In a League of Its Own: The Negro League's Baseball Museum

In a League of Its Own
The Negro Baseball Leagues Baseball Museum

By Jonathan Earle

This article was published in Museum, May/June issue 2008.

On Oct. 23, 1945, Jackie Robinson—the star infielder for the all-black Kansas City Monarchs—signed a contract to join the Brooklyn Dodgers, shattering the unofficial boundary that prevented hundreds of star-quality athletes from playing major league baseball.

That date is usually marked in American, black and sports history as an end to the decades of segregation known as baseball’s “color line.” But at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, located just blocks from where Kansas Citians watched Robinson steal bases and the great Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige pitch shutouts, visitors learn that Oct. 23 marked a more bittersweet end as well. With many of its best players following Robinson’s jump to the majors, the once robust Negro National League folded after the 1948 season. The last All-Star game—once among the most star-studded gatherings in black America—took place at Kansas City’s Municipal Stadium in 1962.

Yet between the end of the Civil War and Robinson’s debut as a Dodger, some of the best baseball played anywhere took place in Negro League games. No one knows how many home runs the black slugger Josh Gibson would have hit in the majors, but according to the National Baseball Hall of Fame he logged almost 800 in his 17-year career against Negro League and unaffiliated pitchers. Or how many strikeouts Paige would have mustered against Major League hitters before making the leap in 1948. What we do know is that such greats as Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks and Roy Campanella all started out in the Negro Leagues—and changed major league baseball forever.

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) does a terrific job of recreating the look, sound and—more importantly—the feel of baseball at the height of the racial segregation of America’s pastime. The exhibits take pains to document the entire history of segregated baseball from the post–Civil War era to the 1960s, but the prime focus is on the Negro National League, organized in Kansas City by Chicago American Giants owner Andrew “Rube” Foster in 1920. As its motto, the new league chose “We are the ship, all else the sea,” a fitting metaphor for its relationship with the Major Leagues. For the next half-decade, Negro League games were phenomenally popular, often drawing more than 50,000 spectators, white and black, to Major League ballparks across the country.

The nation’s museums have rightly depicted the era of Jim Crow by focusing on the pain, degradation and discrimination that took root in every corner of the United States. The NLBM, too, describes the hardships faced by traveling and underpaid black ballplayers, the bitter racism of many major leaguers, owners and managers and the lost “what might have been” opportunities to see players like Babe Ruth and Satchel Paige face each other on a baseball diamond.

But what makes the museum so compelling is its embrace of a more ambiguous and complex story: that segregation in baseball (in addition to segregation in housing, transportation and entertainment) was a key ingredient in creating thriving African American communities across the country, particularly as a spur to an independent black economy. Moreover, the museum aims not only to tell the story of the Negro Leagues but to serve the very function that segregated baseball once performed in the black community.

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum was founded in 1990 in a one-room office at the corner of 18th and Vine streets, around the corner from the site where the Negro National League was founded 70 years before. Horace Peterson wanted to create a Negro Leagues Hall of Fame, but his cofounder, John Jordan “Buck” O’Neil, the great Monarchs first baseman, was adamant that there had been enough segregation in the game of baseball. O’Neil felt that if a player were good enough, he would eventually be recognized by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y. Moreover, as Director of Marketing Bob Kendrick noted, unlike the existing Hall of Fame, “We were dealing with a finite piece of history. What do you do when you’ve inducted everybody there is to induct?”

By 1997 the new museum had moved across the street to the 10,000-square-feet space it occupies today. In 2007 it attracted 55,000 visitors. A privately funded nonprofit organization, the NLBM occupies a building complex along with the American Jazz Museum, which is operated in part with city funds. The two institutions share a large foyer that also houses the Horace M. Peterson III Visitors Center, where a documentary film explains the area’s contributions to the cultural, social and economic development of Kansas City and the Midwest. Through a series of interviews, it offers a good introduction to the African American experience in “wide open” Kansas City between the 1920s and World War II, when musicians and other migrants were attracted to the region’s jobs—the Kansas City Stock Yards were home to one of the largest livestock markets in the country—and culture. The result was a thriving community known for its spicy barbecue, cool jazz, anything-goes speakeasies, trendy fashion and excellent baseball.

In Kansas City, the 18th and Vine Historic District encompassed a legendary scene bounded by Troost Avenue on the east and stretching from 12th to 18th streets, with Vine Street connecting the lines of freewheeling nightclubs and speakeasies. The area was memorialized in song by the jazz great Big Joe Turner:

I’m gonna be standin’ on the corner, 12th Street and Vine, yes I am,
I’m gonna be standin’ on the corner, 12th Street and Vine, yes I am,
Oh, with my Kansas City baby and a mug of Kansas City wine.

