Negro League Baseball | Unsung History

In its earliest years, the National League was not segregated, and a few teams included Black ballplayers, but in 1887 major and minor league owners adopted a so-called “gentlemen’s agreement” that no new contracts would be given to Black players. In 1920, pitcher and manager Rube Foster founded the first of the Negro Leagues, the Negro National League, to organize professional Black baseball, which was played at a very high level. Other professional Negro leagues followed, and for decades the stars of the game played in the Negro Leagues, until the National League and American League began to slowly accept Black players, starting with Jackie Robinson in 1947.

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