Fans tip their cap to celebrate Negro Leagues centennial

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum recognizes milestone despite COVID-19

By Brian Burnes

On Sunday, August 16, 2020, the Kansas City Royals lost 4-2 to the Minnesota Twins.

But the score wasn’t as meaningful as the game’s date and location.

The Royals and Twins played at Target Field in Minneapolis, where local resident George Floyd had been killed during a May encounter with police.

On that same August 16, Major League Baseball observed the 100th anniversary of the 1920 founding in Kansas City of what today is referred to as the Negro Leagues. That was the parallel federation of teams - comprised of Black athletes excluded from participating in the “big leagues” of that era - which organized their own alliances, operating across a segregated America.

On that Sunday every major league player, coach and umpire wore a commemorative patch to mark the leagues’ 100th anniversary, and all 30 teams incorporated Negro Leagues history into their game-day presentations.

It represented an unprecedented level of attention by Major League Baseball to the history of the Negro Leagues, and at least some of it was due to the work of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, one of Jackson County’s most high-profile nonprofit historical organizations.

Only a few months before, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, museum staffers had postponed a long list of celebratory Negro Leagues centennial events. But Floyd’s death and the subsequent protests that followed provided an urgent new context for the museum’s longstanding message of triumph over intolerance.

“We moved into a time of social and civil unrest that was reminiscent of the 1960s,” Bob Kendrick, museum president, said recently.

“That drew people to the museum, and that gives me great pride. If I am going to take solace in anything that has occurred over the last several tumultuous months - in addressing the issues of social injustice and systemic racism – it is how so many during this time have turned to the museum.

‘The museum is a social justice museum and a civil rights museum – just seen through the lens of baseball.”

Kendrick expressed similar sentiments on ESPN on August 16, and throughout the summer reporters and commentators from across the country sought out his perspective. “The social justice upheaval we’re experiencing magnifies and quantifies the value of our museum to a greater degree,” Kendrick told the Los Angeles Times.

In these interviews and others, Kendrick detailed how he considers Jackie Robinson’s 1947 debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers and the integration of Major League Baseball just as worthy a moment on the country’s civil rights timeline as President Harry Truman’s 1948 initiation of the desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous 1954 decision in “Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka,” finding the racial segregation of public education unconstitutional.

Discovering greatness

On February 13, 1920, a group of baseball entrepreneurs met at the Paseo YMCA, in what is now considered Kansas City’s 18th and Vine District.

The Negro National League, formed on that day, included eight teams, including the Kansas City Monarchs, and provided a new degree of permanence and stability to Black baseball.

In the years that followed, the Monarchs emerged as one of the Negro Leagues’ marquee teams. It won the first Negro Leagues World Series in 1924. During the Depression of the 1930s, the Monarchs management proved innovative, developing a portable lighting system that made night games possible.

In 1945, the team’s roster included a U.S. Army veteran and former University of California-Los Angeles athlete, Jackie Robinson.

Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers later that year and appeared in his first major league game in 1947.

Many Black and Latin athletes followed. The successful integration of Major League Baseball soon contributed to the demise of the Negro Leagues; the last Negro Leagues teams folded in the early 1960s.

But soon the larger Negro Leagues narrative began to grip the imagination of all baseball fans.

The 1970 publication of “Only the Ball Was White,” a history of the Negro Leagues by former New York newspaper editor Robert Peterson, prompted many to consider whether some of those Black athletes prevented from competing in the major leagues deserved induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Leroy “Satchel” Paige, former Monarch and longtime Kansas City resident, became the first former Negro Leagues player so honored in 1971.

The following year New York journalist Roger Kahn published “The Boys of Summer,” a history of the 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers and its most celebrated member, Jackie Robinson. That book, which has sold an estimated three million copies, helped make the Robinson story – and Negro Leagues story by extension – even more mainstream.

In 1990 organizers of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum filed its Missouri nonprofit incorporation papers.

