SPORTS | Striving for excellence
12 May 2008
Baseball Museum Honors Negro League Players
National designation raised status of Kansas City, Missouri, museum
Kansas City, Missouri -- In 1996, Congress elevated the status of a small museum in Kansas City, Missouri, by designating it America’s National Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, thus helping make it a national destination for anyone seeking to know how racial segregation affected what is known as "America's pastime."
The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum tells the story of baseball played by African Americans from the post-Civil War era to the early 1960s. More than 200 all-black professional teams played throughout the country at some point during those years. The teams became a major entertainment attraction for black populations and produced some of the greatest players in baseball history.
Kansas City’s contributions to baseball make it a fitting site for the museum. It was the home of the Monarchs, the longest-running team in Negro League history, playing from 1920 to 1930 and from 1937 to 1962. Monarch infielder Jackie Robinson made history in 1945 when he broke major league's baseball’s color barrier and signed with the all-white Brooklyn Dodgers. Kansas City is also where the Negro National League, one of the first all-black leagues, was formed.
The museum was founded in 1990 in a one-room office across the street from its current site in the 18th and Vine district, a historic center of African-American culture and one of the cradles of American jazz. Around the corner is the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) building where the National Negro League was formed in 1920 by a group of team owners led by Andrew "Rube" Foster, former player, manager and owner of the all-black Chicago American Giants team.
The current museum, which opened in 1997, is adjacent to the American Jazz Museum. (See “Kansas City Celebrates Its Legacy of Jazz.”)
African Americans began to settle in the Kansas City area soon after the Civil War of the mid-1860s. The area had some of the final stops of the "underground railroad," an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century slaves escaping bondage.
In the late 1880s, African Americans in the area and in other American cities began to play baseball on military, college and company teams with white players. However, state and local “Jim Crow” laws mandating “separate but equal” status soon forced them to form separate black teams and leagues.
Through displays and narrations, the museum describes life on the Negro leagues circuit. African-American players earned less than their white counterparts in the major leagues, faced the hardships of being turned away by hotels and restaurants as they traveled sometimes hundreds of kilometers between game towns and endured racism from some major league players, team owners and managers.
The recruitment of Jackie Robinson into the major league was a historic event in baseball and civil rights history, yet it led to the decline of the Negro leagues because the best black players were being recruited for the major leagues. The last of the Negro leagues ceased in the early 1960s.
The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum features many other legendary names. On the pitcher’s mound on the recreated ball field at the museum is a life-size bronze replica of pitcher Satchel Paige. In 1971, Paige was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, becoming the first player elected from the Negro leagues.
The museum also sports a statue of first baseman Buck O'Neil. In 1962, O’Neil was signed by the Chicago Cubs to be the first African-American coach in the major leagues.
More information about the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is available on the museum Web site.
See “Baseball Honors Jackie Robinson, Who Integrated Game in 1947” and “Black Americans Have Rich History in Professional Baseball.”
Also see Sports-Games We Play.
