Editors note: My friend and colleague, Chris Jensen, recently had published his comprehensive and moving new book, Tragedy in Black Baseball: Early Deaths of 136 Negro Leaguers, 1871-1950, through McFarland Publishing. I highly recommend checking it out; it’s extremely engrossing, empathetic and a little saddening, and it shines lights on dozens of noble, hard-working, talented people whose deaths, like many of their lives, have been overlooked, obscured or even erased from previous history books. The following is a lightly edited, email interview I recently conducted with Chris about his book and the process of researching and writing it.
RW: What was the genesis of this book? Why did you decide to write about this subject?
CJ: During the five years I spent researching and writing my first book, Baseball State by State (which came out in 2012), I kept coming across Negro Leaguers who died too young under tragic circumstances. I tend to get interested and then obsessed when I see patterns. Each time I encountered another tragic death I would copy the material into a Word document, building up a nice folder of intriguing information.
With basic details fleshed out for about 40 player deaths, I realized I had enough material to turn into a book project. Dave Wyatt’s “Death in the Game” article in the Feb. 24, 1917, edition of the Indianapolis Freeman listing 38 Black players who had died in the previous decade was a puzzle that begged to be tackled. I tried to identify who these 38 players were and what happened to them.
I was only able to flesh out the details for 20 of the players Wyatt mentioned – 15 of them made it to the final cut for the book. Then I set out to turn over every rock in my research to determine how many Negro League players died early, tragic deaths. In the end, my research uncovered nearly 200, although details were frustratingly elusive for some of the player deaths.
I decided to write about this subject because I wanted to put these Negro Leaguers’ life stories in the history books and give them greater recognition for their career achievements. Negro League players were deprived of the right to play in the major leagues for too many years, so that alone bothered me. To discover so many Negro Leaguers died young under suspicious circumstances, without any justice served, bothered me immensely. I wanted to make sure their stories got told and passed on to future generations of baseball fans, because these forgotten stars had already been deprived of so much.
RW: For some, the subject of tragic, early deaths might seem a little dark, but why do you feel it’s important to highlight the fact that so many pre-integration African-American players died so young?
CJ: Many Negro League players, and especially pre-Negro League players, lived and died in anonymity. Some of their greatest feats on the baseball diamond are lost to posterity. African-American players were forced to play in a shadow league due to racial discrimination. They didn’t play for glory or recognition, but that doesn’t mean their stories are less deserving to be told. They are to be saluted, respected and appreciated for their talents, with some measure of dignity that was not provided to them during their lives.
I’m especially proud that my book calls attention to the outstanding work being done by Jeremy Krock with his Negro Leagues Baseball Grave Marker Project. What Jeremy and his group of volunteers have done over the past 20-plus years to bring lasting recognition and restore dignity to long-forgotten Negro League players is truly inspiring.
RW: Why do you think there are so many examples of such tragic passings in the world of Black baseball? Are there any economic, social or cultural factors that might cause such a situation?
CJ: For Negro Leaguers diagnosed with cancer, heart disease, influenza or tuberculosis – just to name a few examples – lack of access to quality health care limited their chances of getting successfully treated. Hospitals were segregated, and the medical profession determined that African Americans were an inferior race and therefore didn’t deserve top-notch care. In 1877, state governments began passing Jim Crow laws to deny equal rights to African Americans, which made all aspects of everyday life more difficult. The Great Migration to northern states created a housing strain and exposed Blacks to new stresses and an environment in which alcohol was more readily available and used to cope with these stresses. Alcoholism was a contributing factor in several of the tragic deaths featured in my book. Race riots in Chicago and other cities bred fear and uncertainty, while Negro Leaguers like Fred Goree learned the danger of traveling through sundown towns.
The Great Depression caused extra financial devastation to Black communities and placed ongoing hardships on Black teams, leagues and players. The only Negro League franchises that remained profitable were those run by men engaged in illegal gambling and bootlegging. Several of the player deaths were directly attributed to bootlegging. While whites also faced financial devastation, their 25-30 percent unemployment rate during the Depression was not as severe as the 50-plus percent unemployment rate for Blacks. With white workers forcing minorities out of lower-paying jobs, Black families no longer had disposable income to spend attending baseball games, and the lack of financial resources placed enormous strain on Negro Leaguers wondering where their next paycheck was coming from. Black teams were forced to travel long distances to play games, which had unintended negative consequences. Porter Moss, Smoky Owens and Buster Brown all died tragically as the result of a chain of events that started with their team bus breaking down.
There has been one Negro League player lynched (James Bowens), one threatened with lynching (Bud Scipio) and one executed (Jim Moss). More than 20 Negro Leaguers were murdered with little or no justice meted out to punish the perpetrator. The same cannot be said of white major leaguers during the segregation era.
