 Pride and Passion: The African-American Baseball Experience
November 2, 2009-December 14, 2009
The story of African Americans in baseball is a remarkable and fascinating
slice of American history. It parallels the failures of the greater American
society in solving the racial problems resulting from slavery, the Civil War,
and the confusion of Reconstruction. Baseball was played on Southern plantations
as far back as the 1850s, and a quote from the New York Clipper newspaper in
1869 tells of a game between the leading black and white baseball teams in
Philadelphia.
Although early baseball was segregated for the most part, there are many examples
of blacks and whites playing the game together. However, racial prejudice escalated
in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and baseball reflected this development
in the larger society. The captain of the leading black team in Philadelphia
was murdered in riots that occurred on the first day black men were legally
allowed to vote in October 1871. Black players on the rare integrated teams,
such as the Toledo Blue Stockings, were sometimes threatened by people in the
stands and by players on opposing teams.
When the National League was founded in 1883, blacks were shut out, and the
black players on the Toledo team in the mid-1880s were the last to play on
an integrated team until Jackie Robinson in 1947. This early baseball history
will be both a revelation and a surprise to most viewers of the traveling exhibition,
and it adds a fascinating dimension to late nineteenth-century U.S. history.
Exhibit dates at The Greenville County Library System’s Hughes Main Library
are November 2, 2009-December 14, 2009. The library is presenting
seven programs developed in conjunction with scholars, artists and writers
that enhance and expand upon exhibit themes.
 The exhibition is arranged in six thematic and chronological sections:
- Finding a Way in Hard Times (1860-1887) covers the years
after the Civil War, during which baseball was affected by the deepening
of racial prejudice throughout the nation.
- Barnstorming on the Open Road (1887-1919) describes how
black baseball players formed their own professional teams and traveled to
towns and cities throughout the nation.
- Separate Leagues, Parallel Lives (1920-1932) looks at
the first black baseball leagues, including the Negro National League and
the Eastern Colored League, and how they fared until the Great Depression.
- Paving the Way to Integration (1933-1946) examines the
revival of Negro League baseball after the Depression, the introduction of
night baseball, and the success of teams such as the Kansas City Monarchs
and the Homestead Grays.
- Signposts for Opportunity (1947-1959) deals with the career
of Jackie Robinson, the black player who joined the all-white Brooklyn Dodgers
in 1947, and the 12 years it took for all Major League teams to field at
least one black player.
- Baseball’s Post-Integration Era (1959-present) looks at
the progress of integration and how it has affected baseball on the field,
in the executive offices, and at the managerial level.
Pride and Passion: The African-American Baseball Experience,
a traveling exhibition for libraries, was organized by the National Baseball
Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, New York, and the American Library
Association Public Programs Office, Chicago. The traveling exhibition
has been made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for
the Humanities: great ideas brought to life.
The traveling exhibition is based on an exhibition of the same
name on permanent display at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
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