Editing Baseball color line (section)

==Origins==

[[File:William Edward White (1879).jpg|thumb|William Edward White]]
Before the 1860s [[American Civil War|Civil War]], black players participated in the highest levels of baseball.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Rossi |first=John P. |url=https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=tZxjDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA125 |title=Baseball and American Culture: A History |date=2018-09-04 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-1-5381-0289-3 |language=en}}</ref> During the war, baseball rose to prominence as a way to bring soldiers from various regions of the country together. In the aftermath of the war, baseball became a tool for national reconciliation; due to the racial issues involved in the war, baseball's unifying potential was mainly pursued among white Americans.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Swanson |first=Ryan |date=2014-01-01 |title=When Baseball Went White |url=https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/unpresssamples/270/?utm_source=digitalcommons.unl.edu/unpresssamples/270&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages |journal=University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters}}</ref>

The formal beginning of segregation followed the baseball season of 1867. On October 16, the Pennsylvania State Convention of Baseball in Harrisburg denied admission to the "colored" [[Pythian Baseball Club]].<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.philadelphiabaseballreview.com/pythian2.html |work= Philadelphia Baseball Review | title=On the field, Pythian baseball club was rivaled by few| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110513050519/http://www.philadelphiabaseballreview.com/pythian2.html| date= April 2008| first= Patrick|last= Gordon| archive-date= May 13, 2011 | access-date=August 30, 2013| quote= The Pythians finished 1867 with a 9–1 record but suffered a setback on October 16 in Harrisburg when the club applied and was denied admission into the Pennsylvania State Convention of Baseball, a state organization designed to promote a professional approach to the game. "The committee reported favorably on all credentials except for the ones presented by the Pythians, which they intentionally neglected", noted author Michael Lomax. The [[National Association of Base Ball Players]] upheld the Pennsylvania State Association's ruling and adopted a formal ban on the inclusion of black players and clubs.}}</ref>
[[Major League Baseball]]'s [[National League (baseball)|National League]], founded in 1876, had no black players in the 19th century, except for a recently discovered one, [[William Edward White]], who played in a single game in 1879 and who apparently [[passing (racial identity)|passed]] as [[white people|white]].  The National League and the other main major league of the day, the [[American Association (19th century)|American Association]], had no written rules against having black players. In 1884, the American Association had two black players, [[Moses Fleetwood Walker]] and, for a few months of the season, his brother [[Weldy Walker]], both of whom played for the [[Toledo Blue Stockings]].[[File:Moses Fleetwood Walker.jpg|thumb|upright|left|[[Moses Fleetwood Walker]] of the [[Toledo Blue Stockings]], {{circa|1884}}]]
The year before, in 1883, prominent National League player [[Cap Anson]] had threatened to have his Chicago team sit out an exhibition game at then-minor league Toledo if Toledo's Fleetwood Walker played. Anson backed down, but not before uttering the word ''[[nigger]]'' on the field and vowing that his team would not play in such a game again.<ref>{{cite web|last=Husman |first=John R. |title=August 10, 1883: Cap Anson vs. Fleet Walker |url=https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/august-10-1883-cap-anson-vs-fleet-walker}} the Society for American Baseball Research.</ref> In 1884, the Chicago club made a successful threat months in advance of another exhibition game at Toledo, to have Fleet Walker sit out. In 1887, Anson made a successful threat by telegram before an exhibition game against the [[Newark Little Giants]] of the [[International League]] that it must not play its two black players, Fleet Walker and pitcher [[George Stovey]].<ref>{{cite web|last=Mancuso |first=Peter |title=July 14, 1887: The color line is drawn |url=https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/july-14-1887-color-line-drawn}}, the Society for American Baseball Research.</ref> The influence of players such as Anson and the general racism in society led to segregation efforts in professional baseball.

