The color line in American baseball excluded players of black African descent from Organized Baseball, or the major leagues and affiliated minor leagues, until Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers organization for the 1946 season. Racial segregation in professional baseball is sometimes called a gentlemen's agreement, meaning a tacit understanding, because there was no written policy at the highest level of baseball organization. Some leagues did rule against member clubs signing black players, however, as the color line was drawn during the 1880s and 1890s.
On the "other side" of the color line, many black baseball clubs were established and especially during the 1920s to 1940s there were several "Negro" or "Colored" Leagues in operation, which primarily featured those players barred from Organized Baseball. Some light-skinned Hispanic players, some Native Americans, and even native Hawaiians played white baseball during that period.
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Formal beginning of segregation followed the baseball season of 1867. On October 16, the Pennsylvania State Convention of Baseball in Harrisburg denied the colored Pythian Baseball Club.[1] Two months later the National Association of Base Ball Players decided to ban "any club including one or more colored persons." As baseball made the transition toward becoming a professional sport over the next decade, and the NABBP dissolved into competing organizations in 1871, professional players were no longer restricted by this rule and, for a short while – in 1878 and again in 1884 – African American players played professional baseball. Over time, they were slowly excluded more and more. As prominent players such as Cap Anson steadfastly refused to take the field with or against teams with African Americans on the roster, it became informally accepted that African Americans were not to participate in Major League Baseball.
Still after 1871, formal bans existed only in minor league baseball. In 1884 in response to the Toledo Blue Stockings of the American Association having Moses Fleetwood Walker, the first black man to play major league baseball, on their roster Cap Anson of the Chicago White Stockings, then one of the most beloved and respected players at the time, threatened to not play in an exhibition game with them if Walker played. Anson backed down when he learned that he would forfeit a day's salary if he did so. A few years later in 1887 Anson, in response to the possibility of the Newark Little Giants hiring the African American pitcher George Stovey, threatened not to play any club who had a black man on their roster.[2]
In part due to Anson's influence and of those of other white players, on July 14, 1887, the directors of the International League voted to prohibit the signing of additional black players – although blacks under contract, like Frank Grant of the Buffalo Bisons and Fleet Walker of the Syracuse franchise, could remain with their teams.[3] Grant and Walker stayed through the 1888 season.
Shortly thereafter, the American Association and the National League both unofficially banned African-American players, making the adoption of racism in baseball complete.[3]
By 1890, the International League was all white, as it would remain until 1946 when Jackie Robinson played for the Montreal Royals.[4]
While professional baseball was regarded as a strictly whites-only affair, in fact the racial color bar was directed against blacks exclusively. Other races were allowed to play in professional white baseball. One example was Charles Albert Bender, a star pitcher for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1910. Bender was the son of a Chippewa Indian mother and a German father and had the inevitable nickname "Chief" from the white players.[5] They apparently voiced no visceral objection to him for being not being white and in fact he was well liked and respected by his teammates and opponents.
As a result of this exclusive treatment of blacks, deceptive tactics were used by managers to sign African Americans, including several attempts, with the player's acquiescence, to sign players who they knew full well were African American as Native Americans despite the ban.
In 1901, John McGraw, manager of the American League Baltimore Orioles, tried to add Charlie Grant to the roster as his second baseman. He tried to get around the Gentleman's Agreement by trying to pass him as a Cherokee Indian named Charlie Tokohama. Grant went along with the charade. However in Chicago Grant's African American friends who came to see him try out gave him away and Grant never got an opportunity to play ball in the big leagues.[6]
On May 28, 1916, British Columbian Jimmy Claxton temporarily broke the professional baseball color barrier when he played two games for the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League. Claxton was introduced to the team owner by a part-Native-American friend as a fellow member of an Oklahoma tribe. The Zee-Nut candy company rushed out a baseball card for Claxton.[5] However, within a week, a friend of Claxton revealed that he had both Negro and Native American ancestors, and Claxton was promptly fired.[3] It would be nearly thirty more years before another black man-at least one known to be black-played organized white baseball.
There possibly were attempts to have people of African descent be signed as Hispanics. One possible attempt may have occurred in 1911 when the Cincinnati Reds signed two light-skinned players from Cuba, Armando Marsans and Rafael Almeida. Both of them had played "Negro Baseball", barnstorming as members of the integrated All Cubans. When questions arose about them playing the white man's game, the Cincinnati managers assured the public that "...they were as pure white as Castile soap."[5]
The African American newspaper The New York Age had this to say about the signings:
"Now that the first shock is over, it will not be surprising to see a Cuban a few shades darker breaking into the professional ranks. It would then be easier for colored players who are citizens of this country to get into fast company."[5]
Nonetheless, regardless of the skin tone of the Cuban players, at the very least blacks of the United States were still banned from white baseball albeit if Marsans and Almeida were in fact black but light skinned then their successful breaking of the color barrier has gone unheralded.
