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96-657: The Washington Potomacs were a Negro league baseball team in the Eastern Colored League , based in Washington, D.C. , in 1924. They also operated as an independent team in 1923. In 1925 the Potomacs moved to Wilmington, Delaware where they played as the Wilmington Potomacs for the 1925 season. In mid-July, George Robinson , owner of the Potomacs, announced that his team was folding and

192-493: A Proto-Indo-European root * nekw- , "to be dark", akin to * nokw- , 'night'. Negro was also used for the peoples of West Africa in old maps labelled Negroland , an area stretching along the Niger River . From the 18th century to the late 1960s, negro (later capitalized) was considered to be the proper English-language term for people of black African origin. According to Oxford Dictionaries, use of

288-651: A criminal prosecution . In the French language , the existential concept of negritude ('blackness') was developed by the Senegalese politician Léopold Sédar Senghor . The word can still be used as a synonym of sweetheart in some traditional Louisiana French creole songs. The word nègre as a racial term fell out of favor around the same time as its English equivalent negro . Its usage in French today ( nègre littéraire ) has shifted completely, to refer to

384-468: A ghostwriter ( écrivain fantôme ), i.e. one who writes a book on behalf of its nominal author, usually a non-literary celebrity. However, French Ministry of Culture guidelines (as well as other official entities of Francophone regions ) recommend the usage of alternative terms. In Haitian Creole , the word nèg (derived from the French nègre referring to a dark-skinned man), can also be used for any man, regardless of skin color, roughly like

480-523: A no-win situation : They could not protect their own interests without seeming to interfere with the advancement of players to the majors. By 1948, the Dodgers, along with Veeck's Cleveland Indians , had integrated. The Negro leagues also "integrated" around the same time, as Eddie Klep pitched for the Cleveland Buckeyes during the 1946 season, becoming the first white American to play in

576-518: A Dream " speech of 1963. However, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, the word Negro began to be criticized as having been imposed by white people, and having connotations of racial subservience and Uncle Tomism . The term Black , in contrast, denoted pride, power, and a rejection of the past. It took root first in more militant groups such as the Black Muslims and Black Panthers , and by 1967, SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael pushed for

672-420: A black player." In some ways Blackball thrived under segregation , with the few black teams of the day playing not only each other but white teams as well. "Black teams earned the bulk of their income playing white independent 'semipro' clubs." Baseball featuring African American players became professionalized by the 1870s. The first known professional black baseball player was Bud Fowler , who appeared in

768-654: A handful of games with a Chelsea, Massachusetts club in April 1878 and then pitched for the Lynn, Massachusetts team in the International Association . Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother, Welday Wilberforce Walker , were the first two recognizably black players in the major leagues. They both played for the 1884 Toledo Blue Stockings in the American Association , which was considered

864-579: A lack of a place to play. Leland bought the Giants in 1905 and merged it with his Unions (despite the fact that not a single Giant player ended up on the roster), and named them the Leland Giants . The Philadelphia Giants , owned by Walter Schlichter , a white businessman, rose to prominence in 1903 when they lost to the Cuban X-Giants in their version of the "Colored Championship". Leading

960-705: A major league at the time. Then in 1886 second baseman Frank Grant joined the Buffalo Bisons of the International League , the strongest minor league, and hit .340, third highest in the league. Several other black American players joined the International League the following season, including pitchers George Stovey and Robert Higgins, but 1888 was the last season blacks were permitted in that or any other high minor league. The first nationally known black professional baseball team

1056-465: A noun was used to designate a wider or more generalized category than Negro ; as an adjective, it qualified a noun as in, for example, "negroid features". "If on no other issue than this one [the capitalization of the word Negro ], Du Bois and Washington were in total agreement; each of them consistently urged the adoption of upper-case treatment by mainstream publications. Du Bois's Suppression and Philadelphia Negro monographs had been among

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1152-707: A year later. While Foster was out of the picture, the owners of the National League elected William C. Hueston as new league president. In 1927, Ed Bolden suffered a similar fate as Foster, by committing himself to a hospital because the pressure was too great. The Eastern League folded shortly after that, marking the end of the World Series between the NNL and the ECL. After the Eastern League folded following

1248-515: Is named after them. The term Negrito has entered scientific usage in the English language based on the original Spanish/Filipino usage to refer to similar populations in South and Southeast Asia. However, the appropriateness of using the word to bundle people of similar physical appearances has been questioned as genetic evidence show they do not have close shared ancestry. In Italian , negro

