Integration Comes to the Texas League: 1952-58

Willard Brown debuted with the Kansas City Monarchs at age 22, and was 32 when he appeared in 21 games for the St. Louis Browns of the American League in 1947. When he was 38 he joined Dallas and spent four seasons in the Texas League, 1953-56. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

 

Most fans of baseball are aware that Jackie Robinson broke the major league color line in 1947. Fewer folks are aware of how slowly integration came to the minor leagues. Whereas Robinson and five others broke into the minors in 1946, most of the minor leagues remained segregated until 1952. In 1951, 27 of the 50 AL/NL affiliated minor leagues were segregated, and in many cases more than half of the teams in the integrated leagues still had no Black players.

As 1951 ended, the situation in the American and National Leagues was not particularly encouraging. Only 20 players had crossed the color line, and ten of the 16 teams remained segregated.1 There was not a single Black player in Class AA until 1952, and that is where our story begins. The Texas League and the Southern Association were the only two minor leagues with the Class-AA designation. The Southern Association clung to its Jim Crow ways until it ceased to function after the 1961 season with one exception: a brief two-game appearance by Nat Peeples with Atlanta in 1954.

Dallas was the AA affiliate of the Cleveland Indians, the first American League team to integrate. The Eagles held tryouts from February 11 through February 15, 1952, and, according to the Kansas City Call, 200 Black players participated.2 The Indians purportedly awarded contracts to three players, but none of them was assigned to Dallas. One of the three, Bobby Fritz, only played one minor-league game, with Big Spring in the Longhorn League in 1954. The others did not play at all in the minors.

The story of the integration of the Texas League could have begun with Ray Neil. In 1951, Neil played for the Indianapolis Clowns and participated in the East-West All-Star Game. He batted .327 with 102 hits (second most in the league), and, at the beginning of the 1952 season, went to spring training with the Dallas Eagles.3 He was the first Black player signed by a Texas League team when, on February 23, 1952, owner R. W. (Dick) Burnett of the Class AA Dallas Eagles purchased him conditionally. On March 16, he was the subject of a column by Bill Rives in the Dallas Morning News.4 The ink was barely dry on that article when it was announced that Neil would be released on March 19.5 Neil returned to the Indianapolis Clowns and remained with them through 1954, batting .397 in 1953. He never had the opportunity to play in AL/NL affiliated ball.

Reportedly signed on March 12 by Dallas was Othello “Chico” Renfroe, who had played for the Kansas City Monarchs and the Cleveland Buckeyes. Renfroe failed to show up when camp got underway in Daytona Beach, because the Union Laguna Baseball Club failed to grant him a release from his pre-existing contract.6

As reported elsewhere in this journal, Dallas integrated with a player who was already in the Cleveland organization: Dave Hoskins, later joined by Jose Santiago. Willard Brown was with the team in 1953, batting .310 in 138 games. Brown, who was age 38 in 1953, spent four seasons in the Texas League. He batted .302 with Houston in 1955 and was with three teams (San Antonio, Tulsa, and Austin) in 1956. Another veteran of the Negro Leagues, Bus Clarkson, joined Dallas in 1953.

Bill Greason, who had pitched for the Birmingham Black Barons in 1951, began the 1952 season at Camp Lejeune, pitching for the military base team. When he was released, he joined the Oklahoma City Indians of the Texas League. His debut was on Thursday, July 31, and he defeated Shreveport, 6-4. He won nine games with only one loss and posted a 2.14 ERA. In 1954, he was acquired by the Cardinals’ organization and became the first Black pitcher with St. Louis on May 31, 1954. His time in the National League was brief. He only appeared in three games and registered an 0-1 record. As of this writing, he is the oldest man to have played in the major leagues still alive.

