What Does It Mean To Be A “Former Negro Leagues Player”?

For the past several years Georgia-native Roosevelt Jackson has been making appearances across the country at baseball parks and at public events commemorating Negro baseball.  At these events, the now 95-year old African-American is usually hailed as the “oldest living former Negro Leagues player.”

Moreover, in 2010, the Georgia State Senate adopted a resolution praising Mr. Jackson for his contributions to baseball, to civil rights, and to African-American culture.

Though by all accounts, Jackson is a gracious, intelligent, and compassionate individual who devotes much of his public remarks to the accomplishments of Martin Luther King, Barrack Obama, and the Civil Rights Movement, a number of individuals knowledgeable about the history of the African-American baseball have pointed out that there is no record that Roosevelt Jackson ever played in the Negro Leagues.

Is there merit to such charges?  Well, yes and no.

There is no doubt that Jackson (pictured below) played and managed in a number of black-only professional and semi-professional baseball leagues in the 1930’s and 1940’s.  That much is uncontested.

What Jackson did not do was to play in any of the all-black leagues traditionally thought of as the Negro “Major” Leagues. So the “problem” of whether Roosevelt Jackson is a veteran of the Negro Leagues is really one of semantics.

(This terminology problem is not limited to the history of the Negro leagues.  Even today, many baseball fans use the terms “professional” baseball” and “Major League” baseball interchangeably, although “professional” baseball is logically a much broader category that includes the Minor Leagues of Organized Baseball as well as independent professional leagues.)

The “Major Leagues” of black baseball are usually viewed as those leagues which contained teams drawn from a wide geographic area and which included most of the top African-American baseball players.  The seven leagues widely viewed as “major leagues” are listed below:

  • Negro National League I (1920-1931)
  • Eastern Colored League (1923-1928)
  • American Negro League (1929)
  • East-West League (1932, folded mid-season)
  • Negro Southern League (major league, 1932 only, otherwise a minor league)
  • Negro National League II (1933-1948)
  • Negro American League (1937-1960)

Most of the historical accounts of Negro League baseball focus upon the above leagues, hence, the frequent assumption that “Negro League” and “Negro Major League” are synonyms.

To his credit, Roosevelt Jackson has never claimed to have played in any of the above listed leagues.  His career was spent almost entirely playing in all black minor or semi-pro leagues, most of which were located in southern Florida.  The list of teams with which he played includes the largely forgotten Miami Globetrotters, Hollywood Redbirds, Miami Red Sox, Belle Glade Redwings, Florida Cuban Giants, the Lucky Stars, the Danny Dodgers; Ft. Lauderdale Braves, Pompano Beach Yankees, Ft. Lauderdale Lucky Stars, Ft. Lauderdale Gray Sox, and the Buffalo Red Sox (a travelling team that appears to have played many of its games in West Virginia and Pennsylvania).

Jackson is a survivor of an era in which even baseball was rigorously segregated, and even if he did “only” play in the Negro “minor leagues,” his accomplishments, memories, and character are clearly worthy of remembrance.

Milwaukeean Dennis Biddle has for many years claimed to have been one of the younger veterans of the Negro Leagues, and has even presented statistics he supposedly compiled as a pitcher for the Chicago American Giants in 1953 and 1954.  He also has claimed to have been signed by the Chicago Cubs in 1955, only to suffer a career ending injury in spring training.

The problem with Biddle’s story is that the team he supposed play for, the Chicago American Giants of the Negro American League, went out of existence after the 1952 season, before the time that Biddle allegedly played for the team.  The Chicago Defender, the Windy City’s leading African-American newspaper reported in the spring of 1953 that the American Giants might be revived for the second half of the 1953 season, but no revival was forthcoming.

It is possible that Biddle could have played for some semi-pro team in Chicago that took up the name Chicago American Giants in 1953, but Biddle’s version of his story clearly indicates that he played in the Negro Major Leagues.  (There also appears to no independent evidence of his signing by the Cubs.)

Although a number of Milwaukeeans, ranging from Marty Greenberg to the Brewer upper management to Tom Barrett, have in the past uncritically accepted Biddle’s story, others in the baseball world have questioned its veracity, including the National Sports Law Institute, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, and the Black Athlete Sports Network.

Whatever the merits of Biddle’s claim, the existence of veterans of black baseball, whether they played at the major, minor, or semi-pro level, is an important reminder of an unpleasant aspect of our society’s past.  It is profoundly sad that a country founded on the premise that “all men are created equal” could exhibit such a degree of racism in the sport that was for a long time the “National Pastime.”  However, it is also a reminder of the true resilience of African-American culture in the age of Jim Crow, and the history of the Negro Leagues is clearly worth preserving.