1344-459: Is provided. As in English, this Spanish word is often used figuratively and negatively, to mean 'irregular' or 'undesirable', as in mercado negro (' black market '). However, in most Spanish-speaking countries, negro and negra are commonly as a form of endearment, when used to refer to partners or close friends. In the Philippines , which historically had almost no contact with

1440-474: Is to use zwarte persoon/man/vrouw ('black person/man/woman') to denote race instead. In German , Neger was considered to be a neutral term for black people, but gradually fell out of fashion since the 1970s. Neger is now mostly thought to be derogatory or racist. In Denmark, usage of neger is up for debate. Linguists and others argue that the word has a historical racist legacy that makes it unsuitable for use today. Mainly older people use

1536-544: The Kielitoimiston sanakirja shifted from "perceived as derogatory by some" to "generally derogatory". The name of a popular Finnish brand of chocolate-coated marshmallow treats was changed by the manufacturers from Neekerinsuukko (lit. 'negro's kiss', like the German version) to Brunbergin suukko ('Brunberg's kiss') in 2001. A study conducted among native Finns found that 90% of research subjects considered

1632-718: The All Cubans , the Cuban Stars (West) , the Cuban Stars (East) , and the New York Cubans . Some of them included white Cuban players, and some were Negro league players. The few players on the white minor league teams were constantly dodging verbal and physical abuse from both competitors and fans. The Compromise of 1877 removed the few remaining obstacles from the South enacting Jim Crow laws , allowing legal discrimination against blacks. On July 14, 1887, Cap Anson 's Chicago White Stockings were scheduled to play

1728-609: The Atlantic slave trade , the Spanish-derived term negro (feminine negra ) is still commonly used to refer to black people, as well as to people with dark-colored skin (both native and foreign). As in Spanish usage, it has no negative connotations when referring to black people. However, it can be mildly pejorative when referring to the skin color of other native Filipinos due to traditional beauty standards. The use of

1824-721: The Chicago American Giants to appeal to a larger fan base. During the same year, J. L. Wilkinson started the All Nations traveling team. The All Nations team would eventually become one of the best-known and popular teams of the Negro leagues, the Kansas City Monarchs . On April 6, 1917, the United States entered World War I. Manpower needed by the defense plants and industry accelerated

1920-602: The Council of Europe noted in its 2016 report, "the wording of the Reale Act does not include language as ground of discrimination, nor is [skin] color included as a ground of discrimination." However, the Supreme Court , in affirming a lower-court decision, declared that the use of the term negro by itself, if it has a clearly offensive intention, may be punishable by law, and is considered an aggravating factor in

2016-741: The Middle States League was formed and it admitted two all-black teams to its otherwise all-white league, the Cuban Giants and their arch-rivals, the New York Gorhams . Despite the animosity between the two clubs, they managed to form a traveling team, the Colored All Americans. This enabled them to make money barnstorming while fulfilling their league obligations. In 1890, the Giants returned to their independent, barnstorming identity, and by 1892, they were

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2112-523: The National Colored Base Ball League , was organized strictly as a minor league but failed in 1887 after only two weeks owing to low attendance. After several decades of mostly independent play by a variety of teams, the first Negro National League was formed in 1920 by Rube Foster . Ultimately, seven Negro major leagues existed at various times over the next thirty years. After integration of organized baseball began in

2208-655: The Quinn-Ives Act banning discrimination in hiring. At the same time, NYC Mayor La Guardia formed the Mayor's Commission on Baseball to study integration of the major leagues. All this led to Rickey announcing the signing of Robinson much earlier than he would have liked. On October 23, 1945, Montreal Royals president Hector Racine announced that, "We are signing this boy." Early in 1946, Rickey signed four more black players, Campanella, Newcombe, John Wright and Roy Partlow , this time with much less fanfare. After

2304-427: The " Mancino Act") and Act No. 85 of 24 February 2006, criminalizes incitement to and racial discrimination itself, incitement to and racial violence itself, the promotion of ideas based on racial superiority or ethnic or racist hatred and the setting up or running of, participation in or support to any organisation, association, movement or group whose purpose is the instigation of racial discrimination or violence. As

