(upbeat music) - [Narrator] "Illinois Stories" is brought to you by The Corporation For Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Hello, welcome to "Illinois Stories", I'm Mark McDonald in Springfield at the Springfield and Central Illinois African-American Museum where they've been waiting two years to bring an exhibit, a very timely exhibit to their a museum here at the entrance to Oak Ridge Cemetery.

The reason it's taken that long is this virus that we're all very familiar with, unfortunately, but finally it came to be, and this exhibit from the Negro Leagues, the National Negro Leagues in Kansas City is here.

And Carolyn Farrar, it's an interesting journey that you took to bring this here because like I mentioned, COVID got in the way and you wanted to do it on the 100th anniversary- - We did.

- Of the Negro Leagues but it didn't happen but it's here now and it's gonna be here for all until the end of October so it's terrific opportunity.

- It is.

- Yeah, tell me how you got interested in bringing this exhibit here.

- It's an interesting story and it is a two-year old story.

- Mm-hmm.

- Back in 2018, my son and my husband who are die-hard Yankee fans- - Boo!

(both laughs) - Decided to take a weekend trip to Kansas City to see them play the Royals.

And as soon as we got there, my son said, my son, Christopher said, "We got to go to the Negro Leagues Museum."

- Mm-hmm.

- And I was not that familiar with it.

We gobbled down our barbecue and flew over there and we had got there about noon and we help them lock the door at 5:00.

- You stayed the whole day.

- The whole day.

And it was, it's a mesmerizing museum that I hope people will go to.

So he said to me, "Mom, you got to bring it to Springfield, see what they've got."

So we did, we called them and we said, "We would like to contract a traveling museum to come to our museum here in Springfield."

And so we did, and they suggested to us to do one call "Beisebol".

And I was like, "Really?"

And I'm a museum wonk.

- Okay.

- And I think if you go to a museum, you should not just go for the general history you know, but you need to come away with something.

- Uh-huh.

- And so we thought what a cool idea to do the Afro-American and Afro-Latino connection that started back in the 1920s 'cause as you say, it's the 100th anniversary.

Actually it's the 101, they call it "Beisbol 101".

- You know, we just saw the spelling of baseball on your shirt.

- Yeah.

- And of course, that's the Spanish spelling.

- That is the Spanish spelling.

- And I didn't know and many of our viewers aren't gonna know the relationship between the players in Central and Latin America- - Mm-hmm.

- And the black players in the Negro Leagues and they did cross over and they played in each other's countries.

- They did.

They did.

Many of the Afro-American players went to the Caribbean and Mexico, Mexico played a big part, to play what was called Winter Ball and they loved going there for two reasons.

First of all, they were respected for their character which they did not get that respect here in the States and for their talent.

- Mm-hmm.

- Many people knew they were very talented, but there, they were just worshiped and they played an integrated leagues, there was no color situation there.

And then the Latino players wanted to come to the States and play ball and they did come, but they, of course, depending on the color of their skin, could not play in the Major Leagues.

- Mm-hmm.

- They played in the Negro Leagues and so there was a great connection between the two, for the love of the game, the brotherhood, and just the respect they regard in each of their countries which as I said, the Afro-American players could not because of Jim Crow and color lines.

- The first thing you see when you enter the exhibit is the hall of flags that we see here.

- Yes.

- And of course the United States, Mexico, let's take a walk down here- - Okay.

- Panama, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, even back then, a hundred years ago, baseball was hot in those countries.

- Baseball was hot in those countries and what we like to say is, as we are talking about these players, it is so prevalent for today because so many of the Major League teams have Latino players on them.

I was telling you the story earlier of Francisco Lindor who destroyed my husband's gosh-given Yankees.

- Oh, and the Mets just got him this year, you know?

- Right, and with the Mets.

- Yeah.

- And he hit three home runs in that Sunday night game.

(Mark laughs) And but because of Lindor's skin color, he would have never played in the majors.

- No, no.

- He would have played with the Negro Leagues.

- Sure and it's so too many years.

- Outstanding talent.

- Absolutely.

- And so that's just a current day connection of what we have with the Negro Leagues.

- Let's take a look on it as we walked down.

- Okay.

- Now, the jerseys were not part of the Kansas City.

- Oh no.

- These are locally- - These are all locally- - Loans, yeah?

- Loans by people in Central Illinois, primarily from Springfields.