Jackson player

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When Did Slavery Really End in the United States?

During the 2012-2013 academic year, Marquette University has sponsored “The Freedom Project,” which was described at the outset as “a year-long commemoration of the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War that will explore the many meanings and histories of emancipation and freedom in the United States and beyond.” Much of the recent focus has been upon the Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued in its final form by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, an event described in impressive detail by Professor Idleman in an earlier post.

An interesting question rarely addressed is whether either the Emancipation Proclamation or the subsequently adopted Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution applied to “Indian Territory.”

By Indian Territory, I refer to that part of the unorganized portion of the American public domain that was set apart for the Native American tribes. More specifically, I use the term to refer to those lands located in modern day Oklahoma that was set aside for the relocation of the so-call “Civilized Tribes” of the Southeastern United States: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole.

These tribes were the only Native American groups to formally recognize the institution of African-slavery. As Southerners, the Civilized Tribes had accepted the institution of African-slavery, and at the outset of the Civil War, African-American slaves made up 14% of the population of Indian Territory occupied by the civilized tribes.

As it turns out, neither document applied to Indian Territory, and consequently, slavery survived in that part of the United States for several months after it was abolished everywhere else with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December, 1865.

In 1861, the existence of slavery and a common “southern” heritage, combined with a history of disappointing dealings with the United States government, led the Civilized Tribes to side with the Confederacy rather than the Union. Although the tribes’ effort to secure admission to the Confederate States of America as an “Indian” state failed, each of the five Civilized Tribes entered into treaties with the Confederacy that at least kept open the possibility that they might someday be directly incorporated into the new nation.

(Less well-known is that the Confederacy also entered into treaties with the Comanches, Delawares, Osage, Quapaws, Senecas, Shawnees, and Wichitas.)

Many Civilized Tribe members served in uniform in the Confederate Army—and while some individual Native Americans fought for the Union—the loyalties of the tribes was primarily to the South. Most famously, the last Confederate general to surrender his troops to the Union Army was the Cherokee Stand Watie, who commanded an all-Indian brigade.

The Emancipation Proclamation by its own language appeared not to apply to Indian Territory, as it was specifically limited to “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States.” Since Indian Territory was not a “state,” the Proclamation had no impact in Indian Territory, even if they were arguably in rebellion against the national government.

However, the year before, the United States Congress had enacted legislation abolishing slavery in the “territories.” Act of June 19, 1862, ch. 112, 12 Stat. 432. (According to the 1860 Census, small numbers of slave were present in Utah, Nevada, and Nebraska territories, areas that had been opened to slavery by the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, as well as the Indian-owned slaves in the area that would like become the state of Oklahoma.)

Was it possible that this act had outlawed slavery in Indian Territory? It seems unlikely, given the unique status of the Indian Territory. Although referred to as a “territory,” “Indian Territory” (or “Indian Country” as it was also called) had never been organized as a formal territory (even though it was apparently treated as one for census purposes in 1860.)

Moreover, territories were intended to be proto-states, but in 1862, there is no evidence that anyone in the Congress imagined that the Indian Territory, home to semi-sovereign Indian Tribes, would someday be a state. The problem of Native American tribes coexisting with state governments was what had made the Trail of Tears necessary three decades earlier. Consequently, it was never an actual territory and thus was not one of the areas covered by the 1862 act.

Moreover, subsequent events involving the Cherokees suggest that Native Americans in Indian Territory did not believe that either the 1862 Act or the Emancipation Proclamation had ended slavery in their jurisdiction. In 1862, John Ross, the president of the Cherokee nation, broke with the Confederacy and cast his lot with the Lincoln Administration. Although a majority of Cherokee remained loyal to the Confederacy (and pro-slavery), Ross was able to use his influence on the National Council of the Cherokee Nation to repudiate the treaty with the Confederacy and to abolish slavery in February 1863, slightly more than a month after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. (Pro-Confederate Cherokee, who were concentrated in the southern part of the Cherokee lands, ignored these actions.)

The National Council’s 1863 decision to abolish slavery, if nothing else, illustrated the beliefs of pro-Union Cherokees that neither to Abolition of Slavery in the Territories Act of 1862, nor the Emancipation Proclamation had changed to status of slaves in Indian Territory.

Because of the widespread view that the Tribes were independent sovereigns, physically located in the United States, but not part of the United States, it also seems unlikely that the drafters and ratifiers of the Thirteen Amendment understood that it would end slavery in Indian Territory.