On July 14, 1887, the high-minor International League voted to ban the signing of new contracts with black players. By a 6-to-4 vote, the league's entirely white teams voted in favor and those with at least one black player voted in the negative. The Binghamton (New York) team, which had just released its two black players, voted with the majority.<ref name="Rosenberg_2016">{{cite web |last=Rosenberg |first=Howard W. |title=Fantasy Baseball: The Momentous Drawing of the Sport's 19th-Century 'Color Line' is still Tripping up History Writers |url=https://howardwrosenberg.atavist.com/racism-bbhistory |website=The Atavist |date=June 14, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160821160011/https://howardwrosenberg.atavist.com/racism-bbhistory |archive-date=August 21, 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref> Right after the vote, the sports weekly ''[[Sporting Life (American newspaper)|Sporting Life]]'' stated, "Several representatives declared that many of the best players in the league are anxious to leave on account of the colored element, and the board finally directed Secretary [C.D.] White to approve of no more contracts with colored men."<ref name="Rosenberg_2016" /> On the afternoon of the International League vote, Anson's Chicago team played the game in Newark alluded to above, with Stovey and the apparently injured Walker sitting out. Anson biographer Howard W. Rosenberg, concluded that, "A fairer argument is that rather than being an architect [of segregation in professional baseball, as the late baseball racism historian Jules Tygiel termed Anson in his 1983 ''Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy''], that he was a reinforcer of it, including in the National League – and that he had no demonstrable influence on changing the course of events apart from his team's exhibition-game schedule."

The year 1887 was also the high point of achievement of black players in the high minor leagues, and each National League team that year except for Chicago played exhibition games against teams with black players, including against Newark and other International League teams.<ref>Rosenberg 2016; in part citing, for exhibition game data, {{cite thesis |degree=PhD |last=Bond|first=Gregory|title=Jim Crow at Play: Race, Manliness, and the Color Line in American Sports, 1876–1916|year=2008 |publisher=University of Wisconsin—Madison |page=262 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fcaWQQAACAAJ&q=%22Jim+Crow+at+Play:+Race,+Manliness,+and+the+Color+Line+in+American+Sports,+1876-1916%22}}</ref> Some of Anson's notoriety stems from a 1907 book on early black players in baseball by black minor league player and later black semi-professional team manager [[Sol White]], who was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2006. White claimed that, "Were it not for this same man Anson, there would have been a colored player in the National League in 1887."<ref name="Rosenberg_2006">{{Cite book|last=Rosenberg|first=Howard W.|title=Cap Anson 4: Bigger Than Babe Ruth: Captain Anson of Chicago|publisher=Tile Books|year=2006|isbn=978-0-9725574-3-6 |pages=423, 425–30}}</ref><ref name="Rosenberg_2016" />

After the 1887 season, the International League retained just two black players for the 1888 season, both of whom were under contracts signed before the 1887 vote, [[Frank Grant (baseball)|Frank Grant]] of the [[Buffalo Bisons (1886–1970)|Buffalo Bisons]] and [[Moses Fleetwood Walker]] of the Syracuse franchise, with Walker staying in the league for most of 1889. In September 1887, eight members of the [[History of the St. Louis Cardinals (1875–1919)#Drawing the color line in baseball (1887)|St. Louis Browns]] of the then-major American Association (who would ultimately change their nickname to the current [[St. Louis Cardinals]]) staged a mutiny during a road trip, refusing to play a game against the New York [[Cuban Giants]], the first all-black professional baseball club, and citing both racial and practical reasons: that the players were banged up and wanted to rest so as to not lose their hold on first place.  At the time, the St. Louis team was in Philadelphia, and a story that ran in the ''[[The Times (Philadelphia)|Philadelphia Times]]'' stated that "for the first time in the history of base ball the color line has been drawn."<ref>Rosenberg 2006, p. 433</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Rowell|first=Jeffrey Clarke |date=Spring 2015 |title=Moses Fleetwood Walker and the Establishment of a Color Line in Major League Baseball, 1884–1887|url=http://cime.gsu.edu/files/2014/04/ARJHVolume12.pdf |journal=Atlanta Review of Journalism History |volume=12 |page=111 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150909065452/http://cime.gsu.edu/files/2014/04/ARJHVolume12.pdf |archive-date=September 9, 2015 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/99920737/sports-of-the-season/ |title=Sports of the Season |newspaper=The Critic |location=[[Washington, D.C.]] |page=4 |date=September 12, 1887 |accessdate=April 17, 2022 |via=newspapers.com}}</ref> Black players were gone from the high minors after 1889 and a trickle of them were left in the minor leagues within a decade.  Besides White's single game in 1879, the only black players in major league baseball for around 75 years were Fleet Walker and his brother Weldy, both in 1884 with Toledo. A big change would take place starting in 1946, when Jackie Robinson played for the [[Montreal Royals]] in the International League.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/sports/27hall.html?pagewanted=2&sq=jackie%20robinson%202006&st=cse&scp=18 "Breaking a Barrier 60 Years Before Robinson,"] ''The New York Times'', July 27, 2006.</ref>