Co-owner and business manager of the Negro National League’s Newark Eagles Effa Manley, was a staunch supporter of the league. She was an enthusiast champion of civil rights and was not afraid to knocked heads with baseball’s Branch Rickey, Bill Veeck, and Jackie Robinson.
Baseball executive extraordinaire Effa Manley and her husband Abe Manley started the Eagles team in Brooklyn in 1935, naming it after the local newspaper. Effa was born March 27, 1897, in Philadelphia, to an interracial family. Effa believed her mother’s husband, Benjamin Brooks, a Black man, was her father. It was when she was a teenager her mother Bertha Ford Brooks felt compelled to tell her the truth of her illegitimate parentage. Brooks revealed to her daughter that she had had an affair with her White employer, John Marcus Bishop, and she was the result. Brooks told her on multiple occasions that she was White. Effa's complexion, which was olive toned, allowed her to mix fairly easily with Blacks. Throughout her life and career, people who met her assumed she was Black. While growing up in Philadelphia, Manley attended Newton Grammar School but eventually transferred to William Penn Central High School.
After graduation from William Penn in 1916, Effa Brooks moved to New York City, New York where she lived in Harlem working in a Millinery in Manhattan in a position she likely secured by presenting herself as a White woman. In 1920, Manley met her first husband, George Bush, a chauffeur. She would take the subway downtown as a white woman, and return to Harlem as a Black one. They later divorced. In 1932, Manley met her second husband, Abraham Manley, at one of the New York Yankees home game of the 1932 World Series. Abe was an avid baseball fan, particularly of Philadelphia's Hilldale squad. The couple married a year later June 15, 1933. Abe Manley worked as a numbers gambling kingpin. After their marriage, the couple moved to the Sugar Hill area of Harlem.
On November 13th of 1934, the National Negro League (NNL) owners awarded Abe a franchise, the Brooklyn Eagles. The Eagles played in the Brooklyn Dodger's Ebbets Field, but moved the franchise after acquiring a semi-pro team based in Newark, as settlement of the owner’s $500 debt to Abe. The Eagles players included Leon Day, Rap Dixon, and Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe. On their first Opening Day as the Eagles’ owners -Saturday, May 11, 1935- Effa brought in New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia to throw out the first pitch. The team ended the season in sixth place of eight teams. In 1936, they purchased the Newark Dodgers franchise and moved the Eagles to Newark. Abe and Effa co-owned the Eagles franchise, but it was Effa who would soon oversee the day-to-day management of the team, while Abe tended to recruitment. Team management was left to Effa. Manley was known as a players' advocate.
"I was surprised even myself with my rapid progress in absorbing the lesson so vital to the successful operation of a modern day baseball organization," she modestly marveled. Manley recognized that her team was a community resource. Said former Eagles star Max Manning: "The Eagles were to (Black) Newark what the Dodgers were to Brooklyn." Effa Manley excelled in a male-monopolized role. Manley was directly responsible for many of the everyday operations for the Eagles, including mapping out playing schedules, booking players’ travel arrangements, negotiating player contracts, and publicizing the games. It was Effa who kept the team running smoothly week after week. The Manleys worked to improve the management of the Negro National League.
In March 1936, the owners elected Abe Manley vice president and the next year as treasurer. Initially, Effa worked behind the scenes with Abe, but Effa seems to have handled the transactions. It was she that completed much of his work for the league. She moved into a more active and public role. At the owners meeting in January 1937 in Philadelphia she suggested changes for how to improve the league. Like Abe, she suggested that the league operate more formally. She had had no formal training in business administration, and women executives in any American business were scarce. But once in the co-owner position, her natural talents rose to the fore. The other owners may have chafed at this, but they did respect her financial abilities and strength.
Effa was active in the Civil Rights Movement and a social activist. She used her position to work for the betterment of Black people. As part of her work for the Citizens' League for Fair Play, Manley organized a 1934 boycott of stores that refused to hire Black sales clerks. Those picketing the store carried signs that said, “We Won’t Shop Where We Can’t Work.” After six weeks, the owners of the store (Blumstein's Department Store) gave in. By the end of 1935 the store owner of some 300 stores agreed to hire Black woman as sales clerks. Manley was also an officer of the Edgecombe Sanitarium Renaissance Committee and the Children's Camp Committee of New York. She believed that African-Americans had great untapped potential. The Black race "does not know its own strength," said Manley in 1936, "and when it begins to realize what really fine things the race is capable of doing it will show rapid progress."
In 1937 Effa turned to raising funds for the victims of flooding in the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys. She was also treasurer of the New Jersey National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Her work for civil rights was also on the baseball diamond. In 1939, Manley held an “Anti-Lynching” campaign at the Eagles’ Ruppert Stadium, where stadium ushers sold buttons and wore sashes that said “Stop Lynching” to support efforts to pass federal anti-lynching legislation. The start of World War II saw many changes in professional baseball. Effa supported the war effort through her work as a local warden for the Newark Defense Council, for the Price Control Board. Once she invited the entire 372nd Infantry Regiment, to attend an Eagles game as her guests. She made sure that the soldiers at Fort Dix had entertainment, paying for a bus to transport performers there.
Manley helped out with the NAACP's Crusade for Liberty, and at one point pinned a campaign button on Newark's deputy mayor. She also helped the federal government, as a member of the gas-rationing committee that decided on special exemptions for hardship cases. She became secretary and treasurer of the Women’s Volunteer War Service Committee. At a 1946 Eagles game, Manley collected donations from fans and used them to cover lawyers’ fees for Black people wrongly accused of murder in Tennessee. Among those lawyers was Thurgood Marshall. Manley clearly sought to use her co-owner status as a platform for positive change. In 1946, it took seven games for the Newark Eagles to defeat the Kansas City Monarchs to win the Negro League World Series in 1946.
