Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 1902–1931: The Negro National League and Eastern Colored League by Michael E. Lomax (review)

Michael Lomax continues the story he began in Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 1860–1901: Operating by Any Means Necessary with his new book published by Syracuse University Press. Lomax picks up the thread at the turn of the century as blacks continued to be excluded from Organized Baseball yet were determined to organize teams for entertainment and to be a part of the black economic system. The first three decades of the twentieth century were a time of great change among African Americans. Slowly at first but later in great waves, blacks left the South and moved north to cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland and changed the face of major cities in the Midwest. The Great Migration found blacks encountering new (or old) forms of racism in their new homes, and they struggled against those systems to make a place for themselves.

One of those places was baseball. While blacks were excluded from Organized Baseball, black baseball teams, during the first two decades of the twentieth century, were able to succeed (to a certain degree) by barnstorming around the country and playing white semipro teams. This was an era when white semipro teams prospered, and they did not have a problem playing top-notch black baseball teams. Lomax delves deeply using manuscript collections and relying heavily on the African American newspaper reports of games. The newspapers also served as a sounding board for editorials by black sportswriters and articles by members of black baseball—such as Rube Foster, Sol White, and John Henry Lloyd—to share their thoughts with readers about the direction black baseball needed to go. Most of the black newspapermen felt that black baseball should attempt to follow the model of Organized Baseball and established leagues, where fans would be able to follow their favorite team and read the paper to get the standings and study the statistics of their preferred players. Rube Foster appeared to understand this, but even he wavered at taking his Chicago American Giants on the road for weekend games, preferring to stay in Chicago and play at his home park.

The baseball men had a difficult time conforming to a league formula. Barnstorming was a major factor in the development of black baseball, and it was difficult for owners to give that up for a league. From 1902 to 1931, organized leagues, or associations, existed, but they rarely were successful. Owners held the power, and they tended to do what they wanted to do without regard for the success of the league. Ballpark ownership was another challenge for the leagues. Very few black teams owned their own ballpark. Most rented them from white owners, and a few never had a home park. Some teams wanted to play at home every weekend and did not care to travel for league games. This created great inequity in league standings, as it was quite common for teams to play an unequal amount of league games.

Team ownership was also an issue. The majority of black baseball teams were owned by black men who had become successful enough to purchase a baseball team. Still, there were a number of white owners, and this continued to be a troublesome matter for some of the black owners. As if the owner situation weren’t difficult enough, there was the issue of booking a team to play in a certain area. For example, Lomax chronicles the problems facing teams wanting to play in New York City. These teams had to deal with Nat Strong, a booking agent and the owner of the Brooklyn Royal Giants, who controlled who could play whom and where in New York. Strong refused to cooperate with other owners to improve the overall quality of black baseball and was only in the game for himself.

Lomax’s book is really two stories that followed one after the other. The first...