NLBM February 19, 2025
The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Frank Robinson becoming the first African American manager by paying homage to the great managers and executives of the Negro Leagues and the many innovations that helped change the game.
Kansas City, MO – The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) announced plans to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Frank Robinson becoming the first fulltime African American Manager in Major League Baseball (MLB) history in 1975 by launching a campaign to raise greater awareness of the brilliant managers of the Negro Leagues who were never afforded the opportunity to showcase their talents after the integration of the game.
The yearlong celebration falls under the banner of the museum’s “Leaders & Innovators” initiative, and it included the unveiling of a new logo and the announcement of the development of an exhibit that is slated to open to the public on May 25, 2025, and run through the 2025 World Series.
The exhibition will provide a retrospective of the Negro Leagues greatest managers and executives who have oftentimes been overlooked. The NLBM also hopes that this level of recognition will open the door for Negro League managers to be inducted in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.
“For years, the primary focus, as it relates to the Negro Leagues, has been on the courageous athletes who overcame tremendous social adversity to play the game they loved. It is important that we elevate the awareness of the brilliant baseball minds that would have assuredly been great managers had those doors opened,” said NLBM president, Bob Kendrick.
Currently, there are no managers from the Negro Leagues that are enshrined in the Hall of Fame. Rube Foster and Buck O’Neil were both outstanding managers, but they were inducted as contributors.
“It was 28 years after Jackie Robinson’s breaking of the color barrier before Frank Robinson breaks through as the major’s first Black manager when there were a plethora of great baseball strategists, tacticians and superb leaders who were never given a chance to assume those roles,” Kendrick said. “This is our opportunity to shine a brighter light on them with hopes that this heighten awareness will eventually lead to Negro League managers being inducted into the Hall of Fame and that it will serve as a tool of inspiration for more people of color to pursue managerial roles in our game.
Last year, Vic Harris, who made his mark in the Negro Leagues as both an outstanding player andlegendary manager, was on the Early Era Committee’s ballot for Hall of Fame consideration. Harris, the winningest manager in Negro Leagues history, guided the powerful Homestead Grays to seven Negro National League pennants. Only five other managers in baseball history have won seven pennants. His winning percentage of 547–278 (.663), is the highest percentage among managers who managed at least 500 games in baseball history. Only nine other managers have won over sixty percent of their games. And yet, Harris received less than five votes for induction.
Great managers like Harris, Foster, O’Neil, Candy Jim Taylor, C.I. Taylor, and a host of others will be featured in the museum’s new exhibition. In addition, the NLBM will create a digital content campaign to help to raise greater awareness of their exploits.
The eye-opening innovations that came out of the Negro Leagues are profound and they helped change the game. The new “Leaders & Innovators” logo, created by graphic designer, Lorinzo Dixon, highlights three of those advents.
SHIN GUARDS: The player in the logo has a set of shin guards over his shoulder. Hall of Fame catcher Roger Bresnahan is often credited with popularizing shin guards beginning in 1907, but he was not the first to wear them in an organized game. In fact, catcher John “Bud” Fowler pioneered shin guards for a much different reason than backstops wear them today.
Fowler, the first known Black professional baseball player, fashioned wooden slats to cover his shins to protect them from the wayward spikes of prejudiced opponents. Black catcher, Chappie Johnson, began wearing shin guards in 1902, three years before white catcher J.J. Clarke briefly wore them in the Majors. About a decade later, Negro Leagues star Pop Lloyd famously wore iron shin guards underneath his socks in an exhibition game against Ty Cobb’s Detroit Tigers, helping him withstand spike challenges by Cobb and blocking him from stealing second base.
BATTING HELMET: The player in the logo has a construction helmet in his left hand to denote that the protective gear was introduced in the Negro Leagues. Many historians cite Negro Leagues star, Willie “El Diablo” Wells, as the first professional player — Black or white — to wear protective headgear at the plate. Opposing pitchers often threw at the Newark Eagles’ star, and when Baltimore Elite Giants notorious spit ball pitcher, Bill Byrd knocked Wells unconscious with a pitch to the temple in 1936, Wells (disregarding a doctor’s advice to sit out) played in Newark’s very next game wearing a modified construction hard hat at the plate. Neither the helmet nor the concussion limited Wells’ bat; he was a consistent .300 hitter for the rest of the decade. Batting helmets weren’t seen in the AL or NL in any form until Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Larry MacPhail made his entire club use hats with protective plate inserts in 1941.
NIGHT BASEBALL: The logo also features a pair of light towers that represent the fact that night games were played in the Negro Leagues in 1930, five years before they played under the lights in Major League Baseball. After the Great Depression devastated baseball clubs across America — and Negro Leagues in particular — Kansas City Monarchs owner J.L. Wilkinson mortgaged everything, he owned in 1929 to commission an Omaha company to build him a set of portable generated light towers. The Monarchs staged their first night game on April 28, 1930, and soon those 50-foot towers allowed Wilkinson’s barnstorming club to play day-night doubleheaders — both in their home city and on the road. The Cincinnati Reds would play the first night game in MLB history when they hosted the Philadelphia Phillies at Crosley Field on May 24, 1935.
The new “Leaders & Innovators” exhibition will also include stories of the women of the Negro Leagues as three pioneering women—Toni Stone, Connie Morgan and Mamie “Peanut” Johnson—competed with and against the men in the Negro Leagues in the 1950s while also highlighting the contribution of female owners such as Hilda Bolden, Minnie Forbes, Effa Manley and Olivia Taylor.The exhibit will chart the Negro Leagues impact on the globalization of baseball as the Negro Leagues barnstormed into Canada; were the first Americans to play in many Spanish-speaking countries and would take the “American Brand” of professional baseball to Japan in 1927 some seven years before Babe Ruth and the All Americans would make that trek. “Our game is a global game,” Kendrick said. There are so many ethnicities that make up a Major League roster every season. At the heart of that globalization were the Negro Leagues. They helped make the game the global game that is today. Unfortunately, they simply were never given proper credit for that contribution. This initiative starts the groundwork to change that and set the record straight.”
About the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum The NLBM, located in Kansas City, Missouri’s historic 18th & Vine District, is the world’s only museum dedicated to preserving and celebrating the rich history of African American baseball and its impact on the social advancement of America. The NLBM is a privately funded, 501c3 not-for-profit organization incorporated in 1990. The NLBM operates two blocks from the Paseo YMCA where the Negro National League was founded by Andrew “Rube” Foster in 1920. The site has been designated as the future home of the John “Buck” O’Neil Education and Research Center
