The 100th Anniversary of the Negro Leagues
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Negro Leagues. During a time of segregation and discrimination, North Carolina would be part of this important history. The 100th anniversary of Negro League Baseball should have been marked with grand style, with pronouncements, with recognition of a profoundly significant time in American sports history. The names now should have been called, again and again, in Major League Baseball stadiums throughout America and Canada.
Josh Gibson. Buck Leonard. Jackie Robinson. Satchel Paige. Cool Papa Bell. Etched in legend they are, some properly enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
A once-in-a-lifetime virus has changed that plan.
The centennial of the Negro Leagues, as they were then called. could have raised — and still can raise — awareness in this age of tumult of not just the enduring racial tensions in the United States, but of some of the triumphs over it. For there are profound lessons in the legacy of the Negro Leagues, created from a thirst for competition from the finest African-American athletes of the day, a thirst that forced them to play in sandlots far beneath the worthiness of their talents, while white players — yes, a man named Ruth and another named Gehrig among them — played in grand stadiums and made huge salaries for the day.
Those players, names now in bronze on that wall in Cooperstown, were lionized as the greats of their time.
But meanwhile, Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard and Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige and Cool Papa Bell and a youngster named Willie Mays, were forced to stay in horrible hotels because the best places on the roads wouldn’t feed or house them. The era now is properly regarded with disgrace and still calls forth, in the few people left who remember it, tears of anger and yes, tears of regret in the white athletes who were aware of what was going on but were powerless to do anything about it beyond their individual protests.
There are sandlots still left in North Carolina, in Rocky Mount and Reidsville and Greensboro and Winston-Salem, where old-timers will point out the places where the Negro League games were held, who recall the Asheville Royal Giants and the Raleigh Tigers and the teams from Greensboro and High Point. North Carolina was big in the Negro Leagues, because it has a baseball legacy built in the small towns, and though the African American kids and the white kids may not have played together officially, they always remained curious about one another’s skills. There were African American games all over North Carolina probably dating from the early 20th century and running through the 1950s, when African-American players were brought into the major leagues.
In the 1930s, cities such as Greensboro (Red Wings), Asheville (Blues), Durham (Red Caps), and Winston-Salem (Mohawk Giants) had active black ball clubs, as did smaller towns including Erwin (Red Sox) and Louisburg (Independents). During World War II, the Raleigh Grays played against Negro units at Fort Bragg. The Raleigh Tigers came a little later and were among the last of the state’s prominent black teams. The Tigers played until the early 1960s, featuring several future minor and major leaguers.
In 1951, four years after Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play in the major leagues, some white minor-league squads in North Carolina had begun signing black players. Granite Falls of the Western Carolina League, for example, hired Boney Fleming, a pitcher from Morganton; Christopher Rankin, a pitcher out of Hickory; Conover’s Bill Smith, a catcher; Hickory’s Russell Shuford, a catcher; and Eugene Abernathy, an outfielder from Hickory.
But before Jackie Robinson, there were players in the Negro Leagues who were clearly “good enough” for the big leagues. And one of them, Walter Fenner Leonard of the Homestead Grays of Pennsylvania, was good enough and then some. His boyhood name of “Buck” was given to him by his family during his upbringing In Rocky Mount, a seemingly unlikely place to launch a remarkable career and life.
But today, that name is in bronze in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and deservedly so. For in his day, in the 1920s through the 1940s, Buck Leonard was as good a baseball player, in any league, as any other. He was called the “black Lou Gehrig” after the New York Yankees first baseman (Leonard’s position), though some players of both races would later say that Gehrig probably should have been called the “white Buck Leonard.” Leonard played on famous Grays teams and batted behind Josh Gibson, perhaps the most famous of all the Negro Leagues players. Gibson also is in the Hall of Fame.
Leonard was so good that at the age of 45, he was offered a professional contract in the major leagues, but typical for a man of his pride and grace, he decided against it for fear of embarrassing himself.
And so he carved quite a life, working in professional baseball running farm teams but also being a strong citizen in his hometown as a truant officer among other occupations. It must also be said it was a good, long life too, with Leonard living to be 90 years old at his death.
North Carolina would send other small town fellows to the major leagues, and yes, some of them like Gaylord Perry and Jim “Catfish” Hunter and others would gain fame. But it would hard to find anyone comparable to Buck Leonard, for whom the hill to greatness was steep but as he demonstrated, one that could be climbed. Today, his story serves as a grand one for all players who put on the glove and lace up the spikes to study.
Alas, Leonard is not going to get the recognition he and other Negro Leagues players should be getting this year, in the 100th anniversary. The COVID-19 virus has seen to that, shuttering major league ballparks for the summer, a summer that was going to see celebrations around the country.
Thankfully, there has already been recognition for Leonard in Chapel Hill, with some of his descendants participating in a special event in February.
The Negro Leagues legacy in human terms is found in the stories of the greatest players of the era, who ranked by all accounts as the greatest players there were in that or any other time. In historic terms, the legacy is more complicated. For there is little glory in an era defined by racial separatism and injustice.
Little glory, but perhaps lessons. Lessons that will teach generations now and forever. Lessons from here, from one small town in North Carolina and from others.