- And I think that's so interesting because if you had heard of the Crawfords for instance, or, and I didn't know that the Black Yankees were called Black Yankees.

- Yes.

- You might've been familiar with the team, but you would never have seen a jersey.

- You've never seen a jersey but also in Kansas City, they had a lot of the jerseys around and I thought in my committee, we had a great committee, thought, "Would it be cool if we could show them?"

The other reason we wanted to do that is the flamboyancy of the jerseys.

These are just not cut and dry deals.

- Mm-hmm.

- They all had a flare.

And the cool thing about some of these is that they were patterned after the Major League teams in the sense of the names like the Black Yankees are there.

And as I said, the St. Louis Stars, many people will- - Back up over here, yeah.

- Will know them as well.

Other big ones that you tend to know, again, are the Pittsburgh Crawfords that you just mentioned, they were one of the premier teams.

The other thing that about some of the jerseys that we were able to get, are what's called centennial jerseys.

And the reason that they're called centennial jerseys is because, and this is the Chicago American Giants jersey, is they were specially made by for the Negro Leagues Museum.

And on the back of them, they tell the reigning dates of those teams on back.

- Very good, very good.

- So these are what's called centennial jerseys and I think we feature approximately five of those.

- Well, let's go back around this way and take our circle.

St. Louis had a couple of different jerseys- - We do.

- The stars, and this one, and I'm not sure if that was the same team.

- We do, this one, that one was made as what's called an authentic replica jersey.

This one was donated or loaned by one of our team people, committee people.

But this one was done by St. Louis Cardinals in one of their days where they were honoring the leagues.

So this is one that's a little bit different from the one over there.

- Kansas City Monarchs.

- Monarchs.

- [Mark] They may be the most famous Negro League team of all time.

- They are.

- Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson.

- Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson- - "Cool Papa" Bell.

- Right, and Jackie Robinson came to the Dodgers from the Monarchs.

- Yeah, yeah.

- And so all of those were some of the major reasons that it was really actually started and located in Kansas City.

Of course, George Bush authorized the Negro Players Association back in the 90s, and from that grew the Kansas City Museum, the Negro Leagues Museum.

- [Mark] The Clowns.

- [Carolyn] The Clowns are from Indianapolis.

- Ah.

(speaks faintly) - Most people hate that name, but The Clowns were the longest running team.

They did not fall until the 60s.

- Is that right?

- And most of these teams were done from 1920 when they were first organized into a baseball structure.

The Clowns did last into the 1960s.

- Well that makes you wonder who were they were playing if all the other teams had dropped out?

Hard to get a game.

- Well, they were still playing various other teams, but it was just that they could not financially survive.

With the advent of Jackie Robinson into the majors was the demise of the Negro Leagues because then all of these players who played that will go through, as we talk about these players, they won't be in Major Leagues.

- Well, and it didn't take long for the other teams to get in line.

- It took a while.

It did take a while, they kind of went along with it, but not, I mean, it didn't run to the teams and take them.

- No, absolutely, no, it took a little bit- - But it took awhile for them to come along.

- This is interesting because in 1920, I guess this is an emblem of each of the Negro League teams, right?

- Right, most of the major ones.

This over here which we really wanted to do these four teams.

The reason we did these four teams, these were some of the most prevalent teams as for as their rank, their ability, I mean, you'd think about them as the winning teams through the years, but we wanted to put up there some of the stars so that you could focus in on, like you were calling out names for Kansas City Monarchs.

But what we also wanted to do was to show this statistics from some of these players and some of these teams so you could really understand and get excited about how good they were.

- [Mark] Wow, Ernie Banks, Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige, and James "Cool Papa" Bell, all on the same team.

- Well, not at the same time, but they were all from the same team.

- Yeah, but still what a depth of talent, oh man.

- Yes, the talent was amazing.

And many of them played across the way different ones and as I said, we had to have like the homestead grades because Josh Johnson, our local person, was a catcher for them back in the late 30s and 40s- - And we're gonna hear more about him later on in the program.

In fact, we have some sort of a memorabilia from his life.

- Yeah, we do, we do.

- That'll be perfect.

- And this is kind of an array and it was a drawing done of the players, and in the middle there is Rube Foster and Rube foster was manager, owner, and he had one time played for the Chicago American Giants.

And he was the organizer of the Negro Leagues 'cause these were teams that were Barnstormers, local, college, school, city teams, whatever, but he came along in 1920 and put them into a structure which became a financial structure that helped the economics in the black community.

