The Founding of the Negro National League (1920)

On February 13–14, 1920, Andrew “Rube” Foster convened the owners of Black professional baseball clubs at the Paseo YMCA in Kansas City, Missouri, and over a single weekend founded the Negro National League (NNL) — the first viable, sustained Black professional baseball league in American history. Foster arrived with a draft charter already in hand; by the time the meeting closed the owners had adopted a constitution and bylaws, agreed on a roster of member clubs, and appointed Foster president. The meeting makes Kansas City the institutional birthplace of organized Black professional baseball.

Summary

The Negro National League was founded at a weekend meeting in Kansas City on February 13–14, 1920.¹² The driving figure was Andrew “Rube” Foster, owner and manager of the Chicago American Giants and the most powerful organizer in Black baseball, who had argued for years that Black baseball needed a stable, Black-owned league structure rather than the unstable independent and barnstorming arrangements that had defined it.³ Foster gathered club owners and several Black sportswriters at the Paseo YMCA in the 18th and Vine district and surprised the assembled owners by producing an official draft charter for the league.¹

By the close of the weekend the group had hammered out a constitution and bylaws, agreed on member clubs and player allotments, adopted a name, and appointed Foster as president.¹⁴ The league took the slogan “We Are the Ship, All Else the Sea” — a pledge of self-determination adapted from a line associated with Frederick Douglass.¹⁴ This founding is the specific event behind the broader Negro Leagues era, and it is the event commemorated by the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in the same district.

Background

By 1920 Black players had been excluded from white organized baseball for roughly three decades under the sport’s unwritten color line.² Black professional teams existed and drew crowds, but they operated independently — barnstorming, playing exhibitions, and competing without a stable league framework, which left them financially precarious and at the mercy of (often white) booking agents.³ Rube Foster had built the Chicago American Giants into a dominant team and a profitable operation, and he had spent years publicly advocating — including in writing in the Black press — for a self-sustaining, Black-owned league with a national footprint to rival the white majors.³ The Kansas City meeting was where that argument finally produced an institution.

The meeting

When and where

The owners convened at the Paseo YMCA in Kansas City, Missouri, on February 13–14, 1920.¹⁴ Some accounts note that portions of the gathering and associated business also touched the nearby Street’s Hotel, the major Black-owned hotel of the 18th and Vine district.⁴ By one account Foster arrived accompanied by roughly a dozen men, including several sportswriters and an attorney, alongside the team owners.¹

Who was there

The clubs represented at the founding meeting, with their owners, included:¹⁴⁵

• Kansas City Monarchs — J. L. Wilkinson
• Chicago American Giants — Rube Foster
• Chicago Giants — Joe Green
• Detroit Stars — John “Tenny” Blount
• Indianapolis ABCs — C. I. Taylor
• St. Louis Giants — Lorenzo Cobb

Two additional clubs — the Cuban Stars and the Dayton Marcos — joined the league as members although they were not present at the meeting itself.⁴⁵ Together these eight clubs are generally counted as the league’s charter members.⁵

The constitution

The league’s constitution and bylaws were drafted by a group of Black sportswriters working with an attorney. Sources credit journalists Cary B. Lewis, Dave Wyatt (Indianapolis Ledger), Elwood C. Knox (Indianapolis Freeman), and Charles Marshall, with attorney Elisha Scott of Topeka, Kansas, serving as lead drafter.⁴⁵ Scott was a prominent Kansas civil-rights attorney whose law office later contributed to the Brown v. Board of Education litigation.

The name and the slogan

The organization’s formal designation was the National Association of Colored Professional Base Ball Clubs.⁴ Some contemporaneous and secondary accounts also render the adopted name as the National Baseball League of the United States; in standard usage the circuit became known simply as the Negro National League.¹⁴ The league adopted the motto “We Are the Ship, All Else the Sea,” a statement of independence and self-reliance.¹⁴

Outcome and significance

Foster was appointed league president (and, in some accounts, also secretary and treasurer), consolidating extraordinary authority — a structure critics noted created conflicts of interest, since Foster simultaneously owned and managed a member club and his booking agency collected fees on league games.⁴ Despite those tensions, the NNL was a near-immediate success and became the first viable, sustained Black professional baseball league — the model that subsequent Black circuits (the Eastern Colored League, the second Negro National League, the Negro American League) would follow.²⁵

The league launched play in the 1920 season with clubs in Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Kansas City, St. Louis, and other midwestern cities.¹⁵ On the field, Foster’s Chicago American Giants won the first several pennants; the Kansas City Monarchs emerged as the league’s other powerhouse, taking multiple pennants across the 1920s.⁵

