Baseball Color Line Essay
What is it
The Baseball Color Line (also known as the color barrier) was an unwritten rule that did not allow African Americans to play Major League Baseball in the states from 1884 until 1946. Owners forced African Americans out of the game. It applied to dark skinned who were of Latin descent, as well as blacks.
There was also a gentleman's agreement made to keep out certain races by owners. Some leagues did not spell it out in their policies about keeping out blacks, but some of the older ones did. Some of the lines were drawn in the 1880s and 1890s.
How it Started
It all dates back to 1868, when the National Association of Baseball players decided to keep out any teams that had one or more colored people on them. There was a short time, …show more content…
Due to less and less work for black players in the NAB, Rube Foster organized the Negro National League in the year 1920. Historians have all said that Foster may have been the best African American pitcher of the 1900s. Foster also managed and founded the Chicago American Giants, a very successful black teams before integration. This created two parallel major leagues, and until 1947, professional baseball in the states was played in two separate leagues, one made up of whites, and the other made of blacks.
After the second World War and before President Truman made the army desegregate, Branch Rickey broke the color line to sign Jack Robinson in 1946. Rickey made the move seventeen years before the Civil Rights Act made racial discrimination illegal. The slow process of integration in Major League Baseball was started on April 15, 1947 when Jackie Robinson made his Major League debut.
Less than three months later, Larry Doby would break the color barrier in the American League when he started playing games for the Cleveland Indians in early July of that year.
By the 1960s, the percentage of players who were black and playing in Major League Baseball was either greater than or equal to that of the general
The Baseball Color Line (also known as the color barrier) was an unwritten rule that did not allow African Americans to play Major League Baseball in the states from 1884 until 1946. Owners forced African Americans out of the game. It applied to dark skinned who were of Latin descent, as well as blacks.
There was also a gentleman's agreement made to keep out certain races by owners. Some leagues did not spell it out in their policies about keeping out blacks, but some of the older ones did. Some of the lines were drawn in the 1880s and 1890s.
How it Started
It all dates back to 1868, when the National Association of Baseball players decided to keep out any teams that had one or more colored people on them. There was a short time, …show more content…
Due to less and less work for black players in the NAB, Rube Foster organized the Negro National League in the year 1920. Historians have all said that Foster may have been the best African American pitcher of the 1900s. Foster also managed and founded the Chicago American Giants, a very successful black teams before integration. This created two parallel major leagues, and until 1947, professional baseball in the states was played in two separate leagues, one made up of whites, and the other made of blacks.
After the second World War and before President Truman made the army desegregate, Branch Rickey broke the color line to sign Jack Robinson in 1946. Rickey made the move seventeen years before the Civil Rights Act made racial discrimination illegal. The slow process of integration in Major League Baseball was started on April 15, 1947 when Jackie Robinson made his Major League debut.
Less than three months later, Larry Doby would break the color barrier in the American League when he started playing games for the Cleveland Indians in early July of that year.
By the 1960s, the percentage of players who were black and playing in Major League Baseball was either greater than or equal to that of the general