Video: Larry Lester on “Why Black Baseball History Matters”

At the 19th annual SABR Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference, historian and author Larry Lester gave a powerful talk on Why Black Baseball History Matters on July 8, 2016, in Kansas City.

“[Negro League ballplayers] changed the landscape of American history,” Lester said. “When you take time to discover … their achievements against the background of discrimination and political upheaval, you make black baseball history all that much more impressive.”

Lester is the chair of SABR’s Negro Leagues Committee and the co-organizer of the “biggest and best black baseball conference in America.” Earlier this year, he was a recipient of SABR’s Henry Chadwick Award, honoring baseball’s greatest historians, statisticians, annalists, and archivists for their invaluable contributions to the research community.

Watch a video of Lester’s talk below or click here to view it on YouTube.

More photos and highlights from the 2016 Malloy Conference can be found at SABR.org/malloy.

 



Originally published: July 8, 2016. Last Updated: April 22, 2020.