Gus Greenlee was born in Marion,North Carolina in 1893. His father was a masonry contractor and his mother was a homemaker. Greenlee did not complete college,but his three older brothers did and pursued professional careers:two became doctors and one a lawyer.[ citation needed ]
In 1916,Greenlee traveled north by freight car to Pittsburgh,settling in the Hill District. This was the period of the first Great Migration,when more than one million black people left the rural South for work and opportunity in the industrial northern cities. In Pittsburgh Greenlee held several jobs in the steel mills,shining shoes and driving a cab. During World War I,he served in the black 367th regiment.[ citation needed ]
Having saved his money,in 1924 Greenlee bought the Collins Inn;he gradually became one of the most influential African-American business owners in Pittsburgh. [1] He acquired the Crawford Grill nightclub and in 1931 bought the Pittsburgh Crawfords Negro league baseball team,which had declined. [2] In 1933 he founded the Negro National League,acting as president. [2] He later built Greenlee Field,one of the few built and owned by a Negro league team. [3]
Greenlee also was known as a numbers runner and racketeer. He acted as a philanthropist to fellow blacks in the community,providing scholarships for students to get education,and grants for adults to buy homes. Such opportunities were not customarily available,because of the segregated policies of white-controlled financial institutions. Scholars suggest that Greenlee's success be read as an enterprising attempt to fill a need created by segregation. For instance,according to Vernell A. Lillie,professor emeritus of Africana studies at the University of Pittsburgh,Greenlee and other "runners" were respected. "They made their money probably from the numbers racket,but they turned that money into something very positive. If anybody wanted to buy a house,they could not go to Mellon Bank or Dollar Savings. They had to go to old man Greenlee,or to [William A. "Buzzy"] Robinson." [4]
Greenlee died of a stroke July 7,1952. He is buried in Pittsburgh's Allegheny Cemetery.
Greenlee knew little about baseball when he first started out. He took interest when the promoters of the Crawford Giants ran out of money,and he decided to give a charitable donation of the money he made from a speakeasy that he owned and money he made from getting into the banking business. His large payroll attracted some big name players in the Negro leagues. He would eventually make the Crawford Giants his team by getting rid of the players that were there before him and bringing in new players. Greenlee also owned a future light-heavyweight boxing champion,which added to his reputation.
In 1933,Greenlee organized the annual East-West Classic,an all-star baseball game in Chicago at Comiskey Park,between Negro league stars;it became the centerpiece of the baseball season. That same year he was the primary founder of the second Negro National League,which he served as president for five seasons.
For a while,the Crawfords were the best-financed team in black baseball. Revenue generated from his gambling and bootlegging operations enabled Greenlee to sign black baseball's biggest names. The 1935 squad may have been the best ever to play in the Negro leagues,as it fielded five Baseball Hall of Fame players. Money also enabled Greenlee's economic success also resulted in his building a ballpark for his team,known as Greenlee Field. When he bought the Pittsburgh Crawfords in 1931,he was insulted that his players were not allowed to use the dressing rooms at white-owned or -controlled venues such as Forbes Field,Ammon Field,and others.
Following the 1938 season,Greenlee left baseball. He sold the baseball team and razed the ballpark,partly because he had lost the best players and partly because he owed money on a heavily played number.(Riley)
In 1945,he made a comeback in alliance with Branch Rickey,related to Rickey's projected integration of the major leagues. They established the United States League as a method to scout black players specifically to break the color line. It is unclear if the league played the 1945 season,or if it was used only as a front to achieve integration of the major leagues. [5]
In October of that year,Rickey signed Jackie Robinson,who never played in the USL. The 1946 season lasted only a few weeks before the league folded. Robinson went on the break the Major League color line in 1947 with Rickey's Brooklyn Dodgers.
Greenlee left baseball permanently after 1946 but continued to operate the Crawford Grill until 1951,when it was destroyed by a fire. [6]
In 1932,Greenlee purchased a plot of land and developed Greenlee Field,one of the early black ballparks. (Contrary to popular opinion,it was not the first;it followed the Walker brothers' ballpark at the corner of Chauncey and Hombre Way,also in the Hill District. [7] ) The stadium was made of concrete and steel. It seated 7,500 fans. The ballpark was designed by Pittsburgh's first African-American architect,Louis Arnett Stuart Bellinger. It cost Greenlee nearly $100,000,of which he financed over half. Lights for evening play and a tarp to shield fans from the sun during the day were added in 1933. The first game at the field attracted 4,000 fans as some seating was still under construction. For a time,the field was also used for the Pittsburgh Steelers football practice.
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 the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the seven relatively successful leagues beginning in 1920 that are sometimes termed "Negro Major Leagues".
Oscar McKinley Charleston was an American center fielder and manager in Negro league baseball. Over his 43-year baseball career,Charleston played or managed with more than a dozen teams,including the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords,Negro league baseball's leading teams in the 1930s. He also played nine winter seasons in Cuba and in numerous exhibition games against white major leaguers. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1976.
Wesley Branch Rickey was an American baseball player and sports executive. Rickey was instrumental in breaking Major League Baseball's color barrier by signing black player Jackie Robinson. He also created the framework for the modern minor league farm system,encouraged the major leagues to add new teams through his involvement in the proposed Continental League,and introduced the batting helmet. He was posthumously elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1967.
