Lester offered this: "The league was dark, and he stood out, and he didn't care." But he did care about winning. February 10, 2011. Vol. Penguin Random House.Jackie Robinson: 7 memorable quotes. Give an example of how a rookie Negro League player was treated. The ECL succumbed to financial weakness in the spring of 1928. 30 Bob Luke, The Most Famous Woman in Baseball: Effa Manley and the Negro Leagues (Potomac Books; Dulles, Virginia, 2011), 11. 27; No. No fewer than four articles were dedicated to the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro National League and one of the most storied Black teams in baseball history. I have learned that I remain a Black in a white world.". Tip Your Cap to Baseball's Negro Leagues | SportsRaid - Medium Vol. ISBN ISBN 978-1-970159-63-9. Established shortly after the turn of the century as a barnstorming team, they had been a central element of the Black community for years before the establishment of the Negro National League in 1920, and would go on to dominate that circuit for several years before playing as an independent club for a number of seasons and then becoming a charter member of the Negro American League in 1937.21, Besides fielding a consistently competitive team, playing in one of the newest and nicest ballparks in the Negro Leagues also helped attract fans. Citing a lack of proper contracts (which is to say, contracts that had been approved for use in the White major and minor leagues), teams simply ignored the vested interests of Black clubs and signed the many of the best players outright without any financial consideration of Negro League owners.44 Denouncing Black-owned businesses as being illegitimate and therefore ethical to deal with in an inequitable manner had long been a common practice among White business owners. While Kansas City may have been somewhat unusual in the variety of activities available and the prominence of its Black celebrities, these themes can be found in urban Black communities throughout the North during this period. Robinson, second from left, poses with his siblings and his mother, Mallie, for a family portrait circa 1925. The Northern City with a Southern Exposure, Matter of Fact: Newsletter of the Urban League of Kansas City, Missouri. "Somebody told me baseball was a White man's game," he says about a teammate who approached him while he sat on the bench. The promise of a new publicly financed stadium helped secure Kansas City an expansion team, the Royals, in 1969 and Municipal Stadium was finally abandoned after the 1972 baseball season.57 It sat unused and dilapidated until 1976 when it was demolished for being a danger to public safety.58 Professional baseball had left Kansas Citys African American community for the last time. 46; No. He was there to lend his name to the integration efforts in the city. ABC7NY.com.Jackie Robinson. Fann grew up in an integrated neighborhood in Macon, Georgia, and saw Black and White children getting along and often playing stickball together. Jackie also met his future wife, Rachel, while at UCLA. For many, these exhibitions were a highlight of the yearly social calendar.25. For the first time in more than a decade, teams consistently made money, and attendance was at an all-time high. Many businesses, most notably barber shops, beauty parlors, and, perhaps to a lesser extent, night clubs and restaurants also filled this role. Black populations in Northern cities boomed during the 1910s with the Great Migration from the South and relatively plentiful job opportunities in defense industries during World War I. Robinson and his wife, Rachel, pose with their three children -- Jackie Jr., David and Sharon -- at their home in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1962. Municipal Stadium would continue to be used on and off by various teams and for different events until the early 1970s, but little effort or funding was put into maintaining the structure. MLB's recognition of Negro League records includes Jethroe, others with Vol. And. Another item advertised for the upcoming Labor Day doubleheader against the Memphis Red Sox in which ace pitcher and future Hall of Famer Hilton Smith was scheduled to pitch.12 Somewhat surprisingly, there was no mention of star rookie shortstop Jackie Robinson, who was having one of the finest seasons of any player in the league.13 While the official announcement would not be made until October, this was the first issue of the Monarchs local paper following the historic signing of Robinson by Branch Rickey and the Brooklyn Dodgers on August 25, becoming the first Black player in the twentieth century to have signed with a major league team.14, In the immediate wake of World War II, economic prosperity was permeating all levels of society (though admittedly distributed unequally) and Kansas Citys African American community was no exception. Count Basie and his orchestra, Cab Calloway, Billie Holliday, and Louis Armstrong, among many others, could frequently be found playing the many venues in this district.20, And of course, there were the Monarchs, arguably the greatest team of the Negro League era and perhaps one of the finest clubs in baseball history. 2. Robinson crosses home plate after hitting a three-run home run for the Montreal Royals in 1946. 3 Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York: Random House, 2008), 17779. [P]laying for the Monarchs in the late thirties and early forties, staying in the Streets Hotel at 18th and Paseo, and coming down to the dining room where Cab Calloway and Billie Holiday and Bojangles Robinson often ate. By this point the team had been playing out of Flint, Michigan for several seasons, only keeping the name as a source of revenue. All these years, these guys felt like they had to fight for somebody to even listen to them. After retiring, Robinson became an executive for the Chock Full o'Nuts coffee company. However, the inside fold of the circular contained stories of decorated Black service members from the area, making special note of how many of them had been commissioned officers. Baseball functioned as a critical component in the separate economy catering to Black consumers in the urban centers of both the North and South. Banchero, the No. Five Bills NFL Draft takeaways through Day 2: Ryan Bates on alert, the Course, some of them were having supper while we were having breakfast and vice-versa. This clearly happened in baseball, where the very best Black and Latino players went to the major leagues, forcing the Negro Leagues to try to compete with less talented players. Hearing racist taunts from fans and players prior to a game, Dodgers teammate Pee Wee Reese is said to have put his arm around Robinson on the field to indicate that he was accepted by those wearing a Brooklyn uniform. There was also no mention of the Monarchs, long a source of civic pride, who probably played their last game about this time.53. The result would be the collapse of the Negro Leagues (and many other Black-owned enterprises) which in conjunction with White Flight left many urban areas much less economically viable and with fewer opportunities for capitalization. 53 The exact date has proven impossible to track down after extensive research. Only the Ball Was White Guided Questions Flashcards | Quizlet While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. His older brother Mack, a silver medalist in track and field at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, inspired him to pursue his interest in athletics, and the younger Robinson ultimately earned varsity letters in baseball, basketball, football and track while at Muir. The change began in earnest in the early 1950s with the decline of the railroad industry, chiefly due to competition from automobile and air travel. In 1932, there were 103,872 Black owned businesses in the United States. 1930 in the Negro Leagues - BR Bullpen - Baseball-Reference.com How many home runs did he hit? Three years later, he died of a heart attack at the age of 53.
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