Pride and passion.

• Position: Athletic Arena - Exhibit about discrimination in baseball

BASEBALL is one of America's central institutions and long has reflected the complicated and painful history of race in the U.S. An American Library Association traveling exhibition tells the story of the country's black baseball players over the past century and a half. Although many blacks played baseball with whites in the 19th century as amateurs and later as professionals (mostly through stints in the minor leagues), by the 1890s, African-Americans were banned from the upper echelon of pro ball--namely the revamped National League, which, in 1892, merged with its main competitor, the American Association. (The American League would not come on the scene for another eight years; the National League originally had formed in 1876.)

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To counter this discrimination, blacks organized teams made up entirely of African-American (and dark-skinned Hispanic) players and created leagues collectively known as the Negro Leagues. More than five decades later, the 1946 signing of Jackie Robinson by the Brooklyn Dodgers' Triple-A minor league affiliate Montreal (Monarchs) signaled the beginning of the end for the Negro Leagues, whose long-suppressed players finally were able to star in the A.L. and N.L. circuits after Robinson joined the Dodgers in 1947. The last Negro League team disbanded in 1961.

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The story of blacks in baseball is a remarkable and fascinating slice of U.S. history, paralleling the failures of the greater American society in solving racial problems resulting from slavery, the Civil War, and the confusion of Reconstruction. Baseball was played on Southern plantations as far back as the 1850s, and a quote from the New York Clipper newspaper in 1869 tells of a game between the leading black and white baseball teams in Philadelphia.

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Although early baseball was segregated for the most part, there were many instances of blacks and whites playing together. However, racial prejudice escalated in the latter half of the 19th century, and baseball reflected this development. The captain of the leading black team in Philadelphia was murdered in riots that occurred on the first day black men legally were allowed to vote. Black players on the rare integrated teams...