Negro League Baseball
The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams predominantly made up of African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latin Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the seven relatively successful leagues beginning in 1920 that are sometimes termed "Negro Major Leagues".
In 1885 the Cuban Giants formed the first black professional baseball team. The first league, the National Colored Base Ball League, was organized strictly as a minor league but failed in 1887 after only two weeks owing to low attendance. The Negro American League of 1951 is considered the last major league season and the last professional club, the Indianapolis Clowns, operated amusingly rather than competitively from the mid-1960s to 1980s.
Read more about Negro League Baseball: Negro Major Leagues, The Negro Leagues and The Hall of Fame, Last Negro Leaguers, 2008 Major League Draft, Museum
Famous quotes containing the words negro, league and/or baseball:
“And then, the negro being doomed, and damned, and forgotten, to everlasting bondage, is the white man quite certain that the tyrant demon will not turn upon him too?”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“I am not impressed by the Ivy League establishments. Of course they graduate the best—it’s all they’ll take, leaving to others the problem of educating the country. They will give you an education the way the banks will give you money—provided you can prove to their satisfaction that you don’t need it.”
—Peter De Vries (b. 1910)
“I’ve gradually risen from lower-class background to lower-class foreground.”
—Marvin Cohen, U.S. author and humorist. Baseball the Beautiful, Links Books (1970)