While we are considering the Negro League and Major League Baseball integration, we should also notice that this phenomenon obeyed physics laws as we say in popular discourse, “for every action that is an equal reaction.”
I summarize this point by arguing that when Jackie Robinson went to the Brooklyn Dodgers and began the integration of Major League Baseball (MLB) in 1947, that was the beginning of the end of self-sustaining African American communities.
How so?
Of course, the integration of MLB was a long-sought goal by African Americans. Why shouldn’t black baseball players have the opportunity to play in the highest levels and most prosperous part of America’s favorite pastime?
Grabbing that golden ring was a victory; however, there were unintended consequences. Before the integration of MLB, cities were not integrated, and many blacks dared venture downtown, where they were not always welcome.
Consequently, black communities had to take care of themselves, and they did so to a substantial degree. Small businesses existed to provide many of the services in these communities. And Negro League baseball was a part of many of these areas.
MLB’s primary reason for integrating the League was to get those many black fans who attended Negro League games. As MLB began to hire more black players, they began to get these fans, and restaurants, movies, and other “white” businesses opened their doors more welcomingly.
After all, in America, the mighty dollar speaks. However, in the process, the black dollar changed its venue.
Before this integration, the black dollar was busy turning over in the black community—from small business to small business to small business, creating the economic multiplier effect.
This economic activity was enhanced substantially when a Negro League team came to town.
Black community restaurants, nightclubs, barbershops, hairdressers, cleaners, and various other small businesses would be booming, and the dollar would be turning over with a multiplier effect.
When blacks began frequenting downtown with their dollars, much of the economic activity went with them. Other issues in the country during this time also had adverse effects on black urban communities. However, the combination of losing Negro League teams and games and African Americans spending more of their money downtown had a severe impact on many black communities. The dollar stopped turning over, such that by the 1970s, the dollar did not spend the night in black communities.
According to author Brooke Stephens, the lifespan of a dollar in the Asian community is 28 days. In the Jewish community, the lifespan of a dollar is 19 days, and shockingly, the lifespan in the African American community is approximately six hours.
By 1957, the last MLB team had integrated. This transformation of MLB led to the demise of the Negro League, which had generated wealth, provided jobs, and did much for the local black economies by circulating dollars within the de facto segregated black communities.
The problem is that baseball did not integrate. Major League Baseball just raided the rosters of Negro League teams and took most of the top players. In a real integration, MLB would have admitted several of the Negro League teams.
The Pittsburgh Crawfords, the Newark Eagles, and the Kansas City Monarchs were three clubs operating at a higher level than several MLB teams. They were considered in good enough shape financially and administratively to participate in MLB.
By the end of the 1960s, some old black activists rued the times they had pushed so hard to integrate the major leagues, learning late that they had been advocating for something that would harm black urban communities.