The “Kansas City Jazz” developed by such greats as Count Basie and Charlie Parker had its origins in the blues of the Deep South but added distinctive riff-based sounds fueled by after-hours jam sessions at the dozens of nightclubs and dance halls crowding the district. But while members of all races came to the area to have a good time, it remained a historic black neighborhood and center of black commercial activities. Black-owned banks, car dealerships and newspapers (including the Kansas City Call) lined the streets. The Monarchs offices’ central location in the district and baseball players’ prominence at restaurants, dance halls and nightclubs attested to the importance of baseball in the community.

The area’s heyday coincided with the career of the corrupt Kansas City political boss Tom Prendergast, who made sure that, despite the Depression and Prohibition, the city kept building and the booze kept flowing. After Prendergast’s downfall and imprisonment on corruption charges, the neighborhood began a long period of decline. Urban renewal projects in the 1950s and ’60s shuttered the clubs on 12th Street made famous by Count Basie, Julia Lee and Charlie Parker, while neglect, a decline in investment and poor planning led to the loss of a number of buildings. The result can be eerie to a visitor from the urban East Coast, where even in rough neighborhoods city blocks usually remain intact. Here, grand buildings with storied pasts are located next to vacant lots, and the entire district is more than walking distance from Kansas City’s other redeveloped areas like the phenomenally successful Power and Light district.

After the 18th and Vine neighborhood was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the city decided to pump in additional funds to support redevelopment, constructing the building complex that now houses the two museums. In the mid-1990s, with both institutions open and attracting visitors, Robert Altman made the film Kansas City, which dramatized the neighborhood at its height. The old Gem Theater, another throwback to a bygone era, was added at this time, and the smoke-free Blue Room, attached to the city-owned museum complex, offered nationally recognized jazz acts—though community members seemed wary of having the area transform into what Raymond Doswell, NLBM deputy director and chief curator, called a “black Beale Street,” a walled-off party zone for out-of-towners. There are numerous seniors living in the neighborhood, and five churches are located within a few blocks of the museum.

The museum, too, set its sights on revitalization. Bob Kendrick said, “We wanted to do for the community what the Negro Leagues did 80 years ago: spark economic development. It’s been wonderful to see. People are living here again; the housing is almost 100 percent occupied. Commercial development is beginning to follow suit. Certainly I’m biased, but I believe if we hadn’t anchored here, you wouldn’t have seen the development happen as it did.” Claude Page, development specialist with the city’s planning and development department, agreed, saying that the museum “has had a dynamic impact in boosting visits to the area and new residents” as well as a “synergistic effect on other institutions.”

Kendrick believes that Negro Leagues baseball was intimately connected to the economic success of black America. “Wherever you had successful Negro Leagues baseball, you had a successful black economy. It can be paralleled. The black economy never recovered from losing the Negro Leagues. Integration was a double-edged sword. It was great for our society.” But with black baseball, “Black businesses arose and flourished to supply the leagues and their supporters. They couldn’t compete with big businesses when integration came. The degree of black [business] ownership that we saw during the Negro Leagues—I’m not sure we’ll ever see that again.”

The museum’s mission has always been ambitious: to tell the story of almost 100 years of black baseball when most people know next to nothing about it. “So much of what people knew about the Negro Leagues was steeped in folklore and myth,” said Doswell. Much of this is due to the lack of reliable statistics and descriptions of the games, and to the tough economic circumstances that made it hard for even talented players to continue playing professionally. “At the time we felt it was necessary to be very academic, to present as many artifacts, photographs and manuscripts as possible and arrange them chronologically.” It is a good approach, and one that still works. But it also adds to an “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to some exhibits. Four jerseys are often presented when two would be enough; paraphernalia crowds the space on some walls.

Because so few authentic Negro League artifacts remain, the museum has tried to preserve and display as many as possible. Engaging vintage photos, uniforms and other equipment, often better than the Negro leagues materials displayed at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, are arrayed in a manner that sometimes suggests clutter. After passing the ticket window ($6 for adults, $2.50 for children) and entering through an old-fashioned turnstile, visitors learn how black communities built their own sports world where men played the national pastime at the highest levels in organized leagues, often in Major League ballparks like Yankee Stadium and Ebbetts Field. (Amazingly, they were joined on the field by three women—a pitcher and two infielders—and a few that were owners such as Newark Eagles co-owner Etta Manley.) The exhibits loop around a large open baseball diamond called the “Coors Field of Legends” (Coors provided significant funding for the construction of the museum) and include descriptions of “The Early Years,” “Pioneers,” “Drawing the Line,” “Hard Times,” “Golden Years,” “Emergence of Superstars” and “Changing Times.”