2400-672: The 1920s or 1930s, the term " Negro " came into use which led to references to "Negro" leagues or teams. The black World Series was referred to as the Colored World Series from 1924 to 1927, and the Negro World Series from 1942 to 1948. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People petitioned the public to recognize a capital "N" in negro as a matter of respect for black people. By 1930, essentially every major US outlet had adopted "Negro" as

2496-642: The 1922 season, and two more after the 1923 season. Foster replaced the defunct teams, sometimes promoting whole teams from the Negro Southern League into the NNL. Finally Foster and Bolden met and agreed to an annual World Series beginning in 1924 . Although this was a strong beginning to the Negro Leagues , throughout the 1920's the leagues were very unorganized, having teams play uneven numbers of games. Teams would skip official games for non-league matchups which would be more lucrative for

2592-627: The 1927 season, a new eastern league, the American Negro League , was formed to replace it. The makeup of the new ANL was nearly the same as the Eastern League, the exception being that the Homestead Grays joined in place of the now-defunct Brooklyn Royal Giants. The ANL lasted just one season. In the face of harder economic times, the Negro National League folded after the 1931 season. Some of its teams joined

2688-505: The 1950s and 1960s in the African-American upper class . African-American linguist John McWhorter has bemoaned attacks on the use of Negro in "utterances or written reproductions of the word when referring to older texts and titles". He cites reports that performances or publishing of certain works ( William L. Dawson 's Negro Folk Symphony , and an anthology of Norman Mailer 's works) have been avoided, "out of wariness of

2784-457: The 1970s it had been replaced with nero and di colore . Nero was considered a better translation of the English word black , while di colore is a loan translation of the English word colored . The noun is considered offensive today, but some attestations of the previous use can still be found. In Italian law , Act No. 654 of 13 October 1975 (known as the " Reale Act"), as amended by Act No. 205 of 25 June 1993 (known as

2880-595: The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (founded 1915) became the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History in 1973, and is now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History ; its publication The Journal of Negro History became The Journal of African American History in 2001. Margo Jefferson titled her 2015 book Negroland: A Memoir to evoke growing up in

2976-665: The Detroit Wolves were about to collapse, and instead of letting the team go, Posey kept pumping money into it. By June the Wolves had disintegrated and all the rest of the teams, except for the Grays, were beyond help, so Posey had to terminate the league. Across town from Posey, Gus Greenlee , a reputed gangster and numbers runner , had just purchased the Pittsburgh Crawfords . Greenlee's main interest in baseball

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3072-492: The Eastern Colored League as an alternative to Foster's Negro National League, which started with six teams: Atlantic City Bacharach Giants, Baltimore Black Sox , Brooklyn Royal Giants, New York Cuban Stars, Hilldale, and New York Lincoln Giants . The National League was having trouble maintaining continuity among its franchises: three teams folded and had to be replaced after the 1921 season, two others after

3168-697: The Genuine Cuban Giants, the renamed Cuban Giants, the Columbia Giants , the Brooklyn Royal Giants , and so on. The early "Cuban" teams were all composed of African Americans rather than Cubans; the purpose was to increase their acceptance with white patrons, as Cuba was on very friendly terms with the United States during those years. Beginning in 1899 several Cuban baseball teams played in North America, including

3264-537: The Giants' home games for almost a month and threatened to become a huge embarrassment for the league. On March 2, 1920, the Negro Southern League was founded in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1921, the Negro Southern League joined Foster's National Association of Colored Professional Base Ball Clubs . As a dues-paying member of the association, it received the same protection from raiding parties as any team in

3360-663: The Gorhams, Bud Fowler caught on with a team out of Findlay, Ohio . While his team was playing in Adrian, Michigan , Fowler was persuaded by two white local businessmen, L. W. Hoch and Rolla Taylor to help them start a team financed by the Page Woven Wire Fence Company, the Page Fence Giants . The Page Fence Giants went on to become a powerhouse team that had no home field. Barnstorming through

3456-631: The Jamaica Monitor Club, Albany Bachelors , Philadelphia Excelsiors and Chicago Uniques started playing each other and any other team that would play against them. By the end of the 1860s, the black baseball mecca was Philadelphia , which had an African-American population of 22,000. Two former cricket players, James H. Francis and Francis Wood, formed the Pythian Base Ball Club . They played in Camden, New Jersey , at

