Although Black players were competing at the highest skill level, they were barred from Major League Baseball because of race. As 1947 dawned, Negro League owners, enjoying steady attendance and presuming that looming integration was “likely to proceed slowly,” did not yet fear the worst. The Negro Leagues demise began with Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. The Black weekly press, particularly sports columnists Wendell Smith of the Pittsburgh Courier and Sam Lacy of the Baltimore Afro-American, kept up a steady drumbeat against the color line during the late 1930s and World War II.
The minor furor in the press over the continued exclusion of Blacks from Organized Baseball led to sham tryouts of Black players by the Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox. There were also expressions of interest in Blacks by other major league clubs. In 1942, former UCLA athletic star Jackie Robinson (a shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs) and another Black player named Nate Moreland were granted a cursory workout with the Chicago White Sox. The 1944 death of Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a strict segregationist, provided another opening.
Robinson and Brooklyn Dodger president Branch Rickey, a one-time big-league catcher and manager, were the courageous protagonists of the integration story, but neither was poised to champion the cause of the continuation of the Negro Leagues. Robinson had played one season in Kansas City in 1945 and had quickly soured on the experience. He was surprised by the lack of formal contracts, the lack of consistency and professionalism in umpiring and scorekeeping, the poor quality of buses and accommodations, and the drinking and late-night partying of his teammates.
Robinson later voiced his scathing critiques in a 1948 article for Ebony titled “What’s Wrong with Negro Baseball,” in which he scolded owners “to place more emphasis on the character and morals of the men they select” and less on “worrying so much about heavy schedules and getting in as many games as they can, regardless of the caliber of ball that is played.” Back in 1945, before Rickey came calling, Robinson declared his intentions to retire from baseball altogether. Rickey was no fan of the Negro Leagues either. He, too, disparaged Negro League owners as unprofessional and lamented their lack of centralized leadership. Branch Rickey, a one-time big-league catcher and manager, had put into motion a secret plan to find and sign a Black player.
Rickey wanted to start his own franchise, the Brooklyn Brown Dodgers, in an upstart all-Black United States League. This was likely primarily conceived to give cover to his scouts to start watching Black players. As it turned out, Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey was already scouting African Americans, ostensibly for a new Negro league but in reality for his major league team. He forged a secret arrangement with Robinson in August 1945, where he interviewed Robinson for three hours, during which he hectored, lectured, and tested the young athlete. Jackie Robinson, officially signed with the Dodgers minor league team Montreal Royals in 1946. He then sparred with the Monarchs over the terms of Robinson’s acquisition. “There is no Negro league as such, as far as I am concerned,” Rickey said, adding that the Negro Leagues “have no right to expect organized baseball to respect them.”
Thus the fate of the Negro Leagues was far from Robinson’s and Rickey’s minds in 1947. Nor did it appear to give pause to Black fans, who flocked to Ebbets Field and Dodgers road games at the expense of the teams they used to frequent. The very things that made Robinson’s debut season such a seismic success captivated Black fans and Black sportswriters all season long. In 1947 Robinson was promoted to the Dodgers, becoming the first African American player in the major leagues in 63 years, since Moses Fleetwood Walker played for the Toledo Blue Stockings in 1884. The Cleveland Indians soon after signed Larry Doby, a hard-hitting infielder from the Newark Eagles, making him the first African American player in the American League. Three more appeared in the majors by the end of the year. Other MLB teams began signing Black players as well, eventually draining top talent from Black teams.
By the fall of 1948, it was clear the Negro National League was on life support. Owners appealed to Black fans to return out of loyalty. They cut player salaries to limit their losses. They pursued minor-league affiliations with major-league clubs, but found few takers. In the midst of a tumultuous offseason, Negro Leagues owners reeled from the added impact of Robinson’s Ebony broadside in early 1948. “Robinson is where he is today because of organized colored baseball,” Newark Eagles owner Effa Manley blasted back. Manley called Robinson "ungrateful" and "more likely stupid" for attacking the very institution that nurtured his talent and provided his path to the Major Leagues.“ An apology is due the race which nurtured him – yes, the team and league which developed him.”
To complicate matters further, a number of White teams refused to honor Negro League contracts and pirated players outright without compensating Negro League team owners. Rickey, while gaining esteem among many African-Americans (and earning the animosity of others) for the signing of Robinson, paid the Monarchs nothing for Robinson’s contract, stating that Negro League contracts were not in accordance with the National Agreement that governed all affiliated baseball contracts and were therefore void. Teams began to sell their players for a fraction of their market value in order to recoup some of their investment rather than to take a total loss on a player who jumped his contract. Manley blasted Rickey for taking Negro League players without paying compensation.
Though the Negro American League continued on throughout the 1950s, it had lost the bulk of its talent and virtually all of its fan appeal. The successes of Black players like Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Monte Irvin, Hank Thompson and many others drew the attention of Black communities and drained the Negro Leagues of its fan base. As the pace of integration increased into the 1950s, the Negro League became the primary source of Black talent — with players like Henry Aaron and Ernie Banks plying their trade in the post-1948 Negro League and catching the attention of Major League scouts. The Negro National League official disbanded during a two-day meeting in Chicago on Nov. 29-30 in 1948. The Negro American League limped through to the late 1950s.
At the end of the 1950s only a handful of clubs remained in the Negro American League, and even then they played most of their games as barnstorming exhibitions. By 1952 there were 150 Black players in organized baseball, and the “cream of the crop” had been lured from Negro League rosters to the integrated minors and majors. During the four years immediately following Robinson’s debut with the Dodgers virtually all of the Negro League’s best talent had left the league for opportunities with Major League Baseball. Some Negro League players had grown too old to attract the attention of major league scouts. With this sudden and dramatic departure of talent, Black team owners witnessed a financially devastating decline in attendance at Negro League games.
The attention of Black fans had forever turned to the integrated major leagues, and the handwriting was on the wall for the Negro Leagues. Major league baseball was proving slow to change; as late as August 1953, only six of its 16 teams were fielding Black players. However, the historic accomplishments of young stars like Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Ernie Banks soon prompted organizations to change their ways. In 1959, the Red Sox became the last major league team to integrate with the addition of infielder Elijah “Pumpsie” Green. By the 1960s, the idea of the Negro Leagues was a relic on it’s last legs.
Major League Baseball benefited from talent cultivated in the Negro Leagues and on the sandlots that sustained the sport, especially in inner cities. But when those leagues crumbled, prospective Black pros were relegated to minor league teams, often in inhospitable, southern cities. With the signing of the Negro players, and the dismantling of the Negro League, it crippled and hurt the economy in those Black neighborhoods. Many Negro League regulars simply hung up their cleats or played in the Caribbean. Major League Baseball recognizes the Negro Leagues only from the Negro National League’s inception in 1920 until the end of the 1948 season, while the NAL did not formally cease operations until 1962. The reason that the cutoff comes so early comes partly from the demise of the Negro National League, and partly because of the man who led the charge to integrate baseball; Jackie Robinson.