Two exhibits stand out: “Travelin’ Men” and “Beisbol.” The first documents the difficulties barnstorming teams had finding food and lodging, and not just in the South. “There was no place between Chicago and St. Louis we could stop and eat, unless we stopped in a place where they had a colored settlement,” recalls New York Black Yankee Bill Yancey in the exhibit. “From St. Louis to Kansas City, same thing. So, many times we would ride all night and not have anything to eat, because they wouldn’t feed you.” Another memorable feature showcases the Indianapolis Clowns, who played more for laughs than runs.

“Beisbol” details the game’s emergence in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and highlights the tactic of casting African American players as “Cuban” or “Dominican” to try to subvert the “gentlemen’s agreement” not to allow blacks into the Major Leagues. It is a great visual complement to a scene in Robert Peterson’s classic book Only the Ball Was White, which tells the sad story of Christobel Torrienti, who in one tryout for a major league scout lined a ball so hard that the rightfielder was able to play it off the top of the fence and throw him out at first base. The scout liked what he saw, but was disappointed in the player’s appearance. “He was a light brown,” recalled one of Torrienti’s teammates, “and would have gone up to the Major Leagues, but he had real rough hair.” The story of the Negro Leagues is the story of the beginnings of Latino baseball as well.

These two exhibits stand out because they add to the complexity of what the museum commemorates. It features more than simple nostalgia, emphasizing the values of courage and perseverance. “The story of the Negro Leagues is not simply one of diversity,” said Kendrick. “It’s what they did to overcome adversity. This story not only parallels American advancement but was a catalyst for it. You’ll get a newfound appreciation for how great this country is. It could only have happened in America. Even though it’s attached to the ugly story of racism, it was the American spirit that allowed [Negro Leaguers] to prevail.”

After 15 years at its current site, the museum has begun a major redesign and expansion. The new five-level building, which will include a gymnasium, will add 40,000 square feet and probably double the amount of full-time employees to 20. It will also be historically significant as a renovation of the Paseo YMCA building around the corner from the current museum; it is where the National Negro League was founded and where thousands of African Americans migrating from the South spent their first days or weeks making the transition to life in the urban Midwest in the early 20th century’s “Great Migration.”

According to Doswell, one goal for exhibitions in the new space is to make them more “story-oriented” and less text-driven. The time to reach out for more stories is growing shorter—only 150 to 200 ballplayers from the Negro Leagues are still alive. But the passing of the last generation of players may also bring a new opportunity. One of the original constituencies of the museum was the ballplayers themselves, who, not surprisingly, wanted to see their pictures on a wall. With the passing of the last of the players, the focus will shift to connecting with people who never witnessed a segregated baseball game. “You can’t put everybody’s picture on the wall, but you can put them in computer databases and kiosks,” Doswell said.

An important theme will continue to be the use of baseball to teach about American history—to give issues such as segregation a more personal impact through the stories of individual players. “The folks who come here encounter a brand-new history, for them,” said Kendrick. “And they’re somewhat frustrated—they leave wondering, ‘Why did I not know this before now?’” There will also be a general effort to keep pace with other local museums—Kansas City has seen a major infusion of national-caliber museums with the opening in late 2006 of the National World War One Museum, the Harry Truman Library, the Science City museum at the old Union Station and the dedication of the splashy new Bloch wing at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

By the time the new space—the Buck O’Neil Education and Research Center—is finished around 2010, it will offer not only a place where visitors can do research, but new programs and activities. There will also be a “fun zone” that will include video games, pitching machines, batting cages and other interactive activities. More importantly, the new building will house a Negro Leagues Baseball Academy to give young would-be ballplayers indoor, year-round training. “Buck was adamant about urban youth having access to this game,” said Kendrick, who noted that the number of black major leaguers has dropped to 9 percent of the total, down from a high of nearly 28 percent. “Nowadays football and basketball are dominating. If kids are not playing baseball, we don’t want it to be because they don’t have access to facilities.”

And the museum, which has a relationship with Satchel Paige Elementary School, will continue to broaden its educational programs to include literacy programs for children throughout the area. Existing programs include Reading Around the Bases, where major leaguers and other celebrities read aloud to children from Kansas City and beyond, and Project reTrace, which invites about 200 high schoolers several times a year to do art projects, encouraging their teachers to use the museum as a classroom. Future plans include a curriculum on math and science that teachers will use in the classroom and then flesh out with visits to the O’Neil Center. “We’ll use baseball to make learning fun,” said Kendrick. “They’ll come to our labs and do experiments. In addition to measuring a batting average, they’ll step into a batting cage. They’ll find out what makes a curve ball curve, what it’s like to hit a ball at 100 miles per hour. The effect of wind and humidity on playing baseball. Also, biology: What happens when a guy tears his rotator cuff? Baseball is well suited to studying science.”