3552-577: The Leland Giants' name. Leland took the players and started a new team named the Chicago Giants, while Foster took the Leland Giants and started to encroach on Nat Strong's territory. As early as 1910, Foster started talking about reviving the concept of an all-black league. The one thing he was insistent upon was that black teams should be owned by black men. This put him in direct competition with Strong. After 1910, Foster renamed his team

3648-479: The Leland Giants, he demanded that he be put in charge of not only the on-field activities but the bookings as well. Foster immediately turned the Giants into the team to beat. He indoctrinated them to take the extra base, to play hit and run on nearly every pitch, and to rattle the opposing pitcher by taking them deep into the count. He studied the mechanics of his pitchers and could spot the smallest flaw, turning his average pitchers into learned craftsmen. Foster also

3744-596: The Midwest, they would play all comers. Their success became the prototype for black baseball for years to come. After the 1898 season, the Page Fence Giants were forced to fold because of finances. Alvin H. Garrett , a black businessman in Chicago, and John W. Patterson , the left fielder for the Page Fence Giants, reformed the team under the name the Columbia Giants . In 1901, the Giants folded because of

3840-578: The Negro National League. Foster then admitted John Connors' Atlantic City Bacharach Giants as an associate member to move further into Nat Strong 's territory. Connors, wanting to return the favor of helping him against Strong, raided Ed Bolden 's Hilldale Daisies team. Bolden saw little choice but to team up with Foster's nemesis, Nat Strong. Within days of calling a truce with Strong, Bolden made an about-face and signed up as an associate member of Foster's Negro National League. On December 16, 1922, Bolden once again shifted sides and, with Strong, formed

3936-473: The Negro leagues. These moves came despite strong opposition from the owners; Rickey was the only one of the 16 owners to support integrating the sport in January 1947. Chandler's decision to overrule them may have been a factor in his ouster in 1951 in favor of Ford C. Frick . Some proposals were floated to bring the Negro leagues into "organized baseball" as developmental leagues for black players, but that

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4032-504: The Newark Giants of the International League, which had Fleet Walker and George Stovey on its roster. After Anson marched his team onto the field in military style as was his custom, he declared that his team would not play unless Walker and Stovey were barred from the field. Newark capitulated, and later that same day, league owners voted to refuse future contracts to blacks, citing the "hazards" imposed by such athletes. In 1888,

4128-627: The Portuguese first arrived in Southern Africa while trying to find a sea route to India. The term negro , literally meaning 'black', was used by the Spanish and Portuguese as a simple description to refer to the Bantu peoples that they encountered. Negro denotes 'black' in Spanish and Portuguese, derived from the Latin word niger , meaning 'black', which itself is probably from

4224-583: The Republic. In Spanish , negro (feminine negra ) is most commonly used for the color black, but it can also be used to describe people with dark-colored skin. In Spain, Mexico, and almost all of Latin America, negro (lower-cased, as ethnonyms are generally not capitalized in Romance languages ) means just 'black colour' and does not refer by itself to any ethnic or race unless further context

4320-568: The abandonment of Negro . After the Newark riots in the summer of 1967, one third to one half of young Black males polled in Newark self-identified as Black . The term coexisted for a while with Negro , with the newer term initially referring only to progressive or radical Blacks, while Negro was used more for the Black establishment. Malcolm X preferred Black to Negro , but also started using

4416-424: The accepted term for black people. By about 1970, the term "Negro" had fallen into disfavor, but by then the Negro leagues were mere historic artifacts. Because black people were not being accepted into the major and minor baseball leagues due to racism which established the color line , they formed their own teams and had made professional teams by the 1880s. The first known baseball game between two black teams

4512-540: The color line. His list was eventually narrowed down to three: Roy Campanella , Don Newcombe and Jackie Robinson . On August 28, 1945, Jackie Robinson met with Rickey in Brooklyn, where Rickey gave Robinson a "test" by berating him and shouting racial epithets that Robinson would hear from day one in the white game. Having passed the test, Robinson signed the contract which stipulated that from then on, Robinson had no "written or moral obligations" to any other club. By

4608-513: The end of Negro National League. Just as Negro league baseball seemed to be at its lowest point and was about to fade into history, along came Cumberland Posey and his Homestead Grays. Posey, Charlie Walker, John Roesnik, George Rossiter, John Drew, Lloyd Thompson, and L.R. Williams got together in January 1932 and founded the East–West League . Eight cities were included in the new league: "Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, Newark, New York, and Washington, D.C.". By May 1932,

