Negro League Baseball

The Early Years

A number of amateur teams, such as the Colored Union Club of Brooklyn and the Pythian Club of Philadelphia, were formed in the 1860s, and the New York Cuban Giants, the first salaried Black baseball team, was established in 1885. Beginning with this period, barnstorming was the way of life for Black baseball players. These early teams were located where players could find day jobs. Such industrial towns as Portsmouth, Virginia (Firefighters), and Baltimore, Maryland (Stars), were home to players who worked in railroad shops while playing for semi-pro teams. The Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., area had the “Blue Ribbons” industrial league team, which eventually came to be known as the “Homestead Grays.” The early days of barnstorming also included the “All-American Black Tourists,” who traveled on their own railroad car; each of their games was preceded by an elaborate street parade.

While institutional-level measures were established for segregation in baseball, some individual players managed to integrate even in earlier days. For example, Bud Fowler, who is believed to be the first Black professional baseball player, first signed with a White team in New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1872. By 1887, [Page 974]twenty Black players were known to be playing with White teams. These were mostly in small leagues, but they included some historically significant figures. By and large, however, most White players did not feel comfortable playing together with Blacks.

Homestead Grays (1913). The Negro League champion Homestead Grays began as an industrial league team located in the mill town of Homestead, Pennsylvania. This team and others like it produced a number of players whose abilities were believed to be comparable to those of the White players in major-league baseball against whom they were prohibited from competing.

Source: Public domain.

At the time, the media praised these Black ballplayers, allowing them to gain some acceptance in organized baseball, while simultaneously blaming their miscues on the color of their skin. Some mainstream sports publications, like the Sporting News, recognized as early as 1889 the injustice in baseball toward Blacks and forecast a rough road ahead. In fact, by 1897, a year after Plessy v. Ferguson made separate-but-equal facilities constitutional, there were no Blacks in White baseball.

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