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.