4704-459: The first to have the noun placed in capitals, and Washington's success in getting Doubleday, Page and Company to capitalize the word in Up From Slavery represented a significant breakthrough." W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 by David Levering Lewis Negro superseded colored as the most polite word for African Americans at a time when black was considered more offensive. In 17th-century colonial America ,

4800-541: The grouping "Black, African-American, or Negro". Negro was used in an effort to include older African Americans who more closely associate with the term. In 2013, the census removed the term from its forms and questionnaires. The term has also been censored by some newspaper archives. The constitution of Liberia limits Liberian nationality to Negro people (see also Liberian nationality law ). People of other racial origins , even if they have lived for many years in Liberia , are thus precluded from becoming citizens of

4896-436: The highest career batting average at .372. During the formative years of black baseball, the term " colored " was the established usage when referring to African-Americans. References to black baseball prior to the 1930s are usually to "colored" leagues or teams, such as the Southern League of Colored Base Ballists (1886), the National Colored Base Ball League (1887) and the Eastern Colored League (1923), among others. By

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4992-410: The idea to duplicate the Major League Baseball All-Star Game , except, unlike the big league method in which the sportswriters chose the players, the fans voted for the participants. The first game, known as the East–West All-Star Game , was held September 10, 1933, at Comiskey Park in Chicago before a crowd of 20,000. With the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States

5088-426: The inclusion of this clause, precedent was set that would raze the Negro leagues as a functional commercial enterprise. To throw off the press and keep his intentions hidden, Rickey got heavily involved in Gus Greenlee 's newest foray into black baseball, the United States League . Greenlee started the league in 1945 as a way to get back at the owners of the Negro National League teams for throwing him out. Rickey saw

5184-407: The integration of the major leagues in 1947, marked by the appearance of Jackie Robinson with the Brooklyn Dodgers that April, interest in Negro league baseball waned. Black players who were regarded as prospects were signed by major league teams, often without regard for any contracts that might have been signed with Negro league clubs. Negro league owners who complained about this practice were in

5280-449: The landing of the Federal Street Ferry, because it was difficult to get permits for black baseball games in the city. Octavius Catto , the promoter of the Pythians, decided to apply for membership in the National Association of Base Ball Players , normally a matter of sending delegates to the annual convention; beyond that, a formality. At the end of the 1867 season, "the National Association of Baseball Players voted to exclude any club with

5376-443: The late 1940s, the quality of the Negro leagues slowly deteriorated; the Negro American League 's 1951 season is generally considered the last Negro league season, although the last professional club, the Indianapolis Clowns , operated as a humorous sideshow rather than competitively from the mid-1960s to the 1980s. In December 2020, Major League Baseball announced that based on recent decades of historical research, it classified

5472-461: The league, took a five percent cut of all gate receipts. On May 2, 1920, the Indianapolis ABCs beat Charles "Joe" Green's Chicago Giants (4–2) in the first game played in the inaugural season of the Negro National League, played at Washington Park in Indianapolis. However, because of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 , the National Guard still occupied the Giants' home field, Schorling's Park (formerly South Side Park). This forced Foster to cancel all

5568-402: The league. The reserve clause would have tied the players to their clubs from season to season but the NCBBL failed. One month into the season, the Resolutes folded. A week later, only three teams were left. Because the original Cuban Giants were a popular and business success, many similarly named teams came into existence—including the Cuban X-Giants , a splinter and a powerhouse around 1900;

5664-438: The leagues and it may be used narrowly for the seven relatively successful leagues beginning in 1920 that are sometimes termed "Negro Major Leagues". In the late 19th century, the baseball color line developed, excluding African Americans from play in Major League Baseball and its affiliated minor leagues (collectively known as organized baseball ). The first professional baseball league consisting of all-black teams,

5760-437: The migration of blacks from the South to the North. This meant a larger and more affluent fan base with more money to spend. By the end of the war in 1919, Foster was again ready to start a Negro baseball league. On February 13 and 14, 1920, talks were held in Kansas City, Missouri , that established the Negro National League and its governing body the National Association of Colored Professional Base Ball Clubs . The league

5856-627: The moribund Philadelphia Phillies and stock them with Negro league stars. However, when Landis got wind of his plans, he and National League president Ford Frick scuttled it in favor of another bid by William D. Cox . After Landis's death in 1944, Happy Chandler was named his successor. Chandler was open to integrating the game, even at the risk of losing his job as Commissioner. He later said in his biography that he could not, in good conscience, tell black players they could not play baseball with whites when they had fought for their country [although they had fought in segregated units]. In March 1945,