- Sure.

- That was a lot of social things that went on, a lot of civic things that went on, so the the whole Negro League structure was very, very, very important.

- I imagine at that point, they started to really develop some talent too- - Yes.

- Because rather than being scattered out, you actually had a system that people could grow up into.

- You did, you did.

- And one of the things that... And let me just point out in the back, we have "Storied" and I did cut it off for the show, but "Storied" is 22 stories about the Negro Leagues that are told by Bob Kendricks who is the president of the museum.

And in the "Storied", he tells you things about the Negro Leagues you never thought about, never knew.

For instance, the importance, the economic impact of these teams as I pointed out.

He talks about that one how the white stadium owners made big money off of these teams.

When these teams came to like the old Comiskey Park- - Mm-hmm.

- They pack it and they made a lot of money.

One of the reasons that some of the owners didn't want to integrate or bring these players on, you're not gonna make that kind of money.

- When their team's out of town, their stadium, they're empty.

- Their stadiums were rented.

- But now they can, yeah, they can... - Yeah, and African-Americans came in droves, I mean, there was hardly a vacant seat in the house.

And the type of ball these guys played was called fastball.

They would just, I mean, it was just entertaining.

I mean, you didn't hold conversations and nod out at a Negro Leagues game.

So they made a lot of money off of these teams when they were coming to use their venues.

And so that was a little bit into their thought process- - Very interesting.

- Of whether we should disband everything and take them on.

So the teams were very, very important and what Rube Foster did in 1920 was amazing and with the development of the teams.

- Kathryn Harris, when you're a ex-librarian and historian, people often time ask you, puts you to tasks- - Right.

- Find this out, find that out.

In this case, there were some players from the Negro League and afterwards black players, who ended up having connections to Central Illinois in Springfield and so you've been sort of looking into that, haven't you?

- Right, I have been looking into it and since we're standing here by Josh Johnson's memorabilia that we have in our collection, may as well talk about him because he was very prominent in the local urban league and served as the president there.

In fact, in 1978, and we have a program here.

- Oh yeah, show that to us.

- Yeah, We have a program that was a testimonial dinner to attest to all of the things that he did.

He was active in the church that my sister goes to the St. Paul AME church right here in Springfield.

He was on the White House planning committee for adult education.

So he did a lot of things other than, other than being a baseball player.

- Mm-hmm.

- So it goes to show you that there is life after baseball, (Mark laughs) even though your knees or arms or whatever got you there may go out.

- I think he was a native Illinoisan - Absolutely.

- And he was on the State Board of Education and hold a number of really prestigious positions.

And in fact, we have his obituary here which was in the local newspaper.

- He had a master's degree in education from Pennsylvania State University in 1941.

So, you know, he was really quite something.

- And he's buried at Camp Butler so he also was on the surface as I understand it right here.

- Right, he was.

He was truly...

I found this to be interesting.

He was awarded the Mentor Graham Award.

Mentor Graham was Mr. Lincoln's teacher.

- Mm-hmm.

- And the Education Association awarded him that the Mentor Graham Award- - Very interesting.

- For his role in education.

- Yeah, very interesting.

- So he was really quite something.

Meritorious services to the State of Illinois by the Illinois Curriculum Council.

So, you know, he was a lot more than just a baseball player.

- Died in 1999 and he's buried in Oak or in Camp Butler, as what's said.

Now, you also did some work on some other folks, too.

- Yes.

- And we're in the process of getting these photographs and the panels made for the museum here.

- Right.

- But let's go talk about those folks too.

- All right, then.

- Hey, Kathryn, we had some local tie-ins.

We're talking about Josh Johnson but now we've got a fellow here that played initially with the Buxton Wonders which was a small Iowa team.

- Right, I was not aware of him at all.

- Hmm.

- And in fact, I thought it was Buxton, Illinois, and then I did a little bit more looking, it was Buxton, Iowa.

- Mm-hmm.

- And he was born and raised right here in Springfield.

- [Mark] And this is George Neal.

- [Kathryn] George Neal, right.

He played with the Chicago Giants and the Leland Giants and he was the manager of the Union Giants which was a baseball team here in Springfield.

- Ah.

- And he was really quite a young man there.

- Yeah, and now here's a young man and an older man.

We have two pictures from the Birmingham team.

