Thorn: The drawing of the color line in baseball, 1867
From SABR member John Thorn at Our Game on November 12, 2012:
African Americans had played baseball near Madison Square in the 1840s and by 1859, they had formed three clubs in the Brooklyn area: the Unknown of Weeksville, the Henson of Jamaica, and the Monitor of Brooklyn; these would be followed by the Uniques and the Union, both of Williamsburgh. In Rochester, in 1859, Frederick Douglass Jr., son of the great abolitionist orator, played baseball with the integrated Charter Oak Juniors. A somewhat later all-black club in Albany was the Bachelors; the Excelsior, the Pythian, and L’Overture formed in Philadelphia. When young Douglass moved to Washington, he helped to form another baseball club, the Alerts.
In July 1867, the Pythians agreed to take on two Washington clubs, the Alerts and the Mutuals, in home-and-home series. The white Athletics offered their grounds for the Philadelphia matches and were broadly supportive of the Pythians. “Fred. Douglass Sees a Colored Game,” reported the Clipper on July 13.
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In seeking to keep out of the convention the discussion of any subject having a political bearing, the game’s color line had been drawn. The committee further proclaimed, “If colored clubs were admitted there would be in all probability some division of feeling, whereas, by excluding them no injury could result to anyone.”
The 1870 New York State Base Ball Association meetings added a final insult: The rules for admission of new clubs were amended so as to bar clubs composed of gentlemen of color, which prompted the Clipper to write, “we would suggest that the colored clubs of New York and Philadelphia at once take measures to organize a National Association of their own.”
Read the full article here: http://ourgame.mlblogs.com/2012/11/12/drawing-of-the-color-line/
Originally published: November 12, 2012. Last Updated: November 12, 2012.