The Negro National League was founded in 1920 by Rube Foster, independent of Organized Baseball's National Commission (1903–1920). The NNL survived through 1931, primarily in the midwest, accompanied by the major Eastern Colored League for several seasons to 1928. "National" and "American" Negro leagues were established in 1933 and 1937 which persisted until integration. The Negro Southern League operated consecutively from 1920, usually at a lower level. None of them, nor any integrated teams, were members of Organized Baseball, the system led by Commissioner Landis from 1921. Rather, until 1946 professional baseball in the United States was played in two racially segregated league systems, one on each side of the so-called color line. Much of that time there were two high-level "Negro major leagues" with a championship playoff or all-star game, as between the white major leagues.
During his 1921–1944 tenure as the first baseball commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis has been alleged to have been particularly determined to maintain the segregation. It is possible that he was guided by his background as a federal judge, and specifically by the then-existing constitutional doctrine of "separate but equal" institutions (see Plessy v. Ferguson). He himself maintained for many years that black players could not be integrated into the major leagues without heavily compensating the owners of Negro league teams for what would likely result in the loss of their investments. In addition, integration at the major league level would likely have necessitated integrating the minor leagues, which were much more heavily distributed through the rural U.S. South and Midwest.
Although Landis had served an important role in helping to restore the integrity of the game after the 1919 World Series scandal, his unyielding stance on the subject of baseball's color line was an impediment. His death in late 1944 was opportune, as it resulted in the appointment of a new Commissioner, Happy Chandler, who was much more open to integration than Landis was.
From the purely operational viewpoint, Landis' predictions on the matter would prove to be correct. The eventual integration of baseball spelled the demise of the Negro leagues, and integration of the southern minor leagues was a difficult challenge.
Baseball executive Bill Veeck claimed that in 1943, he tried to buy the then-moribund Philadelphia Phillies and stock them with Negro league stars. Veeck maintained for years that when Landis got wind of his plans, he and National League president Ford Frick scuttled it in favor of another bid by William B. Cox.
In his autobiography, Veeck, as in Wreck, in which he discussed his abortive attempt to buy the Phillies, Veeck also stated that he wanted to hire black players for the simple reason that in his opinion the best black athletes "can run faster and jump higher" than the best white athletes.[7]
Veeck realized that there was no actual rule against integration; it was just an unwritten policy, a "Gentlemen's Agreement". Veeck stated that Landis and Frick prevented him from buying and thus integrating the Phillies, on various grounds.
Around 1945, Branch Rickey, General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, held tryouts of black players, under the cover story of forming a new team called the "Brooklyn Brown Dodgers". The Dodgers were, in fact, looking for the right man to break the color line. Rickey had an advantage in that he was already an employee of the Dodgers. Also, Landis had died by this time and new commissioner Happy Chandler was more supportive of integrating the major leagues. However, Veeck's story is arguably false based on press accounts of the time; notably, Philadelphia's black press never mentioned anything about a Veeck bid.[8]
The color line was breached when Rickey, with Chandler's support, signed the African American player Jackie Robinson in October 1945, intending him to play for the Dodgers. Chandler later wrote in his biography that although he risked losing his job as commissioner, he could not in good conscience tell blacks they couldn't play with whites when they'd just fought alongside them in World War II.
After a year in the minor leagues with the Dodgers' top minor-league affiliate, the Montreal Royals of the International League, Robinson was called up to the Dodgers in 1947. He endured epithets and death threats and got off to a slow start. However, his athleticism and skill earned him the first ever Rookie of the Year award, which is now named in his honor.
Less well-known was Larry Doby, who signed with Bill Veeck's Cleveland Indians that same year to become the American League's first African American player. Doby, a more low-key figure than Robinson, suffered many of the same indignities that Robinson did, albeit with less press coverage. Both men were ultimately elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on the merits of their play. Due to their success, teams gradually integrated African Americans on their rosters.
Prior to the integration of the major leagues, the Brooklyn Dodgers led the integration of the minor leagues. Jackie Robinson and Johnny Wright were assigned to Montreal, but also that season Don Newcombe and Roy Campanella became members of the Nashua Dodgers in the class-B New England League. Nashua was the first minor-league team based in the United States to integrate its roster after 1898. Subsequently that season, the Pawtucket Slaters, the Boston Braves' New England League franchise, also integrated its roster, as did Brooklyn's class-C franchise in Trois-Rivières, Quebec. With one exception, the rest of the minor leagues would slowly integrate as well, including those based in the southern United States. The Carolina League, for example, integrated in 1951 when the Danville Leafs signed Percy Miller Jr. to their team.
The exception was the Class AA Southern Association. Founded in 1901 and based in the Deep South, it never yielded to integration. As a result, its major-league parent clubs were forced to field all-white teams during the 1950s, a period when African Americans and Latin American players of African descent were beginning to dominate baseball. By the end of the 1950s, the SA also was boycotted by civil rights leaders. The Association finally ceased operation after the 1961 season, still a bastion of segregation. Its member teams joined the International, Sally and Texas leagues, which were all racially integrated.