Managed by James “Biz” Mackey for the second time, the 1946 team ended the season with a record of 56-24-3. The home attendance for the Eagles was their best ever at 120,292 and the Manleys’ profit for the season was $25,000. She was both fiscally responsible and ambitious when the time was right, using $15,000 of the Eagles’ 1946 Negro League World Series winnings to purchase a new air-conditioned team bus. The Manleys looked out for the well-being of their squad. Some players remembered them as tightwads, but Effa always claimed that she went a long way to promote the careers of her athletes. Between 1935 and 1948, the team included three other future Hall of Famers, Ray Dandridge, Mule Suttles, and Willie Wells.
Although the Eagles won the championship in 1946, the major changes in Negro League and Major League baseball already underway would undercut their glory. The 1947 season saw a major drop in attendance for the Eagles and a reduction in revenue for the Abe and Effa Manley. That same season, Jackie Robinson broke the color line. Soon after Effa Manley lost the services of Larry Doby, Monte Irvin, and Don Newcombe. At first, Effa cheered these developments as evidence of racial progress. Indeed, she was a member of the Citizens Committee to Get Negroes into the Big Leagues, and in 1943 had urged some sort of plan to make the Negro Leagues a farm system for the White majors. Manley was critical of Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey, who signed Jackie Robinson to a minor league contract in 1946. After Rickey successfully recruited pitcher Don Newcombe away from Newark and convinced him to join the Dodgers, Manley took action. She wrote letters to Rickey asking him to meet with her. Mr. Branch Rickey did not respond.
But as Rickey's aggressive posture mounted, she reached a different opinion. She complained about his recruiting tactics and privately claimed that he had "raped" the Negro Leagues. Manley fought tirelessly to secure fair compensation for Negro League players and teams when Negro League stars began integrating Major League Baseball. Effa Manley continued to fight for just compensation and speak out against the raiding of Negro League teams without reparation. When Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck called Manley in 1947, inquiring about Larry Doby, he offered $10,000. After negotiations, they agreed to a deal that ultimately paid the Manleys $15,000 in exchange for Doby, who became the first Black player in the American League. The deal established a precedent, and Major League owners then paid an average of $5,000 for each Negro Leaguer they signed. The Eagles became an institution among the Black residents of Newark and one of the most powerful Black ball clubs in the country until the decline of the Negro Leagues after 1947.
Despite her efforts, after the 1948 season, the Manleys disbanded the Eagles. They sold the club to W.H. Young, a dentist from Memphis, Tennessee, who agreed to own the contracts of the players. That same year the Negro National League merged its remaining teams with the Negro American League. The last act the Manleys oversaw as owners of the Eagles include the sale of Monte Irvin’s contract to the New York Giants. The Giants paid her $5,000, which Manley considered minuscule for such a talented player as Monte, who contributed mightily to two Giant pennants and a World Series championship. In 1948, Manley squared off with none other than Jackie Robinson over the quality of Negro League baseball, after his remarks in Ebony, titled "What's Wrong with Negro Baseball?", which Robinson attacked the Negro Leagues and their owners. In an article in the August 1948 Our World, she argued that an apology was due to "the race that nurtured him" and the teams that developed his talent. Manley viewed Robinson's comments as "half-baked statements".
The Negro American League lost six teams and lurched along, with only four teams by 1953, all the way to its ultimate demise in 1960. In 1952, Abe Manley died. Effa moved back to Philadelphia to be near her family in 1955, but soon moved to Los Angeles, hoping to bring them along. Still only in her 50s, she married a musician named Charles Alexander, an old boyfriend, although the marriage lasted only a year. For the most part, she stayed away from baseball, still maintaining a grudge against the Dodgers. In 1957 she wrote to Walter O’Malley, owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, suggesting that the Dodgers pay each remaining Negro American League team for a first option on player contracts. O’Malley and general manager Buzzie Bavasi, apparently did not respond.
In the 1970s, Effa participated in the effort to name a field after former Negro Leaguer Chet Brewer, who managed a local baseball program for boys. Manley was determined to be a progressive figure in the game of baseball. She pressured Fred Claire, the Dodgers publicity director, to recognize Negro League players, and also supported efforts to include them in the Hall of Fame. In her later years, however, Manley made many spirited efforts to remind people of the glory of the Negro Leagues. During 1976 she published "Negro Baseball ... before Integration," which listed 73 players she felt were qualified for the Hall of Fame. In 1985, the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, NY, unveiled a new exhibit on Negro League baseball. The display prominently featured Effa Manley. Years later, Effa Manley was inducted as the first woman into the Hall of Fame and remains the sole woman in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Her influence extended beyond baseball. She was a true inspiration for women in baseball, an active member of the Civil Rights movement, and a preserver of the Negro League legacy. Her health had deteriorated by 1980, and she moved into a rest home operated by former Negro League catcher Quincy Trouppe. In the spring of 1981 she died of a heart attack on April 16. She had the skills, smarts, and drive to succeed, combined with immense passion for the game that extended far beyond her years as an owner. Furthermore, she achieved as much, if not more than many of her male counterparts, and she did so as the lone woman in a male-dominated industry. She was a proponent of civil rights, ahead of her time. Her actions were momentous other Civil Rights leaders, and in the process she made history. She’s a woman who got things done, not only advocating for the Negro Leagues as an owner but to also preserve the history of the Negro Leagues for generations An extraordinary woman named Effa Manley helped to build a baseball dynasty and was indeed the lady in charge.