Playing for Keeps:
From Negro Leagues to Major Leagues, how black
baseball players broke down race barriers
By Ian Chant |
The players of the Homestead Grays, a Negro League team based near
Pittsburgh, where Fences is set. |
Taking place in Pittsburgh in the 1950s, August Wilson’s Fences explores a time in American
history when the lines of racial segregation still confined most African Americans to a
second-class citizenship. But cracks were beginning to appear in this wall. One of the earliest
places to break the color barrier was the world of professional sports, where black players
were finally being signed to major league teams after years of playing in segregated leagues.
Troy Maxson, the patriarch of the story of Fences, found his dreams of playing major league
baseball denied due to segregation, and the bitterness and mistrust this denial inspired never
left him, coloring his outlook on life. It also influences his turbulent relationship with his
relationship with his own son, who sees football as his ticket to a college education, a dream
that Troy refuses to believe in.
For the first half of the 20th century, some of the finest baseball players in the history
of the game were barred from playing in the major leagues because they were black, relegated
instead to the segregated Negro Leagues. But this hadn’t always been the case. In the wake of
the Civil War, American baseball was integrated to a small but significant degree. African
Americans played on teams throughout the north and Midwest, and players like Moses Walker had
notable careers with major teams. Segregated leagues existed, but they weren’t the only option
for black ballplayers until 1890, when an informal agreement not to sign black players was
reached by major league team owners. This arrangement, never put down on paper, would keep
baseball racially divided for more than half a century.
Between the 1880s and the 1960s, almost 200 teams played in dozens of different all-black
baseball leagues, arranged similarly to the many other professional leagues of the day. There
were barnstorming leagues where the teams had no home fields and played every game as visitors,
living on the road and playing game after game in a string of ever-changing rural ball fields.
There were minor leagues, where talented younger players developed their skills alongside
veterans whose best days were behind them. And there were major leagues, with their own stars,
followings, and storied franchises.
After decades of playing in loosely affiliated leagues, and with more and more talented
players coming through the ranks, the Negro National League became the most well-organized and
well-respected black major league. This success saw it followed quickly by the Negro Southern
League and the Negro American League, and from the 1920s to the 1940s, black baseball flourished.
Games featuring well-known franchises like the Pittsburgh Crawfords and Kansas City Monarchs and
star players like Satchel Paige and Buck Leonard packed major metropolitan stadiums like
Chicago’s Comiskey Park on a regular basis. The rosters of these teams held dozens of future
Hall of Fame athletes, many of whom would play in segregated leagues for the entirety of their
careers.
When Jackie Robinson played his first game as a Brooklyn Dodger in 1947, it marked the
beginning of integration in baseball—and the beginning of the end of Negro Leagues throughout
the United States. Some all-black leagues would remain until the 1960s, but as more and more
opportunities opened up, the most talented African American players were signed to lucrative
contracts playing for teams like the Dodgers and the Cleveland Indians, which became the first
American League team to sign African American players. These stars included seven-time All Star
Larry Doby and pitcher Satchel Paige, who in 1946 became the oldest rookie in the history of the
MLB, starting his first game for the St. Louis Browns at the age of 42.
Between 1947 and 1952, the number of African Americans playing in the MLB soared to nearly
200. But while the money was better and the stadiums bigger, life in the majors was hardly easy
for the first generation of black major leaguers, who, despite their often stellar contributions
on the field, were badly abused and harassed by fans.
More than six decades after integration, the absence of players like Josh Gibson, Satchel
Paige, Buck O’Neil, and others from major league rosters taints the legacy of that era in a way
that can never be undone, leaving unanswered questions about not only the careers these players
could have had, but the impact they would have had on the league. But compared to other
institutions, baseball’s legacy of segregation is, at least, a brief one. The sport became
racially integrated prior to the US military and public schools, and many historians now see early
integration on the baseball field as a crucial step in the larger civil rights movement.