Moreover, the language of the Thirteenth Amendment itself seems to rule out application to the Civilized Tribes. The somewhat awkwardly worded amendment provides that it applies “within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The problem is not with the use of “their.” Until the 1870’s, the United States was commonly referred as a plural noun, even when one was talking about a single entity. .

The problem is that Indian Territory was not within the “jurisdiction” of the United States as that term was understood in the 1860’s. Given that the United States government used the international law device of treaties to deal with all Indian Tribes, including the Civilized Tribes, the Lincoln Administration continued the practice of treating the Indian tribes as though they were separate sovereigns, outside the jurisdiction of the United States.

The Fourteenth Amendment, enacted in Congress the following year, had a similar disclaimer: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States …” which provided a continuing rationale for treating native-born tribal Indians as non-citizens.

In fact, in 1866, the United States addressed the slavery in Indian Territory issue by entering into new treaties with each of the Civilized Tribes (although the treaty with the Choctaw and the Chickasaw was a joint treaty). Until these treaties, which were signed between March and July and proclaimed in July and August, only the Cherokee had taken steps to abolish slavery. However, in each of the 1866 treaties the tribal signatory acknowledged that slavery would no longer be recognized as a legal institution by the tribe.

If we simply go by the dates on which the Tribes ratified these treaties, slavery in the continental United States came to an end as a legal institution on June 14, 1866, when the Creek Tribe agreed to abandon African-American slavery. The was, somewhat ironically, the day after Congress approved the Fourteenth Amendment.

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The Basketball Kings and the Football Colts are the Most Frequently Relocated Teams

Professional sports team relocations have been a feature of the American sports industry since the nineteenth century.  Team owners have been willing to move from one city to another, and, occasionally, from one league to another, in search of greater profits.   While some relocations have produced litigation and legislative efforts to regulate the movement process, in most situations the decision to move has been left to the team owner.

It now appears that the Sacramento Kings of the National Basketball Association are poised to move to Seattle, a city that lost its previous NBA team, the Supersonics, to Oklahoma City in 2008.  Since the story broke, a number of publications, including the Wall Street Journal, have reported that the Kings are the most travelled major league sports franchise in American history.  That is true, although at least one other current team can claim to have moved as frequently.

The current Kings began life in the 1920’s as a semi-professional team in Rochester, New York.  In 1945, the Rochester Royals joined the National Basketball League, then switched to the Basketball Association of America in 1948, and in 1949, it was one of the inaugural teams of the National Basketball Association which was formed with the BAA merged with the NBL.

In 1957, the Royals moved to Cincinnati, and in 1972, they moved to Kansas City and Omaha, splitting their home games between the two cities.  Because the American League baseball team in Kansas City was already known as the Royals, the team changed its name to the Kings.  After the 1974-75 season, the team began playing all its games in Kansas City, where it remained until it moved to Sacramento in 1985.  If they do move to Seattle, that will be the team’s sixth city.

However, a case can be made that the Indianapolis Colts of the National Football League have also played in at least six different cities.  Here’s the argument.

From 1913 to 1916, the top semi-professional team in Dayton, Ohio was called the Cadets.  In 1916, the team apparently became fully professional and changed its name to the Dayton Triangles.  The Triangles quickly established themselves as one of the strongest professional elevens in the Midwest, and when the National Football League was organized in 1920 (originally as the American Professional Football Association) the Triangles were a charter member.

The Triangles played in the NFL until 1929, when the team finished last in the 12-team league with an 0-6 record while being outscored 136-7.  (The 1929 championship was won by the Green Bay Packers who finished the season 12-0-1, which is still the second best record in NFL history).

At the conclusion of the season, the Dayton owners sold the team’s franchise to New Yorkers Bill Dwyer (a fomer NHL owner) and Jack Tepler (coach of the NFL’s Orange Toronados).  The new owners moved the team to Brooklyn  and renamed the team the Dodgers in imitation of the borough’s major league baseball team. (Trademark protection did not extend to team names in 1930.)

Given Dayton’s poor performance in 1929, the new owners made no effort to resign any of the Triangles, and instead recruited most of its players from the ranks of Tepler’s former players who had previously been under contract to the Orange Tornadoes.  Either the NFL was not using a reserve clause in its contracts in 1929, or else the Orange team (which moved to Newark in 1930) decided that it was not worth going to court to prevent its former players from jumping teams.

In 1937, a 50% interest in the Brooklyn team was purchased by future New York (baseball) Yankee owner Dan Topping.  Topping, who eventually gained complete control of the team, kept the Dodgers in Brooklyn, but in 1944, he changed the team’s name to the Brooklyn Tigers.  The team had gone 2-8-0 in its final season as the Dodgers, but the name change hardly helped as the club finished 0-10-0 in 1944.

