Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 1902-1931: The Negro National and Eastern Colored Leagues

2Black ProfessionalBaseball’s Growth andExpansion, 1906–1907

28 2 Black Professional Baseball’s Growth and Expansion, 1906–1907 Beginning in 1906, black professional baseball experienced tremendous growth and expansion. Several black clubs emerged in the East to challenge established teams like the Philadelphia Giants and Cuban X Giants for players and gate receipts. Many of these new teams, like the Brooklyn Royal Giants, were run by African American entrepreneurs who epitomized the new black middle class that arose in the early twentieth century. This black business and professional class left its mark in the development of business ventures, institutions, and organizational politics . This growth spurt of eastern black baseball clubs led to the creation of the National Association of Colored Baseball Clubs of the United States and Cuba (NACBC). While this new organization was supposedly modeled after the white Major Leagues, it did not operate in the traditional sense of competing for a pennant and sponsoring a season-ending championship series. Rather, the primary focus of the NACBC was to tighten control over the player force, maintain the teams’ symbiotic business relationship with white semiprofessional teams, gain access to the better parks to generate more gate receipts, and develop extended barnstorming tours nationally and internationally. The NACBC set out to accomplish this by concentrating power in the hands of a few individuals and gaining control of decision-making process. The Leland Giants, on the other hand, experienced a dismal 1906 season, and Frank Leland made several decisions to improve his ball club the following year. Leland lost several of his players to eastern black Black Professional Baseball’s Growth and Expansion ◆ 29 clubs and, in 1907, he retaliated by signing Rube Foster away from the Philadelphia Giants. Foster lured several black players from the East to Chicago and transformed the Leland Giants into a top-notch black club. Simultaneously, Leland made an alliance with several members of Chicago’s new black leadership and formed the Leland Giants Baseball and Amusement Association (LGBBA). The LGBBA was an enterprise designed to cater to Chicago’s growing black consumer market and concurrently to maintain the Giants’ symbiotic business relationship with white semipros. Leland also attempted to expand his influence in the Midwest by organizing a National Colored League of Professional Ball Clubs. While the proposed baseball league ended in failure, its demise did in no way diminish the LGBBA’s significant progress within a short period of time. The growth of black baseball in the early twentieth century coincided with the dramatic change in patterns of urban life. The growing population alone was staggering, as the total number of inhabitants in the United States expanded from 75 million in 1900 to 100 million during World War I. The urban city became the focus of the new America. Rural villages became small towns. Towns and trading centers grew into medium-sized cities like Minneapolis, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Detroit. In the urban-industrial heartland of the Northeast–North Central region, an entirely new type of city emerged: the modern industrial metropolis.1 Technological innovations and industrial expansion also contributed to this era of dramatic change. Instead of walking to work, people could now travel by horse car and beginning in the 1890s by electric streetcar. These new modes of transportation made possible the emerging exodus to the suburbs or to outlying areas of the city, allowing urban populations to arrange themselves by racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic groups. Furthermore , the expansion and diversification of large industries resulted in a more rigid system of zoning regulations than had existed before. These factors were instrumental in the emergence of huge urban centers linked by an interconnection of economic relationships but divided into numerous commercial, industrial, and residential districts. It was within this context that John W. Connor formed the Brooklyn Royal Giants. Organized in 1904, the Royal Giants club was the 30 ◆ Independent Ball, 1902–1920 first in New York that was exclusively black owned and operated since the late 1880s. The Royal Giants began their inaugural season playing games primarily on the weekends. Connor represented the new black leadership that emerged in the early twentieth century that became involved in the management and ownership of black baseball teams. Connor was born in 1878 in Portsmouth, Virginia, and after spending a short time in school, he ran off and joined the United States Navy and served in the Spanish-American War. Unlike Sol White or Clarence Williams , Connor was not...