Hanging Curve (28 page)

By 1924, more than four million Americans were members of the Ku Klux Klan, among them the governors of Texas and Oregon, the mayors of Atlanta and Denver, five United States senators, a future Supreme Court Justice, and future Hall of Fame baseball players Rogers Hornsby and Tris Speaker. The Invisible Empire was strongest in Indiana, where one out of every three white Protestant men was a Klansman, including the governor and the mayor of Indianapolis. The rapid rise of the Klan was followed by an even faster decline. After the 1925 conviction of Grand Dragon David C. Stephenson for the rape and murder of a young white woman, membership in the Ku Klux Klan plummeted, and the organization soon lost its political power.

In the 1920s, 281 blacks were lynched in the United States, while the NAACP continued to press for the passage of antilynching legislation. The federal bill to outlaw lynching never became law.

After 1922, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis forbade major leaguers from playing in major-league uniforms or using major-league team names in games against Negro League clubs. He later ruled that only “all-star” white teams could play Negro Leaguers. When the all-star teams still failed to win often enough, he tried to prohibit such games entirely. During his twenty-four-year tenure as baseball commissioner, there was no progress in integrating baseball.

The Eastern Colored League began operations in 1923. Alex Pompez, owner of the New York Cuban Giants and organized crime figure, was one of the men who negotiated the truce with Rube Foster and the Negro National League that led to the first Negro League World Series in 1924.

James “Cool Papa” Bell, who began the 1922 season as a pitcher with the semipro East St. Louis Cubs before joining the St. Louis Stars, went on to play Negro League baseball for a quarter of a century. He was widely hailed as the fastest man to ever play the game, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974. Oscar Charleston’s baseball career spanned half a century, from his playing debut with the Indianapolis ABCs in 1915 to managing the 1954 Indianapolis Clowns, winners of the Negro American League championship. Considered by many the greatest all-around ballplayer in Negro League history, Charleston was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1976. Neither Cool Papa Bell nor Oscar Charleston ever played a game in the major leagues.

In 1944 Sportsman’s Park became the last major-league park to desegregate. That same year, the Browns won their first and only American League pennant, losing to the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. Ten years later, the Browns’ franchise moved to Baltimore and was renamed the Orioles.

In 1946 former Cardinals’ manager Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to a contract with the Brooklyn Dodger organization. When Robinson took the field in 1947, he broke the color barrier that had stood for more than sixty years.

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Copyright © 1999 by Troy Soos

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First Kensington Hardcover Printing: October 1999

ISBN: 978-0-7582-8833-2

 

eISBN-13: 978-0-7582-8783-0
eISBN-10: 0-7582-8783-6
First Kensington Electronic Edition: August 2013