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5952-401: The new league was the same as the old league Negro National League which had disbanded a year earlier in 1932. The members of the new league were the Pittsburgh Crawfords, the Columbus Blue Birds , the Indianapolis ABCs, the Baltimore Black Sox, the Brooklyn Royal Giants, Cole's American Giants (formerly the Chicago American Giants ), and the Nashville Elite Giants. Greenlee also came up with

6048-423: The only Negro league then left, the Negro Southern League. Only strong independent clubs were able to survive the hard economic turn that affected the country, such as the Kansas City Monarchs . During this time, strong clubs would build teams that had potential to beat the teams in the major leagues with new players and tactics that many have never seen before. On March 26, 1932, the Chicago Defender announced

6144-410: The only black team in the East still in operation on a full-time basis. Also in 1888, Frank Leland got some of Chicago's black businessmen to sponsor the black amateur Union Base Ball Club . Through Chicago's city government, Leland obtained a permit and lease to play at the South Side Park , a 5,000-seat facility. Eventually, his team went pro and became the Chicago Unions . After his stint with

6240-411: The opportunity as a way to convince people that he was interested in cleaning up blackball, not integrating it. In midsummer 1945, Rickey, almost ready with his Robinson plan, pulled out of the league. The league folded after the end of the 1946 season. Pressured by civil rights groups, the Fair Employment Practices Act was passed by the New York State Legislature in 1945. This followed the passing of

6336-401: The owner of the league's Portland (Oregon) Rosebuds franchise. The WCBA disbanded after only two months. Judge Kenesaw M. Landis , the first Commissioner of Major League Baseball , was an intractable opponent of integrating the white majors. During his quarter-century tenure, he blocked all attempts at integrating the game. A popular story has it that in 1943 , Bill Veeck planned to buy

6432-434: The pitcher-catcher battery was made up of the two most marketable icons in all of black baseball: Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson . In 1933, Greenlee, riding the popularity of his Crawfords, became the next man to start a Negro league. In February 1933, Greenlee and delegates from six other teams met at Greenlee's Crawford Grill to ratify the constitution of the National Organization of Professional Baseball Clubs . The name of

6528-434: The same time, Nat Strong , a white businessman, started using his ownership of baseball fields in the New York City area to become the leading promoter of blackball on the East coast. Just about any game played in New York, Strong would get a cut. Strong eventually used his leverage to almost put the Brooklyn Royal Giants out of business, and then he bought the club and turned it into a barnstorming team. When Foster joined

6624-424: The season but never played a game, the Cincinnati Browns and Washington Capital Citys . The league, led by Walter S. Brown of Pittsburgh , applied for and was granted official minor league status and thus "protection" under the major league-led National Agreement . This move prevented any team in organized baseball from signing any of the NCBBL players, which also locked the players to their particular teams within

6720-466: The seven "major Negro leagues" as additional major leagues, adding them to the six historical "major league" designations it made in 1969, thus recognizing statistics and approximately 3,400 players who played from 1920 to 1948. On May 28, 2024, Major League Baseball announced that it had integrated Negro league statistics into its records, which among other changes gives Josh Gibson the highest single-season major league batting average at .466 (1943) and

6816-522: The team. Players would jump from franchise to franchise, looking for the highest pay, causing imbalance within the leagues. 1925 saw the St. Louis Stars come of age in the Negro National League. They finished in second place during the second half of the year due in large part to their pitcher turned center fielder, Cool Papa Bell , and their shortstop, Willie Wells . A gas leak in his home nearly asphyxiated Rube Foster in 1926, and his increasingly erratic behavior led to him being committed to an asylum

6912-611: The term Afro-American after leaving the Nation of Islam . Which in th e 1980s became more broadly accepted due to Jesse Jackson Since the late 1960s, various other terms have been more widespread in popular usage. These include Black , Black African , Afro-American (in use from the late 1960s to 1990) and African American . The word Negro fell out of favor by the early 1970s and major media including Associated Press and The New York Times stopped using it that decade. However, many older African Americans initially found

7008-538: The term Negro had been also, according to one historian, used to describe Native Americans . John Belton O'Neall 's The Negro Law of South Carolina (1848) stipulated that "the term negro is confined to slave Africans, (the ancient Berbers) and their descendants. It does not embrace the free inhabitants of Africa, such as the Egyptians, Moors, or the negro Asiatics, such as the Lascars." The American Negro Academy

7104-562: The term black more offensive than Negro. The term Negro is still used in some historical contexts, such as the songs known as Negro spirituals , the Negro leagues of baseball in the early and mid-20th century, and organizations such as the United Negro College Fund . The academic journal published by Howard University since 1932 still bears the title Journal of Negro Education , but others have changed: e.g.

