“Dr. May, gentlemen, — ladies and gentlemen. My plane doesn’t leave until tomorrow at 10:35 A.M. and I haven’t a thing to do between now and then but to talk if I get the chance, — and I feel like talking. “I asked Mr. Lawson and several others today about my time limit, and I [...]
During the baseball season Negro League players were not allowed to play ball with the the Major League players the off-season was quite different. Players from the Major Leagues would get up a team and players from the Negro Leagues would get a team together, head south and then play on the same ballfield as [...]
The first black professional ballplayer played second base for an all-white team in New Castle, Pennsylvania. That player, John W. (Bud) Fowler, was born in 1854 to freedmen parents. Ironically, he was born in Cooperstown, New York, where professional baseball has its museum and Hall of Fame. Fowler was the first of more than thirty [...]
It’s the seventh inning stretch. Everyone is on their feet to sing, “Take Me Out To The Ballgame”, but instead the fans are about to be entertained by a gospel quartet and hear a remarkable story of faith and perseverance about a school located 20 miles southeast of Jackson, Mississippi; the Piney Woods Country Life [...]
The published histories of the Negro Baseball Leagues generally end with 1955 or even earlier. The Negro American League (NAL) actually continued through 1961, with league and all-star games, but little has been written about this era. While the major and minor leagues had opened up to African-Americans beginning with Jackie Robinson, there is no [...]