Marcus: On a mission to give final dignity to Negro League players
From Steven Marcus at Newsday on February 24, 2018, with mention of SABR member Jeremy Krock and Ralph Carhart:
As Negro Leagues baseball star Solomon White was being enshrined in Cooperstown, his remains were in an unmarked grave, where they had been for more than 50 years.
White’s career began near Long Island’s Argyle Hotel in Babylon Village in 1887. When he died at 87 in 1955, his body went unclaimed and was unceremoniously placed in a grave on Staten Island.
That indignity continued even beyond White’s 2006 induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Decades after White’s death of a pulmonary embolism at Central Islip State Hospital, a monumental injustice is being addressed by the Negro Leagues Grave Marker Project. Four years ago, a headstone was placed on White’s grave at Frederick Douglass Memorial Park.
White’s is one of 38 headstones placed by the project, which was started in 2004 by Jeremy Krock, a Peoria, Illinois, anesthesiologist.
Read the full article here: https://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/grave-marker-project-1.16927092
Originally published: February 26, 2018. Last Updated: February 26, 2018.