The organization’s founding had followed the authorization the previous year of $20 million in public financing for the 18th and Vine District. Museum founders soon occupied a small space in the Lincoln Building, standing on that intersection’s southeast corner.

Among the 12 signatories on the museum’s nonprofit documents belonged to John “Buck” O’Neil, himself a former Kansas City Monarchs player and manager who, in 1962, had become the first Black coach in Major League Baseball with the Chicago Cubs.

For years O’Neil had lived in Kansas City. But the 1994 “Baseball” documentary by Ken Burns, shown on public television stations across the country, rendered O’Neil a national figure.

For the rest of his life O’Neil – who died in 2006 - put his celebrity in service of the Negro Leagues’ legacy, presenting “Late Night” host David Letterman with a replica Monarchs jersey and generating nationwide publicity for the museum.

Kendrick’s first affiliation with the museum dates to 1993 when, as a senior copy writer with the Kansas City Star’s promotions department, he developed a marketing program for a Negro Leagues exhibit, “Discover Greatness.”

About 10,000 people came to the Lincoln Building to see it.

Kendrick continued as a volunteer in 1997 as the museum opened in its current location at 1616 East 18th St. Kendrick later became the museum’s marketing director and, in 2011, its president.

Many high-profile moments followed.

Resisting melancholy

Fox Sports, which broadcast the 2012 All-Star Game in Kansas City, presented a pre-game segment detailing the Negro Leagues and the 1920 Kansas City organizational meeting, narrated by actor Terrence Howard.

More film star face time followed in 2013 when actors Harrison Ford and Chadwick Boseman, the stars of “42,” the Jackie Robinson biopic, presented a Monarchs jersey from the film to Kendrick during its Kansas City premiere.

In 2017 Rob Manfred, Major League Baseball commissioner, and Tony Clark, Major League Baseball Players Association executive director, visited the museum to announce a joint $1 million donation. Some of that money had been earmarked for the new Buck O’Neil Education and Research Center, to be located in the former Paseo YMCA, about two blocks away.

Museum officials imagined the building as a center for baseball scholarship. They had hoped to offer the latest in interactive technology, enabling students and researchers to use the museum’s own collection of archival photographs and oral histories but also access digitized materials maintained by libraries across the country.

Those plans ended temporarily in 2018, when somebody broke into the Paseo YMCA and cut a second-floor water pipe.

The flood that followed ruined the first-floor space that already had been renovated.

The vandalism largely halted the center’s construction schedule. Kendrick, resisting melancholy, began planning the Negro Leagues February 13, 2020 centennial kick-off, to be held in the same building.

Those present that day included Jackson County Executive Frank White, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and Kansas City Royals majority owner John Sherman.

Commissioner Manfred returned to Kansas City to announce, with Xavier James, chief operating officer with the Major League Baseball Players Association, another joint $1 million museum donation.

“We were off and running,” Kendrick said. “And 30 days later everything came to a screeching halt.”

Because of the pandemic, the museum closed in mid-March. Staffers cancelled a long list of planned centennial events.

“The effect of COVID-19 on the philanthropic community made us think about whether or not it made sense to even try to execute these events,” Kendrick said. “We would be knocking on the doors of so many who then were locked into the cause of health and human services, helping those people in need.

“At that point my spirits were pretty low,” Kendrick added.

“I gave myself a few days to wallow in my own self-pity – because this had really knocked the wind out of my sails – but then I stopped wallowing.

“As I tell people all the time, if you are going to be a steward of the Negro Leagues story, you cannot wallow in self-pity. It would be doing a total disservice to all of those players and executives who called the Negro Leagues home.

“Once I resolved that internally with myself, then it was about trying to salvage as much of this year as I possibly could.”

Among the museum’s centennial plans had been a Negro Leagues recognition day, scheduled for June 27. Although Major League Baseball long has been supportive of the museum and its mission, that day’s schedule of events constituted a level of support that would be unprecedented.