The San Antonio Missions integrated in 1953 with Harry Wilson and Charlie White. San Antonio was affiliated with the St. Louis Browns, and White and Wilson had been signed by Bill Veeck.7 Wilson, a pitcher from Blount County in Tennessee, was signed by the Browns in March 1950 and was assigned to Gloversville-Johnstown in the Canadian-American League, a league that had first integrated in 1946.8 He posted an 18-7 record with Stockton in the California League in 1951 and was in the military in 1952. In 1953, he signed on with San Antonio. In his first appearance, on April 14, he won a 10-inning pitching duel, 2-1, and he batted in the winning run.9

Joe Durham joined the Missions in 1954, and Lenny Green joined in 1955. Green was signed by Veeck and was one of the first Black stars with Baltimore. Also on the Missions in 1955 were Dave Roberts and Willie Tasby.

Tulsa integrated with Chuck Harmon and Nino Escalera in 1953. Also on the 1953 team was Honey Lott, whose career had begun with the New York Black Yankees in 1948. Harmon and Escalera broke the Cincinnati Reds color line on April 17, 1954. Lott never made it higher than Class AA. Frank Robinson was with Tulsa early in the 1954 season, but spent most of the season one level lower, in the South-Atlantic League.

The other teams were a bit slower to add Black players.10 The Houston Buffaloes added Bob Boyd in 1954. Boyd played with the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro American League before joining the Chicago White Sox organization in 1950. He made his American League debut at the tail end of 1951 with the White Sox and spent all of 1952 and part of 1953 with Chicago minor league affiliates. He played parts of 1953 and 1954 with the White Sox and, at the end of May, was sold to the Cardinals.

The Cardinals, an organization that didn’t integrate at all until August A. Busch & Co. acquired the team in 1953, was affiliated with Houston and Boyd, once St. Louis obtained him, was assigned to the Buffaloes. He batted .321 in 94 games with Houston in 1954 and .310 in a full season in 1955. In 1955, Houston added Willard Brown and Bill Greason. Although both Brown (.302 BA) and Greason (17-11) put up good numbers in 1955, neither was destined to return to the majors. Boyd was not protected in the offseason Rule 5 draft and was selected by the Baltimore Orioles. From 1956 through 1960 Boyd, though in his late 30s, batted .301 in 1,795 plate appearances.

 

Bill Greason on his 100th birthday, 70 years after becoming the first Black pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals. (US Marine Corps)

 

Prior to the 1954 season, Beaumont traded pitcher Ed Konick to the Dallas Eagles for Bus Clarkson, who had spent the prior season with Dallas, batting .330.11 Clarkson was a Negro League veteran who broke the Beaumont color line with a flourish. In front of a crowd of 5,114 fans, he went 4-for-5 with a home run and started two double plays from his shortstop position in an 8-5 win over Tulsa on April 9.12 Through 79 games, he was batting .339 with a league-leading 20 home runs and 77 RBIs.13 But Clarkson was 39 and a brief stint in 1952 with the Boston Braves was his only appearance in the AL/NL. On June 23, he was traded to Dallas and finished the season with the Eagles. Overall, in 1954, he batted .324 with 42 homers and 135 RBIs.14 He played two more minor league seasons.

Fort Worth was the Dodgers affiliate through 1956. Despite the organization’s well-documented efforts in integration, Fort Worth remained segregated until April 18, 1955. Breaking the color line in Fort Worth was Maury Wills, whose minor league career had begun in 1951 at Hornell in the PONY League. He finally made it to the National League with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1959. The man credited by many with having brought the stolen base back to the majors stole only 12 bases with Fort Worth in 1955. It was the only season from 1951 through 1970 in which he stole fewer than 20. Eddie Moore was also with Fort Worth in 1955. After banging 52 homers in his first three seasons in the Dodgers organization, he only had two homers with Fort Worth, the first coming on April 22 in his debut with the team. The Black fans welcomed Wills and Moore. Per the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, of the 2,617 fans at the game on April 22, 1,167 were Black.15

Dallas became affiliated with the New York Giants in 1955 and some of the players that started with the Giants in the majors passed through Dallas. Bill White, a player who would star with the Cardinals in the 1960s was working his way through the Giants organization when he spent the 1955 season in Dallas, as did Ozzie Virgil who, along with White, moved on to the New York Giants the following year. In 1958, Virgil crossed the color line with the Detroit Tigers. In 1956, Andre Rodgers was with the Dallas Eagles. Willie McCovey was one of four Black players with the Eagles in 1957. McCovey slammed 11 homers that season.