7200-678: The term for the color black is restricted to Spanish phrases or nouns. Negrito (feminine negrita ) is also a term used in the Philippines to refer to the various darker-skinned native ethnic groups that partially descended from early Australo-Melanesian migrations. These groups include the Aeta , Ati , Mamanwa , and the Batak , among others. Despite physical appearances, they all speak Austronesian languages and are genetically related to other Austronesian Filipinos. The island of Negros

7296-592: The terms neekeri and ryssä among the most derogatory epithets for ethnic minorities. In Turkish , zenci is the closest equivalent to negro . The appellation was derived from the Arabic zanj for Bantu peoples . It is usually used without any negative connotation. In Russia, the term негр ( negr ) was commonly used in the Soviet period without any negative connotation, and its use continues in this neutral sense. In modern Russian media, negr

7392-635: The terms guy or dude in American English . In the Romanian language , negru can refer to either the color or a black person (as a neutral term). The Dutch word neger was considered to be a neutral term, but since the start of the 21st century it is increasingly considered to be hurtful, condescending and/or discriminatory. The consensus among language advice services of the Flemish Government and Dutch Language Union

7488-593: The titles of their non-fiction books, The Negro (1915) and The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933) respectively. Du Bois also used in the titles of his books The Study of the Negro Problems (1898) and The Philadelphia Negro (1899). Negro was accepted as normal, both as exonym and endonym , until the late 1960s, after the later Civil Rights Movement . One example is Martin Luther King Jr. self-identification as Negro in his famous " I Have

7584-485: The way for the Cubans was a young pitcher by the name of Andrew "Rube" Foster . The following season, Schlichter, in the finest blackball tradition, hired Foster away from the Cubans and beat them in their 1904 rematch. Philadelphia remained on top of the blackball world until Foster left the team in 1907 to play and manage the Leland Giants (Frank Leland renamed his Chicago Union Giants the Leland Giants in 1905). Around

7680-500: The white majors created the Major League Committee on Baseball Integration . Its members included Joseph P. Rainey , Larry MacPhail and Branch Rickey . Because MacPhail, who was an outspoken critic of integration, kept stalling, the committee never met. Under the guise of starting an all-black league, Rickey sent scouts all around the United States, Mexico and Puerto Rico , looking for the perfect candidate to break

7776-582: The white majors were barely recognizable, while the Negro leagues reached their highest plateau. Millions of black Americans were working in war industries and, making good money, they packed league games in every city. Business was so good that promoter Abe Saperstein (famous for the Harlem Globetrotters ) started a new circuit, the Negro Midwest League , a minor league similar to the Negro Southern League. The Negro World Series

7872-478: The word neger is largely considered to be a neutral term for black people with African roots. The word nikker (evil water spirit) is considered to be offensive and derogatory, but not necessarily racist due to the term's historic definition. In the Finnish language the word neekeri (cognate with negro ) was long considered a neutral equivalent for negro . In 2002, neekeri 's usage notes in

7968-415: The word neger with the notion that it is a neutral word paralleling negro . Relatively few young people use it, other than for provocative purposes in recognition that the word's acceptability has declined. In Swedish and Norwegian , neger used to be considered a neutral equivalent to negro . However, the term gradually fell out of favor between the late 1960s and 1990s. In West Frisian ,

8064-453: The word "now seems out of date or even offensive in both British and US English". A specifically female form of the word, negress (sometimes capitalized), was occasionally used. However, like Jewess , it has completely fallen out of use. Negroid was used within physical anthropology to denote one of the three purported races of humankind, alongside Caucasoid and Mongoloid . The suffix " -oid " means "similar to". Negroid as

8160-425: The word 'Negro'” used in titles; and of "two cases" between 2020-2021 "of white college professors having complaints filed against them by students for using the word 'Negro' in class when quoting older texts." The United States Census Bureau included Negro on the 2010 Census , alongside Black and African-American , because some older black Americans still self-identify with the term. The U.S. Census used