As a result of the wartime manpower-shortage, the Brooklyn Tigers combined with the Boston Yanks for the 1945 season.  The largest number of the teams starters had played for Brooklyn in 1944, but the team was coached by Boston coach Herb Kopf, and the club played four of its five home games in Boston.  (The fifth home game, with the New York Giants, was played in Yankee Stadium.)

(Combined teams were a feature of the NFL during World War II.  In 1943, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles combined for the season, and in 1944, Pittsburgh and the Chicago Cardinals did the same.)

However, after the 1945 season, Topping decided to move his team to the All America Football Conference, a new major league football enterprise designed to compete directly with the NFL.   In the new league, Topping’s team was renamed the New York Yankees, and it played its home games in Yankee Stadium.   Although most of the Yankees were recruited from the ranks of returning veterans and recent college graduates, Topping brought several of the best of his Tigers/Yanks players with him to the new team, including fullback Pug Manders, tackle Don Currivan, and fullback Eddie Prokof, the first round draft pick of the Tigers/Yanks in the 1945 NFL draft.

To fill the gap opened by the move of the Tigers to the AAFC and in anticipation of a post-World War II sports boom, the NFL allowed the Boston Yanks—the Tigers former partner–to move to New York City where the team played as the New York Bulldogs.

After four seasons of competition, the two leagues agreed to merge.  Cleveland, San Francisco, and Baltimore (the original Colts) were added to the ten team NFL, now (temporarily, as it turned out) dubbed the American-National Football League.   Although the mechanics of the transaction are a little obscure, as part of the merger of the leagues, the AAFC Yankees and the NFL Bulldogs were permitted to merge into a single “second” New York team.  Ownership of the combined team, called the New York Yanks, went to Bulldogs owner Ted Collins (who paid $1 million for the Yankees).

The combined team was coached by Red Strader, the former coach of the Yankees, and the vast majority of the team’s players had played for the Yankees the year before.  Although the New York Giants were permitted to take several players from the Yankees as deferred compensation for allowing the new Yanks to move into their territory, nine of the eleven starters for the 1949 Yankees played for the 1950 Yanks.  Essentially, Collins bought the Yankees and substituted them for his team in New York.  Moreover, the similarity of team name, coach, and players undoubtedly led New York football fans to associate the 1950 NFL team with its 1949 AAFC predecessor.

Although the 1950 Yanks compiled a 7-5-0 record, the following year the team slumped to 1-9-2.  At this point owner Collins decided to get out of the football business and sold his franchise to the league.    The NFL in turn transferred the franchise to a group from Texas, who moved the team from New York to Dallas, where the team was dubbed the Texans.  Along with the franchise came the roster of the 1951 New York Yanks.

The 1952 Dallas Texans tuned out to be one of the biggest disasters in NFL history.  Not only did the team lose its first seven games of the season, but white residents of Jim Crow Dallas seemed reluctant to cheer for a team with black players.  (Several  of the former Yanks were African-Americans including star running back Buddy Young.)  In their first four home games, the Texans never drew as many as 18,000 fans while playing in the 70,000 seat Cotton Bowl.  After Game 7, a 27-6 home loss to the Los Angeles Rams in which the team drew just over 10,000 fans, the franchise was returned to the league.

The NFL moved the team offices to Hershey, Pennsylvania (near the NFL offices in Philadelphia), and the Texans played one of their two remaining home games in Akron, Ohio, and the other in Detroit against the Lions.  With only a single victory over the Bears (in the Akron game), the Texans finished their only season at 1-11-0.

After the season, the abandoned  Dallas franchise was awarded to Carroll Rosenblum of Baltimore who renamed the team the Colts.  (The original Colts had folded after the 1950 season, becoming the last NFL team to go out of business.)  The Colts initially flourished in Baltimore, but faltering attendance led the team to relocate to Indianapolis in 1984, where the team has played ever since.

So Dayton became Brooklyn and Brooklyn became New York after a one year stay in Boson.  New York  became Dallas and then Baltimore and then, finally, Indianapolis.  Counting the temporary combination of 1945, the team has played home games in seven different cities.  (I do realize that since 1898, New York and Brooklyn have been part of the same city, but for sports purposes, they have traditionally been treated as though they were two separate municipalities.)

It would be interesting to see the Colts play a “turn-back-the-clock” game next year wearing Dayton Triangle uniforms, but I am not holding my breath.

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