Joshua Gibson was an American baseball catcher primarily in the Negro leagues. In 1972,he became the second Negro league player to be inducted in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
The Pittsburgh Crawfords,popularly known as the Craws,were a professional Negro league baseball team based in Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania. The team,previously known as the Crawford Colored Giants,was named after the Crawford Bath House,a recreation center in the Crawford neighborhood of Pittsburgh's Hill District.
William Julius "Judy" Johnson was an American professional third baseman and manager whose career in Negro league baseball spanned 17 seasons,from 1921 to 1937. Slight of build,Johnson never developed as a power threat but achieved his greatest success as a contact hitter and an intuitive defenseman. Johnson is regarded as one of the greatest third basemen of the Negro leagues. In 1975,he was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame after being nominated by the Negro Leagues Committee.
The Chicago American Giants were a Chicago-based Negro league baseball team. From 1910 until the mid-1930s,the American Giants were the most dominant team in black baseball. Owned and managed from 1911 to 1926 by player-manager Andrew "Rube" Foster,they were charter members of Foster's Negro National League. The American Giants won five pennants in that league,along with another pennant in the 1932 Negro Southern League and a second-half championship in Gus Greenlee's Negro National League in 1934.
The East–West All-Star Game was an annual all-star game for Negro league baseball players. The game was the brainchild of Gus Greenlee,owner of the Pittsburgh Crawfords. In 1933 he decided to emulate the Major League Baseball All-Star Game,using Negro league players. Newspaper balloting was set up to allow the fans to choose the starting lineups for that first game,a tradition that continued through the series' end in 1962. Unlike the MLB All-Star game which is played near the middle of the season,the Negro All-Star game was held toward the end of the season.
The New York Black Yankees were a professional Negro league baseball team based in New York City;Paterson,New Jersey;and Rochester,New York. Beginning as the independent Harlem Stars,the team was renamed the New York Black Yankees in 1932 and joined the Negro National League in 1936,and remained in the league through 1948.
Greenlee Field in Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania,was one of only a few Black-built and Black-owned major league baseball fields in the United States. The field was the dream of Gus Greenlee,owner of the Pittsburgh Crawfords.
The Crawford Grill was a renowned jazz club that operated in two locations in the Hill District of Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania. During its heyday in the 1950s and 60s,the second Crawford Grill venue hosted local and nationally-recognized acts,including jazz legends Art Blakey,Charles Mingus,Max Roach,Miles Davis,John Coltrane,Bill Evans,and Kenny Burrell. The club,an important social gathering spot for Pittsburgh's African-American communities,drew devoted listeners from the region's ethnically and racially diverse population making it a rare site of interracial socializing during the civil rights period. The Crawford Grill was one of many black-owned neighborhood clubs in the Eastern United States that supported a tour circuit for small jazz ensembles during the genre's "golden age." Despite the riots of 1968,which severely damaged the neighborhood's economic infrastructure,the club continued to operate until 2003,when it was shuttered. In 2010,a group of local investors purchased the property with the goal of restoring and reopening the location as a venue and restaurant.
Josh Gibson Field is a baseball venue located in the Hill District of Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania. The field was known as Ammon Field or sometimes Ammons Field until 2008,when it was renamed for Baseball Hall of Fame player Josh Gibson.
The Philadelphia Stars were a Negro league baseball team from Philadelphia. The Stars were founded in 1933 when Ed Bolden returned to professional black baseball after being idle since early 1930. The Stars were an independent ball club in 1933,a member of the Negro National League from 1934 until the League's collapse following the 1948 season,and affiliated with the Negro American League from 1949 to 1952.
The Pittsburgh Keystones was the name of two historic professional Negro league baseball teams that operated in 1887 and again in 1921 and 1922. The first team was a member of the first black baseball league in 1887,the League of Colored Baseball Clubs. The league only lasted a week,which resulted in a 3-4 record for the Keystones,and included Weldy Walker,the second African-American to play in the major leagues and future hall of famer,Sol White.
The East–West League was an American Negro baseball league that operated during the period when professional baseball in the United States was segregated. Cum Posey organized the league in 1932,but it did not last the full year and folded in June of that year. It was the first Negro league to include teams from both the Eastern and Midwestern United States.
Theodore Roosevelt Page,nicknamed "Terrible Ted",was an American baseball player. From 1923 to 1937,Page played for numerous Negro league teams,including the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords. On a 1986 Larry Fritsch baseball card,“…Page is regarded as one of the best outfielders ever to play the game.”He is a member of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame.
Central Park was a baseball venue located in the Hill District of Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania from 1921–1925. The stadium was the first black-owned,controlled and managed baseball park in the city.
The Memphis Red Sox were an American Negro league baseball team that was active from 1920 to 1959. Originally named the Barber College Baseball Club,the team was initially owned and operated by Arthur P. Martin,a local Memphis barber. In the late 1920s the Martin brothers,all three Memphis doctors and businessmen,purchased the Red Sox. J. B. Martin,W. S. Martin,and B. B. Martin,would retain control of the club till its dissolution in 1959. The Red Sox played as members,at various times,of the Negro Southern League,Negro National League,and Negro American League. The team was never a titan of the Negro leagues like wealthier teams in northern cities of the United States,but sound management led to a continuous thirty-nine years of operation,a span that was exceeded by very few other teams. Following integration the team had five players that would eventually make the rosters of Major League Baseball teams and two players that were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The United States League (USL),alternately called the United States Baseball League,was one of the several Negro baseball leagues created during the time organized baseball was segregated. The USL was organized as a minor league in 1945 by Branch Rickey to serve as a platform to scout black players.
International | |
---|---|
National |