With the passage of time, the alignment of teams in the Texas League changed. The first change of significance was the movement of the Beaumont team to Austin in 1956. Austin continued the affiliation with the Milwaukee Braves, and there were four Blacks on the 1956 Austin Senators.

By 1957, 10 years after Jackie Robinson debuted with Brooklyn and five years after Dave Hoskins had begun his time with Dallas, the Texas League was far more integrated. There were still players entering the Texas League who had ties to the Negro Leagues. Webbo Clarke joined Dallas that season. But even more players without ties to the Negro Leagues were coming of age and integrating the minors. Tony Taylor, who later starred for the Phillies, was with Dallas in 1957.

Oklahoma City, in 1956, affiliated with the Boston Red Sox. The 1957 roster included Pumpsie Green who, two years later, became the first Black player for Boston at the major league level.

In 1958, each of the teams in the Texas League was integrated (21 players in all), and two new cities joined the league: Corpus Christi and Victoria. Corpus Christi was the new home for the franchise that had been based in Shreveport. Victoria had been in the Big State League prior to 1958 and replaced Oklahoma City. The Giants switched their affiliation from Dallas to Corpus Christi, and the Dallas team, now called the Rangers, was unaffiliated in 1958. The Dodgers, who had no Texas League affiliate in 1957, affiliated with Victoria in 1958, and shipped prospects including Tommy Davis and Derald Wooton to Victoria.

The Dallas Rangers had two Black players, each with ties to the Negro Leagues. Jim Tugerson pitched for the Dallas Eagles in 1954-56. He had first pitched professionally for the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro American League in 1951 and 1952. In 1954 with Dallas, he posted a 9-14 record with a 3.98 ERA. He remained with Dallas in 1955 when they affiliated with the Giants. In 1958, Tugerson struck out a league-leading 199 batters. Also returning to Dallas in 1958 was Dave Hoskins. At age 40, he posted a 17-8 record.

The season marked Dallas’s final season in the Texas League. The team moved on to the Class AAA American Association in 1959.

Forth Worth also marked 1958 as their last year in the Texas League and they, like Dallas, had a 40-year-old veteran with ties to the Negro Leagues. In 1948, Lorenzo “Piper” Davis had played for Birmingham and posted a .393 batting average while managing the team and its rookie, Willie Mays, to the Negro American League pennant. Davis had first played in affiliated ball with Scranton in 1950, being dismissed by the Red Sox affiliate after 15 games despite batting .333. He was in his last professional season in 1958, batting .282 in 82 games with the Cats. Also with Fort Worth was Leonard “Preacher” Williams, who had first played professionally with the Indianapolis Clowns in 1950.

Houston finished in second place in 1958, and Ellis Burton led the team with 22 homers. Burton was in his fourth minor league season and advanced to the St. Louis Cardinals late in the season. He played in parts of five big-league seasons. Also on the team was George Moton, who hailed from California. Moton was only 2-8 with the team when he was sent to York of the Class A Eastern League in late June.

Austin finished the season in fourth place and lost to Corpus Christi in the playoffs. They had five Black players on their roster during the season, the most of any team in the Texas League. The team finished second in the league in home runs and three Black sluggers were a big part of the picture. Nat Peeples had 21, Dave Roberts had 20, and Lee Maye had 15. Winston Brown led all team pitchers with a 17-10 record, and Chi-Chi Olivo was briefly with the team. Olivo had spent most of the season in the South Atlantic League before being promoted to the Texas League. Of these players, Maye had the most accomplished major-league career, playing 13 seasons, leading the National League in doubles with 44 in 1964 with the Braves.