- Right, the Birmingham Black Barons, Ernest Leon Westfield, and he just passed away recently.

He was from Champaign, he graduated from Eastern Illinois, and he was the president of the Champaign NAACP.

- [Mark] No kidding?

- And he retired after, I think in 1999, it was after 31 years from the Illinois Department of Security.

And he was a graduate of Eastern Illinois.

So it's, you know, I think that in doing this, you find out that there is indeed the life after baseball (Mark laughs) and that these folks did leave a tremendous mark on our community.

- Yes they did.

Now here's a young man that we... Everybody knows his name but probably don't know why they know his name.

- Absolutely.

- [Mark] There's a park in Springfield called Comer Cox Park.

- Comer Cox.

- I always thought that was the last two names of two people and they sort of- - And joined them together.

- Yeah, but no, Comer Cox was his name.

- Right.

- And he was a very good baseball player from St. Louis.

- Right, he was not only a very good baseball player, he was also a very good football player.

- Aha.

- And from high school, he went to Sumner High School in St. Louis.

There he is in his position for the football.

And he lived here in Springfield after his time in the Negro League.

He was a graduate of Fisk University and he became one of the directors of the Springfield Urban League, and the park was named in his honor in 1976.

- Oh, my God.

- He passed away in 1971.

- Yeah.

- He played with the Nashville Elite Giants and the Cleveland Cubs in the 30s.

- And this is interesting, I mean, the Unknown Player.

Because there were so many black players that never got any notice by anybody and their history isn't written anywhere so this is interesting.

It's sort of a generic- - It's kind of a generic picture.

You know, we have the Tomb of the Unknown.

We have no idea who's in the Tomb of the Unknown in D.C. and much as you said, there were folks who did not receive notoriety or fame or anything, but he could be construed to be a composite of all the folks who played in the Negro Leagues but didn't make it into the stat books as they call them but he was just as important.

- Yeah, and we can't go without mentioning Satchel Paige because he's probably the most famous Negro League player of all time and then he went on to be very successful in the Major Leagues.

- [Kathryn] Absolutely, he did.

- [Mark] And he had a Springfield connection which I was not aware of before.

- [Kathryn] Right, and he was affiliated with the Springfield Redbirds which is the, what do they call it?

- [Mark] Who's the Cardinals?

- The Minor League.

- Triple A team at the time, yeah.

- Triple A team for the St. Louis Cardinals and in fact, he was the vice president.

- I'll be doggone.

- Vice president of that so- - He must've been here a lot that year then you're looking at talent or, you know.

- Right, right.

And I always remember this one thing about Satchel Paige, even I've heard this phrase, "Don't look back or something might be gaining on you."

(Mark laughs) So just keep looking forward, whatever you do, just stay the course.

- Good advice.

- Oh, absolutely.

Oh, absolutely.

So I'm not being a baseball person, you know, I'm not really one into all the stats and stuff, but I really enjoyed learning about what these folks did to make our society in this part of Central Illinois much better than it was and so we do owe them a debt of gratitude and they are to be acknowledged not only for their prowess, I guess would be the word, and the skills, on the diamond, on the court, but also for what they did for our community.

- Thank you.

- So, thank you.

- Well Carolyn, you know, the material from the Negro Leagues Museum is fantastic, but you really wouldn't have a localized exhibit here unless you had people bringing in things on loan that's in their personal collection and that's what's sort of at the back here, isn't it?

- Yes, it is.

We have a really rich group of people here in Springfield and Central Illinois that have experiences or real knowledge and love of Negro Leagues baseball.

So when we put the call out for memorabilia, we had several people to answer the call and actually, we still are having people who said that they didn't want to bring in things.

As I mentioned earlier, all of the jerseys are on loan from local residents.

The books at the top are also some of the things from the library of various people who just dropped them off and been dropping them off over the year, two years.

This is a commemorative baseball from the Kansas City Monarchs, and of course, what's baseball without a cap or a hat?

(Mark laughs) And many of these things, as you can see, are what we call authentic reproductions of the caps, especially those over in the end.

I think those were donated or loaned by Kathryn.

Those are more of the original, authentic type of cap.

- Wow, okay, yeah.

- At the bottom, again, are some more of the baseball memorabilia books, and that one was a course calendar so a lot of what we wanted to show here were a lot of commercial aspects of the Negro Leagues.

- [Mark] Mm-hmm.

- And this one was done to commemorate the 100th anniversary that was coming up last year.