Arc through 1931

The original Negro National League ran from 1920 to 1931.⁵ It thrived through the 1920s but was destabilized by two blows in close succession: Foster’s mental illness, which forced his withdrawal from baseball in 1926, removed the league’s central organizing force, and Foster’s death in 1930 left a leadership vacuum.⁴⁵ The onset of the Great Depression, which devastated the Black communities that supplied the league’s fan base and revenue, proved fatal: the original NNL collapsed after the 1931 season.⁵ A second, eastern-based Negro National League would be organized in 1933, but the 1920–1931 circuit founded in Kansas City was the original — and the one that proved a Black-owned national league could be built and sustained.⁵

The Kansas City Monarchs

Of all the clubs at the 1920 founding, the hometown Kansas City Monarchs became the league’s most enduring franchise — and the reason Kansas City’s tie to Black baseball outlived the original league itself. The Monarchs were founded and operated from 1920 to 1948 by J. L. Wilkinson, who was white; Foster “was reluctant to accept White ownership of a club in his circuit” but accepted Wilkinson on the strength of his reputation and fairness.⁶ Wilkinson built the Monarchs into a flagship operation and a genuine baseball innovator: in 1929 he commissioned a portable lighting system — a 100-kilowatt generator feeding lamps on 40-foot telescoping poles — and the Monarchs played their first night game on April 28, 1930 in Enid, Oklahoma, pioneering night baseball years before the major leagues adopted it.⁶ Wilkinson was inducted posthumously into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.⁶

The Monarchs also became the pipeline through which Black baseball’s greatest figures reached the wider world:

• Satchel Paige pitched for the Monarchs from 1941 to 1947 and in 1971 became the first player elected to the Hall of Fame by its Committee on Negro Baseball Leagues.⁷
• Jackie Robinson played shortstop for the Monarchs in the 1945 season after his Army discharge — hitting well over.300 — immediately before he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers organization and broke Major League Baseball’s color line.⁸

Legacy in Kansas City

The 1920 founding is the specific historical anchor for Kansas City’s identity as the home of Black baseball. The event is interpreted and commemorated at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) — a privately funded 501(c)(3) established in 1990 in the 18th and Vine district, two blocks from the Paseo YMCA where Rube Foster founded the league.⁹ Under its longtime chairman John “Buck” O’Neil, the museum moved in November 1997 into its 10,000-square-foot home at the Museums at 18th & Vine, where it interprets the league born down the street.⁹ The founding also stands as an early marker of 18th and Vine’s institutional weight in the years just before the district’s jazz-era peak. For the broader story of the leagues this meeting created, see The Negro Leagues.

Sources

Footnotes

1. “The Negro National League is Founded” — National Baseball Hall of Fame. https://baseballhall.org/discover-more/stories/inside-pitch/negro-national-league-is-founded ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

2. “The Negro Leagues” — MLB.com History. https://www.mlb.com/history/negro-leagues/history ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. “Rube Foster” — Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) BioProject. https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/andrew-rube-foster/ ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. “‘We Are the Ship, All Else the Sea’: The Founding of the Negro National League” — Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). https://sabr.org/research/article/we-are-the-ship-all-else-the-sea-the-founding-of-the-negro-national-league/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

5. “Negro National League (1920–1931)” — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro_National_League_(1920%E2%80%931931) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹

6. “J.L. Wilkinson” — Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) BioProject. https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/j-l-wilkinson/ — Confirms: Wilkinson (b. May 14, 1878, Algona, IA; d. Aug 21, 1964, Kansas City, MO) founded and operated the Monarchs 1920–1948 as a white owner Foster accepted reluctantly; 1929 portable-lighting commission; first night game April 28, 1930, Enid, OK; Hall of Fame induction 2006. ↩ ↩² ↩³

7. “Satchel Paige” — National Baseball Hall of Fame. https://baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/paige-satchel — Confirms: pitched for the Kansas City Monarchs 1941–1947; elected to the Hall of Fame in 1971 as the first electee of the Committee on Negro Baseball Leagues. ↩

8. “Jackie Robinson” — Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) BioProject. https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/jackie-robinson/ — Confirms: joined the Kansas City Monarchs for the 1945 season after Army discharge, hitting well over.300 at shortstop, before breaking MLB’s color line. (Exact 1945 average/salary/games not given — “ for precise figures.) ↩

9. Negro Leagues Baseball Museum — “About The Museum.” https://www.nlbm.com/about/ — Confirms: privately funded 501(c)(3) established 1990; located in the Historic 18th & Vine district two blocks from the Paseo YMCA; moved into its 10,000-sq-ft home at the Museums at 18th & Vine in November 1997 under chairman Buck O’Neil. (Museum founders roster not confirmed on the official page — “.) ↩ ↩²