At the time, Kendrick said, it remained unclear whether there would be any kind of baseball season at all in 2020, as negotiations between the union and officials often proved contentious.

But then he had an idea.

A few dignitaries

“I thought about a virtual ‘tip of the cap,’” said Kendrick.

“There is nothing more honorable for a baseball player to offer just a simple tip of the cap. I thought about a virtual tip of the cap campaign and I thought maybe if we could get a few dignitaries to do it, it could work.”

The museum’s “Tipping Your Cap” campaign launched in late June and more than a few dignitaries – as Kendrick had hoped - did it.

Very quickly, in viral fashion, those who tipped their caps included four former presidents (Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama), basketball stars (Michael Jordan, Earvin “Magic” Johnson), current and former Major League Baseball stars (Lorenzo Cain, Bo Jackson), current and former Kansas City Royals (Whit Merrifield, George Brett), singers (Tony Bennett, Otis Williams, an original member of the Temptations), diplomats (former Secretary of State Colin Powell), entertainers (Conan O’Brien, Stephen Colbert), other sports figures (Billie Jean King) and astronaut Chris Cassidy, who tipped his space helmet from on board the International Space Station.

Other initiatives have followed.

This September the museum announced plans for commemorative centennial coins to be produced by the U. S. Mint. With the support of U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt and U.S. Rep Emanuel Cleaver, coins are expected to go into production in 2022 and could generate significant revenue for the museum, at no taxpayer expense, once production costs are covered, Kendrick said.

On Friday, November 13, 2020, the 109th anniversary of the birth of Buck O’Neil, Kansas City public transportation officials are expected, during a Union Station ceremony, to unveil a streetcar honoring O’Neil.

In 2021 museum officials hope to re-schedule the postponed centennial events under the new theme of “Negro Leagues 101” – referencing the leagues’ 100th anniversary, and then adding one year.

Then there is the O’Neil education and research center.

The pandemic halted much of the progress on the project during 2020, said Kendrick, who hopes to see some portions of the building open by the time of O’Neil’s 110th birthday anniversary, in November, 2021.

Meanwhile, the museum’s educational mission has continued despite the pandemic. This past June, the museum reopened on a modified basis, reducing its hours of operation with guests registering in advance of visits.

Staffers have been able to continue to conduct virtual presentations to both students and corporate groups, said Raymond Doswell, museum curator and education director.

“We expect to continue to operate in a largely virtual environment through next summer,” Doswell said.

“But our space is limited right now and that is why we need the research center.”

The urgent dialogue in 2020 regarding racial and social justice has resulted in a continuing demand for perspective and context, Doswell added.

“Sports can be a good entry point for discussing issues of race,” he said.

“We can be provide lessons not only in African American history but also lessons in fortitude and entrepreneurship,” Doswell said.

“It is important to me to be empowering teachers with content and materials, as they are the ones who will be teaching, and making it work on a variety of different learning ability levels.”

In 2020 the interest in the Negro Leagues may never have been higher, Kendrick added.

“It was a great source of pride for me, on August 16, to see the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum trending on social media,” he said.

For Kendrick that day started with a 5 a.m. interview with baseball officials in South Korea and included a full 17 hours of interviews before ending at 10 p.m.

“I was exhausted, but it was the most gratifying level of exhaustion I have ever experienced,” Kendrick said.

“Throughout the day I constantly reflected back on my friend, Buck O’Neil.

“I first met him in 1993 and one of the first questions I posed to him was what had motivated him to build a Negro Leagues museum.

“His answer was very succinct and profound: ‘To be remembered.’

“And on August 16 the Negro Leagues were being remembered in a way I don’t think Buck ever would have dreamed of.”

Brian Burnes

Brian Burnes, a St. Louis native, from 1978 through 2016 served as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. In 1993, editors named him the newspaper’s history reporter, and he wrote or co-wrote eight books for The Star’s books division. He and his wife Debra live in Westwood, Kansas.

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