Black Baseball's National Showcase


Book Description

A lively illustrated introduction to the Negro League equivalent of the All-Star Game discusses the history of the games, as well as the colorful cast of promoters, gamblers, and hucksters who made it happen. Original.




Black Baseball in Chicago


Book Description

When the Negro National League was formed in Kansas City in 1920, a new chapter in sports history began. The city of Chicago played no small part in the creation and content of this historic chapter. Black Baseball in Chicago chronicles the history of the teams and players that spent time in the "Windy City." In 1911, the Chicago American Giants were born. This team drew some of the best players from the league, including such legendary stars as Bruce Petway, Pete Hill, Grant "Home Run" Johnson, and future hall-of-famer John Henry "Pop" Lloyd. On any given Sunday afternoon, the Chicago American Giants games often outdrew those of the cross-town rivals, the White Sox and the Cubs.




The Black Press and Black Baseball, 1915-1955


Book Description

This book brings into dramatic relief the dilemma, or devil's bargain, that faced the black press in first building up black baseball, then crusading for the sport's integration and, as a result of that largely successful campaign, ultimately encouraging and even ensuring the demise of those same black leagues. Taking a thematic approach, this book focuses each of its chapters on a singular event or phenomenon from and for each decade of the period covered, a period that spans the roughly four decades of the black leagues' existence. Thus, the book drills down on a handful of representative events and phenomena to present a history of the black press and black baseball. Themes include the many ways team owners and the weekly newspapers' editors and writers worked in concert to build up the leagues, the paired fortunes of black players and black writers, the desperation to save the Negro leagues when it became clear integration threatened their survival, and finally the black press’s response to the residues of baseball's decades of segregation.




They Played for the Love of the Game


Book Description

A century before Kirby Puckett led the Minnesota Twins to World Series championships, Minnesota was home to countless talented African American baseball players, yet few of them are known to fans today. During the many decades that Major League Baseball and its affiliates imposed a strict policy of segregation, black ballplayers in Minnesota were relegated to a haphazard array of semipro leagues, barnstorming clubs, and loose organizations of all-black teams—many of which are lost to history. They Played for the Love of the Game recovers that history by sharing stories of African American ballplayers in Minnesota, from the 1870s to the 1960s, through photos, artifacts, and spoken histories passed through the generations. Author Frank White’s own father was one of the top catchers in the Twin Cities in his day, a fact that White did not learn until late in life. While the stories tell of denial, hardship, and segregation, they are highlighted by athletes who persevered and were united by their love of the sport.




Black Baseball's Last Team Standing


Book Description

 The Birmingham Black Barons were a nationally known team in baseball's Negro leagues from 1920 through 1962. Among its storied players were Hall of Famers Satchel Paige, Willie Mays, and Mule Suttles. The Black Barons played in the final Negro Leagues World Series in 1948 and were a major drawing card when barnstorming throughout the United States and parts of Canada. This book chronicles the team's history and presents the only comprehensive roster of the hundreds of men who wore the Black Barons uniform.




Conspiracy of Silence


Book Description

The story behind the mainstream press’s efforts to preserve baseball’s color line and the efforts of Black and communist newspapers to end it.




J.L. Wilkinson and the Kansas City Monarchs


Book Description

Baseball pioneer J. L. Wilkinson (1878-1964) was the owner and founder, in 1920, of the famed Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues. The only white owner in the Negro National League (NNL), Wilkinson earned a reputation for treating players with fairness and respect. He began his career in Iowa as a player, later organizing a traveling women's team in 1908 and the multiracial All-Nations club in 1912. He led the Monarchs to two Negro Leagues World Series championships and numerous pennants in the NNL and the Negro American League. During the Depression he developed an ingenious portable lighting system for night games, credited with saving black baseball. He resurrected the career of legendary pitcher Satchel Paige in 1938 and in 1945 signed a rookie named Jackie Robinson to the Monarchs. Wilkinson was posthumously inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006, joining 14 Monarchs players.




Separate Games


Book Description

Winner of the 2017 NASSH Book Award for best edited collection. The hardening of racial lines during the first half of the twentieth century eliminated almost all African Americans from white organized sports, forcing black athletes to form their own teams, organizations, and events. This separate sporting culture, explored in the twelve essays included here, comprised much more than athletic competition; these “separate games” provided examples of black enterprise and black self-help and showed the importance of agency and the quest for racial uplift in a country fraught with racialist thinking and discrimination. The significance of this sporting culture is vividly showcased in the stories of the Cuban Giants baseball team, basketball’s New York Renaissance Five, the Tennessee State Tigerbelles track-and-field team, black college football’s Turkey Bowl Classic, car racing’s Gold and Glory Sweepstakes, Negro League Baseball’s East-West All-Star game, and many more. These teams, organizations, and events made up a vibrant national sporting complex that remained in existence until the integration of sports beginning in the late 1940s. Separate Games explores the fascinating ways sports helped bind the black community and illuminate race pride, business acumen, and organizational abilities.




The Day All the Stars Came Out


Book Description

This is a history of major league baseball's first All-Star game, originally conceived in 1933 as a one-time "Game of the Century" (including greats such as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Carl Hubbell and Lefty Grove) to lift the spirits of the nation and its people in the midst of the Great Depression. The game was so successful that it became a yearly event and an integral part of the baseball season. The work covers the game, from the Chicago Tribune's early advocacy for the contest through every play, and the later accomplishments of many of the individuals involved.




Black Barons of Birmingham


Book Description

A unique approach to the history of a Negro League team: The first half of this book covers the leagues and the players of the 1920s, the 1930s, and 1940 through 1947 (when Robinson broke the color barrier). The second half is devoted to the Black Barons of subsequent decades, the former Barons invited to tryout camps, others who were signed with minor league clubs, and the fortunate few who got their long-awaited chance in the majors.