The Boston Red Sox were the last major league team to integrate,[9] due to the steadfast resistance provided by owner Tom Yawkey. The Red Sox had refused to consider signing Jackie Robinson after a brief tryout at Fenway Park in April 1945.[9] Boston city councilor Isadore Muchnick spurred that tryout by threatening to revoke the team's exemption from Sunday blue laws.
The segregation policy was enforced by Yawkey's general managers: Eddie Collins (through 1947), Joe Cronin (1948–58), and Mike "Pinky" Higgins (field manager 1955–59 and 1960–62, special assistant to the owner 1960, and general manager 1963–65). A strong team in the late 1940s, the Red Sox finished perpetually in the second division during the early and mid-1960s, the implication being that Boston shut itself off from the expanded talent pool due to its segregation policy.
When integration did come, it may have been half-hearted. The new General Manager Bucky Harris promoted Pumpsie Green from Boston's AAA farm club in July 1959, but Green did not become a regular player, though Green's minor league record suggests he probably was no better than a fourth outfielder. Earl Wilson began a nearly five year run as a regular in the Red Sox' rotation beginning 1962. Felix Mantilla was slowly promoted from utility infielder to regular second baseman from '63-'65. By 1966, semi-dark skinned Jose Santiago had joined Wilson in the rotation and Boston had very dark skinned George Scott, George Smith, and Joe Foy in their regular line-up.
After a dismal ninth-place finish in 1966, General Manager Dick O'Connell promoted Dick Williams, manager of the club's Triple-A Toronto affiliate, to lead the major league team. Williams brought along many of his minor league players, some of whom were black. The Red Sox went on to win the "Impossible Dream" pennant and battle the fully integrated St. Louis Cardinals for seven games in the 1967 World Series. African-American Reggie Smith finished second for the "Rookie of the Year"; George Scott had been third in 1966.
After Williams was fired in 1969, any commitment to a fielding a color-blind team began to slip. Perennially in need of pitching, the Red Sox made a habit of trading away its top black players: Scott went to the Milwaukee Brewers, where he became a home run champion; Smith was peddled to the Cardinals and later became a top star with the Los Angeles Dodgers. In the mid-1970s, future home run champion Ben Oglivie was traded to Detroit (he became a star in Milwaukee); future star first-baseman Cecil Cooper was traded directly to Milwaukee to bring back an aging Scott.
Tom Yawkey died in 1976 and Dick O'Connell failed in his efforts to acquire the team. Tom's widow Jean Yawkey eventually sold to Haywood Sullivan and former team trainer Edward "Buddy" LeRoux, even though they did not have enough funds to run a top franchise in the dawning era of free agency. By the early 1980s, the Red Sox were almost bereft of African Americans not only on the field, but even in the minor leagues. In 1983, the first losing season since 1966, only one player on the major league roster was black, the perennial star Jim Rice. As George Scott noted in a Boston Globe article on the team's apparent racism, not having many black players on the team meant that there was a dearth of social as well as psychological help for a black player, particularly in a city racked by racial turmoil. Other professional sports teams in Boston were integration leaders, however.[10]
The institutional racism of the Red Sox had become a public scandal in New England. Most journalists laid the blame on owner Sullivan, a Southerner. Yawkey has frequently been labeled a Southerner in spirit. In fact, he was a Michigan-born, New York-bred timber baron who had been friends with the overt racist Ty Cobb as a young man and maintained an estate in South Carolina. Sullivan hailed from Alabama and seemed an unreconstructed Southerner despite all his years in New England. He had made his career with the Red Sox by good relations with Mrs. Yawkey, becoming something akin to an adopted son to the childless couple.
As chief executive, Haywood Sullivan found himself in another racial wrangle that ended in a courtroom. The Elks Club of Winter Haven, Florida, the Red Sox spring training home, did not permit black members or guests. Yet the Red Sox allowed the Elks into their clubhouse to distribute dinner invitations to the team's white players, coaches, and business management. When the African-American Tommy Harper, a popular former player and coach for Boston, then working as a minor league instructor, protested the policy and a story appeared in the Boston Globe, he was promptly fired. Harper sued the Red Sox for racial discrimination and his complaint was upheld on July 1, 1986.[11] Sullivan sold his share of the Red Sox in November 1993. In 2000 Harper rejoined the Boston organization as a coach and in 2007 he was listed as a player development consultant for the team.
* A case has been made for Ernie Banks as the de facto first black manager in the major leagues. On May 8, 1973, Chicago Cubs manager Whitey Lockman was ejected from the game. Coach Ernie Banks filled in as manager for two innings of the 12-inning 3-2 win over the San Diego Padres. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide prior to the 1974 season stated flatly that on May 8, "Ernie Banks became the major leagues' first black manager, but only for a day" (page 129). The other two regular coaches on the team were absent that day, opening this door for Banks for the one occasion, but Banks never became a manager on a permanent basis.
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