RW: What were your biggest challenges writing this book?
CJ: Fleshing out the biographical information proved challenging for some of the players. Census records didn’t always jive with birth records, death certificates and military draft registration cards. Newspaper reporting on Black baseball teams was spotty, with names misspelled, game accounts lacking and details on player deaths wildly inaccurate. Also, it was upsetting to see so much overtly racist coverage in newspapers, especially in the pre-Negro Leagues era.
RW: Are you pleased with how the book turned out?
CJ: I love how the cover turned out, which features illustrations by Nick Wilson of Josh Gibson, Rap Dixon and John Merida. Overall, I am very pleased with the book’s content but wish I didn’t have to leave out so many players who died too young under tragic circumstances. I was given a word limit by my publisher, so featuring more players would’ve meant writing a lot less about each one.
The Negro Leagues were on a downward spiral once Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, so it made sense to cut things off at 1949. That resulted in leaving out the stories of 20-plus Negro Leaguers who died tragically from the 1950s into the 1980s. It was disappointing to not be able to tell the stories of Phil Cockrell, Charlie Peete, Luke Easter, Hank Thompson, Sam Bankhead and others.
RW: Finally, which deaths that you touched on in this book were the most tragic or unexpected? Were there any particular cases that spoke to you?
CJ: I’d like to say all the player deaths spoke to me, but the reality is that some deaths were just unfortunate. Tuberculosis killed lots of people in the early 1900s and not just Black baseball players. I’ll mention just a few of the cases that made a big impact on me.
Octavius Catto was the Martin Luther King Jr. of the 19th century, a true civil rights icon but also a legitimate baseball pioneer with the Pythian Base Ball Club of Philadelphia. He helped form the National Equal Rights League with Frederick Douglass and rallied support to pass the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. Catto was instrumental in getting Pennsylvania to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment granting Blacks the right to vote. So, it was deeply ironic and tragic that Catto was assassinated on Election Day in 1871, the first year Blacks could vote. It was surprising and disturbing to learn that when “A Quest for Parity: The Octavius V. Catto Memorial” was unveiled outside Philadelphia City Hall in 2017, it was the first of 1,700-plus statues in the city to honor an African-American individual.
James Bowens is one of 4,743 people to be lynched in America and the only professional baseball player. The mob that lynched Bowens in Frederick, Md., in 1895 was stirred up by sensational but untrue accounts in the local newspaper. Bowens, who professed his innocence to the end, was killed in an unbelievably cruel and inhumane way with no due process. He was dead before his alleged victim was alert and properly able to identify her attacker.
What is most disturbing about Fred Goree’s 1925 death is that it took nearly a century for his descendants to learn the true details of his death. Goree, the manager and possible owner of the Chicago Independent Giants, was savagely beaten and then shot to death by a police officer who had pulled him over for alleged speeding, in a clear case of racial profiling. It was cold-blooded murder with multiple witnesses. White newspapers, none of whom spelled Goree’s name correctly, portrayed him as the instigator who left the cop no choice but to defend himself. The St. Louis Argus newspaper, representing the African-American community, told the real story of the shooting based on eyewitnesses who were in the car with Goree. The details of Goree’s death and the sham trial that exonerated his murderer got clouded over as the years went by, and family members didn’t see the Argus article until 2016.
Jeremy Krock was moved to action by Goree’s story and ensured he had a proper grave marker. And you, Ryan, are among the journalists who have called attention to Goree’s tragic killing. It takes a village of researchers and historians to ensure stories of Black baseball are told accurately and with historical context. I’m pleased to be part of that process.
The tragic death of Porter Moss is another important one that has not been told accurately in print until my book came out. It was long believed that Moss died at age 34 in 1944 of a gunshot wound on a passenger train in Tennessee, a situation that culminated with a white doctor boarding the train and refusing to treat Moss because of the color of his skin. That version of the story was backed up by teammate Verdell Mathis in a 1993 interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer. That’s a pretty big accusation and numerous podcasts, articles and even doctoral dissertations have condemned the inhumane actions of the white doctor over the years.
Except that’s not what happened. SABR researchers Russ Speiller and Gary Cieradkowski unearthed a July 21, 1944, article in the Atlanta Daily World (an African-American newspaper) that states the white doctor gave Moss an injection (perhaps morphine for pain) and told his friends to take him to the next station where an ambulance would be waiting to treat him. Moss needed more medical attention than a doctor with a black bag could provide in the baggage room of a train. It was not discrimination or malfeasance that sealed his fate, but being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Black baseball players like Catto, Bowens, Goree and Moss demonstrated a resilient spirit and love for the game that transcended the adversity they faced. I hope their stories get told and retold for many years to come with newfound respect for what they endured.