Museum staff also look forward to increasing their collaboration with their neighbor, the American Jazz Museum. “We do some crossover events, trying to promote what each other is doing,” said Kendrick. “Jazz and baseball went hand in hand in this community. There was mutual admiration: Players would go support musicians, and by day jazz musicians would go watch them. Many musicians wanted to be ball players, and vice versa.”

All this expansion is going to cost money, and it’s a good thing that the NLBM was visionary about one unlikely funding source: the team logos from the old Negro National League. Since its inception, the NLBM has managed a dynamic and far-sighted licensing program, starting by tracking down Ted Raspberry, the last owner of the Kansas City Monarchs, and buying the rights to team names and logos. The museum also acquired the rights to the names and logos of numerous other clubs (most had never trademarked their logos), created some innovative new logos and inaugurated a “retro logo series” of products. Kendrick was reluctant to give exact figures on the royalties various companies pay to make everything from ball caps and jerseys to coffee mugs and high-end jackets, but he noted that the revenue has kept the museum self-supporting.

“In the 1990s, folks thought we were a little goofy to invest money for the licensing program,” said Kendrick. “They didn’t think there would be a market. But baseball has always been used to sell.” The investment paid off well—at a time when many African-American-themed museums are struggling financially, the NLBM remains debt-free. “We wanted to remain autonomous from the city, and we’ve been able to maintain that,” Kendrick said. Three years ago, the museum entered a licensing deal with Nike, producing a product line called The Untold Truth, with tags and labels that give mini-lessons about the history of the leagues. This summer the museum will team up with Nike to launch a hip-hop salute to the Negro Leagues, a venture that could provide still more revenue, especially through generating a CD with major musical groups. Kendrick expects the museum to remain debt-free even after moving into the renovated YMCA building.

The licensing program has led to some awkward negotiations with Major League Baseball (MLB) over control of their own logos. One dustup was over the New York Black Yankees logo, which Doswell explained was very similar to that of the Major League Yankees. “One year the Black Yankees bought the old New York Yankees uniforms. But these teams existed—we have to be able to tell our story, the same way [MLB] needs to tell their story. We’re not a charity, and we’ve lately been more successful convincing MLB that we can help them promote this game.” He added that it took a while for the Major Leagues to get used to working closely with the NLBM, due to such contentious issues as pensions for players who ended their careers before the MLB pension program, but that the relationship has improved recently. NLBM staff helped MLB identify and track down former Negro leaguers who qualified for pensions, and the two institutions are partnering to increase interest in baseball among the residents of inner cities. Kendrick noted also that the Major Leagues have shared photographs and other display items and made the Negro Leagues more prominent in the Hall of Fame.

The next decade will clearly be a decisive one for the NLBM. But as the staff looks forward to expansions and telling new stories, it will be without the museum’s cofounder, greatest spokesman and storyteller and all-around “ambassador” for the Negro Leagues: Buck O’Neil, who died at 94 in 2006. After becoming the first black coach in Major League Baseball when his playing days were over, O’Neil became the face and voice of the Negro Leagues, as well as a spellbinding speaker and interview subject in Ken Burns’s 1994 PBS documentary Baseball. In fact, O’Neil is generally considered to have stolen the show. He played a major role in establishing the NLBM, served as its chairman and was often spied hanging around the turnstile to the Coors Field of Legends, talking about the old days.

“My crowning achievement for me right now is the Negro League Baseball Museum,” O’Neil said in an interview shortly before his death. “It tells the story of the Negro Leagues; it tells the story of this country during that era. The only reason why we had the Negro Leagues is because we couldn’t play in the Major Leagues. It was a good league.” It was typical O’Neil-ian understatement: Josh Gibson, James “Cool Papa” Bell and Satchel Paige might have been the best to players to play the game of baseball ever, in any league.

Bob Kendrick clearly shares O’Neil’s conviction about the museum’s educational and entertainment value, for visitors of all races and both sexes. “From my observations, I’d say most of our male visitors are baseball fans. The women are bringing their kids—in many cases, the emotional part of the story appeals to them, as does the pioneering spirit of the Negro Leagues regarding women players and owners. The Negro Leagues gave women [such] opportunities before the rest of the country.’”

But no matter who you are, he feels, “Once you’re exposed to this story, you’re going to love it. It’s the story of the underdog; you don’t have to be a baseball fan. And if you are a baseball fan, you’re in hog heaven.”