In 1934, Josh Gibson strode up to bat at Yankee Stadium. At six feet one, 220 pounds, he brought size, strength, and vitality to the plate. Some called him the Black Babe Ruth; others called Babe Ruth the white Josh Gibson. With a swing, Gibson reportedly belted a home run out of the park, the ball bouncing onto the streets of the Bronx. Gibson, 22, would hit another 14 home runs that year. But none of them was in Major League Baseball.
Gibson was a star of the Negro Leagues, a branch of American baseball that originated in the early 1900s and is now regaining the attention of travelers who are visiting museums and restored stadiums in cities where the athletes used to play.
Established in 1920 during the height of the Jim Crow era, the Negro Leagues were a result of segregation. Black baseball players were not allowed in the major leagues. Negro Leagues teams played each other exclusively, recording their own statistics, until Jackie Robinson broke the game’s color barrier in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
As the 20th century wore on, the major leagues diversified, and by the early 1960s, the Negro Leagues stopped operating. Many of the stadiums were repurposed or fell into disrepair.
The spotlight shone back on the Negro Leagues in 2020, the year of the 100th anniversary of their founding. By 2024, another milestone was achieved after decades of activism on behalf of fans: The leagues’ statistics were finally entered into the official Major League Baseball record; several were rightfully transferred to Gibson, and the achievements of many early-20th-century Black players were elevated.
“Interest in Negro Leagues history is at an all-time high,” said Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, the nation’s most significant museum on the subject.
Rickwood Field (left) and Hinchliffe Stadium (right)
Shutterstock/Jedstrom (left) and National Register of Historic Places (right)
There are six Negro Leagues stadiums remaining in the U.S., and in the past few years, four have undergone major renovations. Perhaps the biggest project is Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson, New Jersey.
Once home to three Negro Leagues teams—the New York Black Yankees, the New York Cubans, and the Newark Eagles—Hinchliffe over time suffered from Paterson’s financial difficulties and succumbed to neglect.
But after a grassroots preservation effort led to a $100 million renovation, it reopened to fanfare in 2023. It’s now home to the New Jersey Jackals—an independent professional baseball organization not affiliated with the MLB—and boxing and wrestling matches. Bryan Verhasselt, general manager of operations at the Hinchliffe District, which includes the stadium and nearby housing and garage, said stadium attendance is “steadily inclining.” Hinchliffe is planning to add a restaurant, in addition to existing concessions. “We’re kind of building out this neighborhood,” Verhasselt said.
Hinchliffe Stadium also has a museum that showcases Negro Leagues uniforms, gloves, and memorabilia from players like hometown hero Larry Doby, an all-star multisport athlete at Paterson High School who joined the Newark Eagles in 1942. “We’re getting more locals now to the museum, which is great,” Verhasselt said.
Baseball fans have also been flocking to Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, the oldest surviving baseball park in the country, where Hall of Famer Willie Mays started his career and the last Negro Leagues world series, in 1948, occurred. Chosen as the site of the MLB Field of Dreams game in 2024, it underwent a $5 million renovation to welcome all living Negro Leagues players as the St. Louis Cardinals and the San Francisco Giants faced off in period uniforms. (Sadly, Mays passed away days before the event.)
“Our tourism has exploded since the MLB game, and it will continue,” said Gerald Watkins, president and executive director of Friends of Rickwood.
At Rickwood, fans can do more than watch a game: “We have baseball gloves dating from the ’20s to the ’40s and ’50s that we loan guests. They can go out and have a catch,” Watkins said. “You can remember things better when you touch them and use them than if you just look at them.” Friends of Rickwood also plans to update the stadium’s museum.
“When you come to Rickwood Field, you’re coming to the real thing,” said Watkins of the 115-year-old ballpark. “You’re not coming to something that’s been rebuilt to look like it used to be.”
The Baseball Heritage Museum in Cleveland is home memorabilia and exhibits detailing the Negro and Women’s baseball leagues.
Photo courtesy of Baseball Heritage Museum
Other Negro Leagues renovations include Hamtramck Stadium near Detroit, at $2.6 million in 2022, and J.P. Small Memorial Park Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida, ongoing but thus far costing $9.7 million, and including a new home for its museum. League Park in Cleveland, Ohio, is currently a community field with a Baseball Heritage Museum.
Long overdue, the Jackie Robinson Museum opened in Manhattan in 2022 to honor the player who broke the color barrier. It explores the Hall of Famer’s life before and after segregation, including his 1946 visit to spring training in Jim Crow Florida, where segregation was more severely implemented than in some other parts of the country. The galleries also give an overview of Robinson’s life as a social justice activist.
Robinson has another “home” at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, which acts as a headquarters for this period in American history. Visitors can learn about Black players from the late 1800s through the 20th century, including Robinson, who played locally with the Kansas City Monarchs. It was said that these games were so popular that Black churches timed their services so that fans could go straight to the stadium afterward, still wearing their finery. Today, the tradition of “dressing to the nines” continues with the Kansas City Royals.
Opened in 1990, the museum today is planning a new, $30 million, 30,000-square-foot home. It will gain a rooftop event space, a larger gift shop, more exhibition space, and an adjacent hotel. Kendrick also plans to turn the nearby Paseo YMCA, where the Negro Leagues were established in 1920, into an education and research center. Taken together, the campus will serve as a gateway to Kansas City’s historic jazz district.
Recently, the museum has been reaching a new audience through video games. “We’re now in our third year of inclusion of Negro League players in MLB the Show, which is the biggest baseball video game in the world,” said Kendrick, who wants the new museum to include an interactive experience similar to the game. “There’s a generation of young people and young adults who are now not only learning about the Negro Leagues, but they’re falling in love.”
In the future, Kendrick hopes to see the birth of locally focused satellite museums outside of his own, which is national in scope. He wants to collaborate with cities that have a Negro Leagues history to help them engage their communities.
“The stories deserve to be told,” he said.
