Students looking for law reference books or past dissertations
will encounter a big surprise when they find that baseball
has taken over Halle Library.
The Negro Leagues Baseball Exhibit, a traveling exhibit
from the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City,
Mo., will be on display in the Information Commons South,
in Halle Library until Nov. 15.
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PLAY BALL: Johnny Rutherford (middle),
a former
pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and
Mel Duncan
(right),
a former pitcher
for the Kansas City
Monarchs,
a team from the Negro Leagues, cut
the
ribbon to commemorate the
opening of the Negro
Leagues Baseball Exhibit
in Halle Library. Eddie
Bedford
(left), an assistant
professor in the School of
Health
Promotion and Human Performance, who
arranged
for the exhibit to be displayed at Eastern
Michigan University, looks on. Photo
by John Ryan
|
The exhibit consists of 90 framed photographs, and replica
hats, gloves and jerseys, commemorating the Negro Leagues.
The exhibit is divided into five sections: pre-1900, The
Beginnings of Black Baseball; 1901-1919, The Great Independents;
1920-1931, A League of Their Own; 1932-1946, Heyday; and
1947-1960, The Color Line Falls.
Mel Duncan, former pitcher for the Kansas City Monarchs
( one of the Negro League teams) who now lives in Ypsilanti,
visited the exhibit at its Oct. 6 opening.
"This isn't just baseball, it's a social and cultural
history," said Eddie Bedford, assistant professor in the
School of Health Promotion and Human Performance (HPHP),
who set up the exhibit. "Jackie Robinson broke the color
barrier in 1947, Brown vs. Board of Education came nine
year later. Integration in baseball preceded integration
in our country."
Baseball was actually integrated before it was segregated.
Visitors to the exhibit will learn that Moses Fleetwood
Walker was the first black player to play in the major
leagues, long before Jackie Robinson was signed to the
Brooklyn Dodgers.
Walker was a catcher for the Toledo Blue Stockings, a
team in the American Association, a professional league
considered to be a major league by most baseball historians.
In 1887, Cap Anson, who was considered to be one of the
best baseball players in the country, refused to play with
Walker on the field. At that point, baseball was segregated,
said Bedford.
The exhibit starts at the beginning, with Walker, and
ends with the demise of the Negro Leagues as black players
were integrated into white teams. Some of its highlights
are pictures of the first salaried Negro team, the Cuban
Giants, a team made up of black waiters at the Argyle Hotel;
the Page Fence Giants, a company team from Adrian, Mich.,
and the first Colored World Series in 1924. Lockers contain
replica jerseys and hats from well-known players such as
Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson and Rube Foster.
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OUT OF THE PAST: The Negro Leagues Baseball
Exhibit at Halle Library includes 70 items,
including these lockers, complete
with replica jerseys
and photos ofthe former greats
of the Negro Leagues.
The exhibit, on loan from the
Negro Leagues Baseball
Museum in Kansas
City, Mo., will be on display
through Nov. 15. Photo by
Lisa Heise
|
Bedford was able to bring the exhibit to Eastern Michigan
due to his membership in the museum. He has been studying
the Negro Leagues since 1992. An avid baseball fan since
his youth, when Bedford discovered the Negro Leagues, he
made that the focus of his research.
"My neighbor used to talk to me about baseball. I would
tell my mother he was drinking too much moonshine because
he kept mentioning names that I didn't recognize," said
Bedford. "It turns out they were Negro Leaguers. If I had
listened to him, I could have started earlier."
Bedford has presented at the National Negro Leagues Conference,
and created and teaches a course about the Negro Leagues
here at EMU.
"I think, in all of our histories, we're a baseball fan," said
Bedford. "Baseball has touched something in all of us."
In addition to just being a form of entertainment, the
Negro Leagues provided other benefits to the black community.
Baseball was the second largest black industry (after insurance),
and attendance at Negro League games often rivaled attendance
of their Major League Baseball counterparts. When a team
came to a city, it brought in money — much like the
Super Bowl did for Detroit, but on a smaller scale. In
addition, the teams brought the news. From traveling to
different games, the players were able to tell the community
what was happening in other parts of the country, Bedford
said.
In 1945, A.B. "Happy" Chandler succeeded Judge Kennesaw "Mountain" Landis
as commissioner of baseball. Chandler announced that he
would not oppose introduction of black players into the
major leagues. Robinson was signed the following year and,
soon, other teams followed suit, signing black players.
Though the Negro Leagues are long gone, the Negro Leagues
Baseball Museum makes sure that they are not forgotten.
Consisting of donations from many former players and their
families, the museum shows the history of the leagues to
generations too young to have seen them play. A portion
of the proceeds goes to former Negro League players who,
unlike major league players, do not have pension plans.
Following its run at Eastern, the exhibit will return
to the museum before starting a two-year tour of black
colleges in February. Only four or five colleges have hosted
the exhibit before EMU, Bedford said. It has been traveling
nationally since 1993.