8256-405: Was able to turn around the business end of the team as well, by demanding and getting 40 percent of the gate instead of the 10 percent that Frank Leland was getting. By the end of the 1909, Foster demanded that Leland step back from all baseball operations or he (Foster) would leave. When Leland would not give up complete control, Foster quit, and in a heated court battle, got to keep the rights to

8352-802: Was founded in 1885 when three clubs, the Keystone Athletics of Philadelphia, the Orions of Philadelphia, and the Manhattans of Washington, D.C., merged to form the Cuban Giants . The success of the Cubans led to the creation of the first recognized "Negro league" in 1887—the National Colored Base Ball League . It was organized strictly as a minor league and founded with six teams: Baltimore Lord Baltimores , Boston Resolutes , Louisville Fall City , New York Gorhams , Philadelphia Pythians , and Pittsburgh Keystones . Two more joined before

8448-895: Was founded in 1897, to support liberal arts education. Marcus Garvey used the word in the names of black nationalist and pan-Africanist organizations such as the Universal Negro Improvement Association (founded 1914), the Negro World (1918), the Negro Factories Corporation (1919), and the Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World (1920). W. E. B. Du Bois and Dr. Carter G. Woodson used it in

8544-734: Was held on November 15, 1859, in New York City. The Henson Base Ball Club of Jamaica, Queens , defeated the Unknowns of Weeksville, Brooklyn , 54 to 43. Immediately after the end of the American Civil War in 1865 and during the Reconstruction period that followed, a black baseball scene formed in the East and Mid-Atlantic states. Comprising mainly ex-soldiers and promoted by some well-known black officers, teams such as

8640-453: Was initially composed of eight teams: Chicago American Giants, Chicago Giants , Cuban Stars, Dayton Marcos , Detroit Stars , Indianapolis ABCs , Kansas City Monarchs, and St. Louis Giants . Foster was named league president and controlled every aspect of the league, including which players played on which teams, when and where teams played, and what equipment was used (all of which had to be purchased from Foster). Foster, as booking agent of

8736-466: Was recognized as contrary to the goal of full integration. And so, the Negro leagues, once among the largest and most prosperous black-owned business ventures, were allowed to fade into oblivion. First a trickle and then a flood of players signed with Major League Baseball teams. Most signed minor league contracts and many languished, shuttled from one bush league team to another despite their success at that level. Negro#United States Around 1442,

8832-541: Was revived in 1942, this time pitting the winners of the eastern Negro National League and midwestern Negro American League . It continued through 1948 with the NNL winning four championships and the NAL three. In 1946, Saperstein partnered with Jesse Owens to form another Negro league, the West Coast Baseball Association (WCBA); Saperstein was league president and Owens was vice-president and

8928-528: Was the archaic form of the adjective nero ; as such, the previous form can still be found in literary texts or in surnames (cfr. the English-language surname Black ), while the latter form is the only one currently used today. However, the word could also be used as a noun and at a certain point it was commonly used as term equivalent to English negro , but without its offensive connotation. However, under influence from English-speaking cultures, by

9024-633: Was thrust into World War II. Remembering World War I, black America vowed it would not be shut out of the beneficial effects of a major war effort: economic boom and social unification. Just like the major leagues, the Negro leagues saw many stars miss one or more seasons while fighting overseas. While many players were over 30 and considered "too old" for service, Monte Irvin , Larry Doby and Leon Day of Newark ; Ford Smith , Hank Thompson , Joe Greene , Willard Brown and Buck O'Neil of Kansas City ; Lyman Bostock of Birmingham ; and Lick Carlisle and Howard Easterling of Homestead all served. But

9120-474: Was to use it as a way to launder money from his numbers games. But, after learning about Posey's money-making machine in Homestead , he became obsessed with the sport and his Crawfords. On August 6, 1931, Satchel Paige made his first appearance as a Crawford. With Paige on his team, Greenlee took a huge risk by investing $ 100,000 in a new ballpark to be called Greenlee Field . On opening day, April 30, 1932,

9216-569: Was unable to complete the season. The league contracted to seven teams and the Potomacs players were dispersed to other teams. This article about a baseball team in Washington, D.C. is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This Negro league baseball team article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Negro league baseball The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams of African Americans . The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside

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