Integration dooms Negro leagues

SJI students gather inside the Negro League 

Baseball Museum Field of Dreams

By Rhiannon Walker

Who would have thought that an organization getting what it had been fighting for would bring about its demise?

That’s what happened to the Negro leagues. In 1959 the last Major League Baseball team was integrated. The next year, the Negro leagues ceased to exist.

The Negro leagues started in response to the Jim Crow laws and racism that kept the majors almost completely segregated from the 1800s until the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson in 1945. Ending that was good, but the disbandment of the Negro leagues also meant meant that players not talented enough to move up to the majors no longer had an arena to play the game they love.

I enjoyed perusing the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City on Sunday and looking at the 300 autographed baseballs, seeing the jerseys and being on the field that is recreated inside the museum. I still wondered, though, about those less notable players.

Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball was too important an event for me to protest the end of the Negro leagues. Branch Rickey, the manager of the Dodgers, could not have brought Robinson up at a better time.

At the same time Robinson was leaving the Kansas City Monarchs, African Americans were calling for the government to end segregation in the United States, after World War II had highlighted the hypocrisy here. While blacks, including 50 players from the Negro Leagues, were fighting to end racism in Europe, in their own country they were being told to accept second-class status.

Robinson moving up was a huge step in social desegregation and could be considered the start of the Civil Rights Movement.

But I couldn’t help but think that while some black players saw their dream of playing in the majors fulfilled, many of their counterparts were left behind when the Negro leagues went away. No doubt it is true that with every major historical moment, there are plenty of nameless heroes who are forgotten. Robinson was the face of the integration process, but those lesser known players were the ones who helped drive it.

As I read about the accomplishments of Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson and Cool Papa Bell in the majors, I thought again about the players who just wanted to play. Throughout our tour, one of our instructors, Leon Carter, kept saying “Know your history!” The Negro leagues were something I’d known very little about.

As I reflected on the museum visit as we rode back to Columbia, I realized why I was most disturbed. I felt I should have known more about the importance of something that was so important in changing attitudes on segregation, and that helped create the world I live in today.