A fighter for Black baseball players’ rights

When it comes to professional baseball in the U.S., the most recognizable woman’s name is Marge Schott, the deceased owner of the Cincinnati Reds who made racist remarks about Black players on her team. Hopefully, one day it will be Effa Manley’s name that will wipe out the horrific memory of Schott when it comes to baseball owners.

Abe Manley and Effa Manley.

On Feb. 27, Manley became the first woman elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. That Major League Baseball remains a male-dominated sport, on and off the field, makes Manley’s election just that much more important.

What makes this development even more significant is that Manley, who died at the age of 84 in 1981, was connected to the Negro Major Leagues, which were all-Black professional baseball teams. The NML was established in 1920 because Black and other players of color were barred from joining the then all-white, richer Major League Baseball.

Until the civil rights struggles emerged in a major way during the 1950s and 1960s, sports of all kinds, amateur and professional, reflected racist Jim Crow laws—much like the rest of U.S. society. Black and white spectators sat in segregated sections when Black teams played white teams on the field.

Effa Manley and her spouse, Black businessman Abe Manley, were co-owners of the NML’s Newark Eagles. The Eagles won the NML championship in 1946, one year before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in MLB when he was signed to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Effa Manley’s mother had been a white woman married to a Black man—a marriage that was illegal throughout the entire South and frowned upon in other parts of the country during most of the 20th century. According to Larry Lester, a member of the Hall of Fame election committee and an NML historian, although she was conceived during a relationship her mother had with a white man, Effa Manley grew up in this racially mixed family.

Because Effa “grew up” as a Black woman, this helped her develop an anti-racist consciousness. She got involved in the civil rights movement and became treasurer of the Newark, N.J., chapter of the NAACP. As a member of the Citizens League for Fair Play, she organized a successful 1934 boycott of 300 stores in Harlem that refused to hire Black salesclerks. At one of the Eagles games in 1939, she organized an “Anti-Lynching Day” at Rupperts Stadium.

While she was admired for her advertising skills, she was also known for her tenacity in fighting for the right of Black baseball players to higher guaranteed salaries and more humane playing and traveling schedules. The Manleys supplied the Eagles with an air-conditioned Flexible Clipper bus, a first for the Negro Leagues. They also established winter leagues in Puerto Rico for players who would be unemployed during regular off-season.

She fought for all Black players to be fairly compensated when white teams finally signed them. When Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers, she publicly called the team’s white manager, Branch Rickey, a “crook” for not compensating Robinson’s former NML team, the Kansas City Monarchs. Rickey reportedly paid less than 5 percent of the former NML players’ labor value when he signed them to the Dodgers—a practice that lasted until 1950. (deadballera.com)

Leslie Heaphy, another NML historian and member of the voting committee, said the following about Effa Manley: “While Abe had the money, she was really the one running the show. She was very much ahead of the other owners who were afraid to speak up. She really pushed to make sure they received those payments.” (New York Times, Feb. 28)

Effa Manley was one of 17 people elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame this year, the highest annual total ever. All the others were either members of the NML or associated with the pre-NML era. This large number of mainly Black inductees was a result of a $250,000 grant given to the Hall of Fame by MLB to do a study of the statistics on Black baseball players from 1860 until 1960.

If these players had been allowed to play in the MLB from the beginning, one can only speculate how many storied MLB current records would have been dramatically altered. Before Manley’s death, she sent letters to the MLB election committee lobbying them to allow NML players into the Hall of Fame.

Manley and the 16 others, all deceased, will be inducted into the Hall of Fame on July 30. The epitaph on Effa Manley’s gravestone reads, “She loved baseball.”