San Antonio had Jesse Gonder, Jose Santiago, and Sam Hairston on its roster in 1958. Hairston, at age 38, was on loan from the White Sox organization. Gonder, on loan from the Cincinnati organization, batted .328 for San Antonio in 1958, and was promoted to the Pacific Coast League for the last month of the season. He debuted in the majors with the Yankees in 1960 and played parts of eight seasons in the majors, his best year being with the Mets in 1964 when he batted .270 in 131 games. Santiago, who had pitched for Dallas 1952-53, had a 7-5 record. He was in his 11th professional season. He had first played with the New York Cubans in 1948 before joining the Cleveland Indians organization that same year. He played with the Indians in 1954 and 1955 and last played in the majors in 1956 with Kansas City.

Tulsa’s roster included John Kennedy and Marvin Williams. Each had played in the Negro Leagues. Kennedy, in 1957, had become the first African American to play with the Philadelphia Phillies. Williams had taken a long and winding trail in professional baseball, beginning in 1943 with the Philadelphia Stars of the Negro National League. He was 38 when he played with Tulsa in 1958. Although he batted .294 in 144 games, he had essentially reached the end of the line, although he continued to play in the minors until he was 41.

Corpus Christi had three Black players in 1958. Although James Miller, Jack “Bo” Bossard, and Cal Dorsey did not make it to the majors, they nevertheless played an important part in the story of the integration of the Texas League. Corpus Christi finished the 1958 season in third place, but by virtue of playoff wins over Houston and Austin earned a place in the Dixie Series against Southern Association champion Birmingham. Bossard’s three-run homer in the decisive seventh game against Austin enabled Corpus Christi to win the league championship series. He was honored with a $50 gift certificate.17

Segregationist Birmingham, pursuant to Section 597, originally passed in 1944 and updated via a referendum on June 1, 1954 (in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education ruling), prohibited interracial play at any facility in the city, including Rickwood Field, home of the Birmingham Barons. Corpus Christi’s Black players stayed home when the series started in Birmingham on September 26.18

All told 53 Black players integrated the Texas League 1952 through 1958. During the first wave of Texas League integration, the American and National Leagues added 87 players of color, and the stage was set for the final team—the Boston Red Sox—to finally integrate in 1959. In coming years, the Texas League would welcome more cities and build on the foundation laid from 1952 through 1958.

ALAN COHEN has been a SABR member since 2011. He chairs the BioProject factchecking team, is Vice President-Treasurer of the Connecticut Smoky Joe Wood Chapter, and is a datacaster (MiLB stringer) with the Eastern League Hartford Yard Goats, the Class AA affiliate of the Rockies. He also works with the Retrosheet Negro Leagues project and serves on SABR’s Negro League Committee. His biographies, game stories, and essays have appeared in more than 80 baseball-related publications.

 

Appendix 1: First 20 Players of Color in AL/NL Baseball

	Date	Name	AL/NL Team
1	4/15/1947	Jackie Robinson	Brooklyn Dodgers (1)
2	7/5/1947	Larry Doby	Cleveland Indians (1)
3	7/17/1947	Hank Thompson	St. Louis Browns (1)
4	7/19/1947	Willard Brown	St. Louis Browns (2)
5	8/26/1947	Dan Bankhead	Brooklyn Dodgers (2)
6	4/20/1948	Roy Campanella	Brooklyn Dodgers (3)
7	7/9/1948	Satchel Paige	Cleveland Indians (2)
8	4/19/1949	Minnie Miñoso	Cleveland Indians (2)
9	5/20/1949	Don Newcombe	Brooklyn Dodgers (4)
10	7/8/1949	Monte Irvin	New York Giants (1)
11	8/11/1949	Luke Easter	Cleveland Indians (3)
12	4/18/1950	Sam Jethroe	Boston Braves (1)
13	4/18/1951	Luis Marquez	Boston Braves (2)
14	4/18/1951	Ray Noble	New York Giants (3)
15	4/18/1951	Artie Wilson	New York Giants (4)
16	4/21/1951	Harry Simpson	Cleveland Indians (5)
17	5/25/1951	Willie Mays	New York Giants (5)
18	7/21/1951	Sam Hairston	Chicago White Sox (2)
19	9/8/1951	Bob Boyd	Chicago White Sox (3)
20	9/22/1951	Sam Jones	Cleveland Indians (6)

