Early History
In the early history of Black baseball, Black players began to play baseball in the late 1800s on military teams, college teams, and company teams. They eventually found their way to professional teams with White players. Most of these players fell victim to regional prejudices and an unofficial color ban after brief stays with White teams, but some notable exceptions built long and solid careers in White professional baseball. The first professional Black baseball team in the US. was the Cuban Giants, formed in 1885, and played out of Trenton, New Jersey. These early teams mostly functioned as independent franchises
A select few players including Moses Fleetwood Walker eventually integrated professional baseball when they signed to play on predominately White teams. In 1884, catcher Moses Fleetwood Walker of the Toledo Blue Stockings became the first African American to play in what was then considered a major league. However, Walker and fellow Black Americans often faced outright hostility and physical intimidation from both teammates and opponents. In one case, 19th-century superstar Cap Anson of the Chicago White Stockings threatened to cancel a game with Toledo if Walker was in the lineup.
On July 21, 1886, the Trenton-based Cuban Giants defeated the Cincinnati Red Stockings to become the first Black team to defeat a major league baseball squad. After the 1891 season, the players that remained on the roster of what was once the Cuban Giants were signed by the New York Gorhams. The Gorhams were an integrated club, and that club would cease to exist, until a resurgence five years later. By the 1890s, Black players were increasingly facing exclusion from organized baseball and finding more opportunities with traveling teams.
The first league, the National Colored Base Ball League, was organized strictly as a minor league but failed in 1887 after only two weeks lowing to low attendance. Black teams barnstormed around the country (and internationally) to play baseball. Although professional White leagues had become segregated, Black teams competed not only against each other but also against local White teams of all levels in non-league games. The Page Fence Giants would become one of the great early teams in Black baseball. Some sources say they played 156 games, winning 118 their first year. The Page Fence Giants were founded September 20th, 1894, by Bud Fowler and Grant "Home Run" Johnson.
Based in Adrian, Michigan, the team was sponsored by the Page Woven Wire Fence Company. Johnson served as captain, while Fowler was the playing manager. Team members were selected on the basis of both ability and character. Traveling throughout the United States and Canada in a special railroad coach, the team provided a combination of quality baseball and show business. In 1896, the second year of existence, the Page Fence Giants won the Colored Championship when they defeated the East's top team, the Cuban Giants. During the next two seasons the team continued its success on the baseball diamond, but suffered financial reverses. They disbanded after only four full seasons, but their legacy as a pioneering, history-making ball club endures.
Some baseball owners and managers of major league teams tried to hire Blacks by describing the players as Hispanic or Native American. In 1901, John McGraw, manager of the Baltimore Orioles, attempted to get Black second baseman Charlie Grant into the game by calling him a Cherokee named Tokohama. The majority of owners and managers thwarted efforts like this. The baseball establishment also frowned on interracial barnstorming. White players were eventually banned from wearing their major league uniforms in these games. In many parts of Latin America, professional baseball was not segregated. Many Blacks played baseball there in the winter as well as in Negro Leagues in the summer.
The dawn of the twentieth century brought new growth to Black teams across the country. By the end of World War I, it had become the most popular entertainment for urban Black populations throughout the nation. With the Great Migration, many Blacks moved from the South to the more industrialized areas in the North. Urban centers saw the rise of teams such as the Chicago American Giants, the Indianapolis ABCs, and the Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City. Rube Foster, of Calvert, Texas "the Father of the Negro Leagues", knew the time was right for a league of their own. He brought together the heads of other Midwestern Black teams and created the Negro National League on Feb. 13 1920.
Rube Foster made a name for himself as a player and then a manager. A dominant pitcher, he won 44 games in a row for the Philadelphia Cuban X-Giants in 1902 and began a legendary career that inspired fans to call him the “Black Christy Mathewson.” Foster had been Negro baseball’s best pitcher in the early years of the 20th century and then its best-known manager and promoter. The principal Negro leagues were the Negro National League (1920–31, 1933–48), the Eastern Colored League (1923–28), and the Negro American League (1937–60). Rube Foster, the owner and manager of the Chicago American Giants, made sure that his team were known all over the country through their winter tours to California and Florida.
The original Negro National League teams were Foster’s Chicago American Giants, the Indianapolis ABCs, Chicago Giants, Kansas City (Missouri) Monarchs, Detroit Stars, St. Louis Giants, Dayton (Ohio) Marcos, and the Cuban Stars, who had no home city. These were cities with significant Black populations and abundant baseball talent. Before the NNL all-Black teams were unorganized, insufficiently compensated, and had a difficult time reserving stadiums for games. The NNL provided the infrastructure to correct those problems. League players were now able to make good money and play in often Black-owned stadiums on a regular schedule. The NNL adopted the slogan, “We Are the Ship, All Else the Sea” as a pledge to set its own course.
Many teams discovered financial success coming out of the gate. Foster’s American Giants drew nearly 200,000 spectators during the 1921 season. Black baseball was alive and thriving. With the high level of play and professionalism exhibited by the players, their games drew crowds into the thousands in cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Kansas City. Foster continued to manage his Chicago club and serve as NNL president until a nervous breakdown led to his retirement in 1926. Without his leadership and vision, the NNL began to falter. He passed away in 1930, fifty-one years before his election to the Hall of Fame.
The establishment of the NNL inspired two other Negro leagues to form across the country. In December 1923 another Black major league with six teams was established in eastern cities. They were known as the Eastern Colored League (ECL) organized by Ed Bolden. Members were the Brooklyn Royal Giants, Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City, Baltimore Black Sox, Hillsdale Club of Philadelphia, and the Cuban Stars and Lincoln Giants of New York City. Many of these teams were tenants of teams in the major and minor leagues and were obligated to use the parks when the owners were playing out of town and to vacate them when their hosts returned.
From 1924 through 1927, the NNL and ECL champions met in a Negro World Series. The ECL succumbed to financial weakness in the spring of 1928. After the Eastern Colored League folded, a new eastern league, the American Negro League, was formed to replace it in 1929. The makeup of the new ANL was nearly the same as the Eastern Colored League, the exception being that the Homestead Grays. They joined in place of the now-defunct Brooklyn Royal Giants. The ANL lasted just one season. Only strong independent clubs were able to survive the hard economic turn that affected the country, such as the Kansas City Monarchs, one of the original eight of the Negro National League.
The NNL, stumbled on until 1931 before disbanding as the Great Depression deepened and left most fans with empty pockets. In 1932, another Black circuit, called the East-West League, was started for eastern teams by Cumberland W. Posey, veteran manager of the Homestead Grays. The NNL returned in 1933 and to boost attendance, the NNL and SNL introduced the East-West All Star Game which would become Black baseball’s biggest annual attraction along with the League’s World Series games. During this time, strong clubs would build teams that had potential to beat the teams in the major leagues with new players and tactics that many have never seen before.