- Mm-hmm, really, really interesting.

- Those are said, all of those are local.

- We mentioned course Satchel Paige earlier and I bet a lot of people don't even know that he wrote an autobiography, but that's what it is.

- That is, that is.

Can't say it was a best seller, but he did write it.

(Mark laughs) This was one that was very unique by one of our local residents.

- Mm, yeah.

- The cover page of Jackie Robinson who, it's not about him breaking in, it's from 1950 when he started in a movie which I did not see that movie but I plan to look it up.

- I didn't even know that.

- I didn't know he- - Yes, he did.

He became a movie star and the ones across in the league are sort of more into the media hype of the Negro Leagues.

This is from "Jet" magazine from 1965 which dealt with Satchel Paige and a rocking chair beside the duck out of Kansas City Athletics.

(Mark laughs) So again, this is Satchel trying to get enough time to get a pension from the MLB.

(Mark laughs) So that was that, and of course, that's the Satchel Paige book.

This is a piece I mentioned earlier which I think is very, very important.

This was actually given to my son, Corey, he's not really into baseball but he cherished it by Josh Johnson.

And what was cool about it was in 1992, it is a program for when George Bush did inaugurate the Negro Leagues Players Association.

This was prior to the museum which set up moving into the museum.

And this is a nice piece in the sense that it has bios of the players.

- [Mark] Very nice, yeah.

- [Carolyn] This is a ball from the Negro Leagues time.

As you can say, it's look at a little age on it- - Mm-hmm.

- Which one of our local people did donate.

We wanted to put this piece in because this is from 2021, a "New York's Times" article and put it by the Negro Players Association piece because this talked about the MLB recognizing the Negro Leagues and their statistics and the numbers that these players put up.

- Mm-hmm.

- So we put this in here because this again is from then to now and of course, the whole exhibit is about that 100 years so we thought that was a neat piece to put in.

- Very much, very much so.

- This is some from one of our, we have one volunteer who works very closely with the St. Louis baseball team and of course, everybody loves Bobby Gibson.

- Oh, we just lost him, too.

- Yes, we did.

And that's one reason we thought it would be nice to put this piece in there to celebrate him and this is what they did as far as putting him into the baseball hall of fame and the other thing Cy Young winner and so forth.

Again, this is another book from that, and this is one of the bats from that particular time when this was more from the Gibson era, those map that was donated.

And these were some articles from "Jet" magazine.

"Jet" magazine was a weekly magazine.

I think we can get some of it online, but was the along with "Ebony" magazine published by Johnson Publishing Company out of Chicago, which was the news media of African-Americans.

And these are from the 1960s, 50s, and 60s about some of the things that baseball players.

And baseball players along with entertainers were great celebrities.

- Oh, they were, they were.

- And so in fact, when you go to Kansas City, the Negro Leagues Museum is right next door to the Jazz Museum which, again, they fostered each other.

And we thought we'd also do a little play on current things because as I said, what happened with the Negro Leagues, as far as bringing in the Caribbean players was just a flashback to Mario Rivera.

- [Mark] Over here.

The era, which as I said, and it took sign picture, and of course, he is from Panama.

And of course, that was for my husband's sake.

And of course, Derek Jeter, who just went into the hall of fame.

- Yeah, that's for your husband's sake, too?

- Yes, that was all owned by my son, Christopher, and he did donate it to us.

It's his free agent report when he was being recruited for the Yankees.

- Wow.

- And of course then, we have of course, a local favorite Yadier Molina who is from Puerto Rico, who is currently playing for the Cardinals.

- [Mark] Yup.

- And so we wanted to bring those in.

And then last on the corner down there is Lou Brock and everyone loves Lou Brock.

- [Mark] Yeah, we lost Lou recently, too.

- Yes, and Lou Brock was very interesting because he started, he was a big one for the unionization and the plane of black baseball players.

- Carolyn, thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- You and Kathryn.

We're out of time and we really appreciate you giving us a tour.

- Thank you, thank you.

- Yeah, this exhibit is here until October 30th at the Springfield and Central Illinois African-American Museum and it's open Tuesday through Saturday 12 to 4, and you're welcome to come in.

There is no admission, but they do appreciate your donations.

With another "Illinois Story", I'm Mark McDonald in Springfield, thanks for watching.

(lively music) - [Narrator] "Illinois Stories" is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

(gentle music)