Notes:

1. Hank Thompson integrated the New York Giants (along with Monte Irvin) on July 8, 1949.

2. Minnie Miñoso integrated the Chicago White Sox on May 1, 1951.

3. Only the Brooklyn Dodgers, Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Browns, New York Giants, Boston Braves, and Chicago White Sox were integrated prior to 1952.

 

Sources

In addition to the sources shown in the notes, the author used Baseball Reference, and the following:

Adelson, Bruce. Brushing Back Jim Crow—The Integration of Minor League Baseball in the American South (University of Virginia Press, 1999). Jackson, Marion E. “Sports of the World,” Atlanta Daily World, October 3, 1961: 5. Tagliabue, Emil. “Tagged Topics: Piper Davis Another Satchel Paige,”

Corpus Christi Caller-Times, September 4, 1958: 37.

 

Notes

1. Alan Cohen, Team Integration Dates Log compiled by the author. See Appendix 1 above for the complete list of 20 players 1946-51.

2. R.E. Dixon, “Near 200 Report for Baseball Tryout in Dallas,” Kansas City Call, February 22, 1952: 10.

3. Per the September 8, 1951, issue of the Baltimore Afro-American, based on Howe News Bureau statistics and shown on the Center for Negro League Baseball Research website.

4. Bill Rives, “The Sports Scene,” Dallas Morning News, March 16, 1952: 2:1.

5. Rives, “Eagles to Drop Negro Player,” Dallas Morning News, March 19, 1952: 14.

6. Joel W. Smith, “Othello Renfroe Rejoins Team in Mexican League,” Alabama Tribune (Montgomery, Alabama), April 11, 1952: 7.

7. The integration of the Baltimore Orioles began in the minor league system of the St. Louis Browns, of which San Antonio was a part. Veeck, who had pioneered integration in the American League during his time with the Indians, had moved on to the Browns. He signed Black players and assigned them to the minor league teams in the St. Louis organization. Prior to the 1954 season, Veeck sold his interest in the team, and the Browns relocated to Baltimore, becoming the Orioles.

8. “Browns Sign Blount Negro,” Knoxville News Sentinel, March 30, 1950: 30.

9. “Missions Take Texas Loop Lead,” Tulsa Tribune, April 15, 1953: 37.

10. The order in which the teams of the Texas League integrated is shown in Table 3.

11. “Clarkson Traded by Dallas Eagles,” Longview News-Journal, January 3, 1954: 7.

12. “Clarkson is Hero at Bat for Shippers,” Shreveport Times, April 10, 1954: 8.

13. “League Leaders,” The Sporting News, June 30, 1954: 31.

14. “League Leaders,” The Sporting News, September 15, 1954: 33.

15. Lorin McMullen, “Cats Homers Nip Indians,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, April 23, 1955: 11.

16. “Court Fight Due on Louisiana Bill,” and “Shreveport’s Future Tops TL Meeting,” Austin American-Statesman, July 17, 1956: 20.

17. “Bossard Says Thanks,” Corpus Christi Caller-Times, September 30, 1958: 31.

18. Bob Phillips, “Corpus Christi Arrives…Bearing Gifts,” Birmingham Post-Herald, September 26, 1958: 8.