Negro Leagues Baseball Museum
1616 East 18th Street
Negro Leagues Baseball Museum
The Negro Leagues began in the 1900s as racism and Jim Crow laws forced African Americans to play on separate baseball teams. An organized league structure began in 1920 under the guidance of Andrew “Rube” Foster. These leagues lasted until the 1960s after integration drew players into the Major Leagues. The Negro Leagues Museum explores the great players of the Negro Leagues and their impact on baseball and the nation.
African-Americans began to play baseball in the late 1800s on military teams, college teams, and company teams. They eventually found their way to professional teams with white players. Moses Fleetwood Walker and Bud Fowler were among the first to participate. However, racism and “Jim Crow” laws would force them from these teams by 1900. Thus, black players formed their own units, “barnstorming” around the country to play anyone who would challenge them.
In 1920, an organized league structure was formed under the guidance of Andrew “Rube” Foster—a former player, manager, and owner for the Chicago American Giants. In a meeting held at the Paseo YMCA in Kansas City, Mo., Foster and a few other Midwestern team owners joined to form the Negro National League. Soon, rival leagues formed in Eastern and Southern states, bringing the thrills and innovative play of black baseball to major urban centers and rural country sides in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. The Leagues maintained a high level of professional skill and became centerpieces for economic development in many black communities.
Integration began in 1945, when the Brooklyn Dodgers recruited Jackie Robinson from the Kansas City Monarchs. Robinson. While this historic event was a key moment in baseball and civil rights history, it prompted the decline of the Negro Leagues. The best black players were recruited for the Major Leagues, and black fans followed. The last Negro Leagues teams folded in the early 1960s, but their legacy lives on through the surviving players and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum was added to the U.S. Civil Rights Trail in 2022! Read more here
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“PLAYING FOR THE KANSAS CITY MONARCHS WAS LIKE MY SCHOOL, MY LEARNING, MY WORLD. IT WAS MY WHOLE LIFE.”
— “Mr. Cub” Ernie Banks, U.S. Veteran and Baseball Hall of Famer, began his career with the Kansas City Monarchs
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