Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 6, Number 1, Spring, 1994 Page: 17
This periodical is part of the collection entitled: Legacies: a History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Dallas Historical Society.
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The Clowns had their own uniforms and their own bus. We had the first air conditioned bus in the
league. We finished second or third every year. The team was owned by a Jewish man named Sid
Pollock who lived in Florida. The Clowns made lots of money. Barnie Downs, a black man, ran the
team for Pollock. You had a few white people who owned black teams but the rest were owned by black
people, like Sonny Jackson who owned the Homestead Grays.
The baseball teams were so good, and you had so many great players that you never hear of now.
The Kansas City Monarchs was a team that stayed together for fifteen years. There was no way you
could get in there, except maybe as a reserve. A lot of people don't know that Jackie Robinson [the
player who broke the major league color line] was never a regular for the Kansas City Monarchs. There
was nowhere for him to play. There were a thousand Negro players better than Jackie Robinson. He
was sent to the majors because of his mentality. Because he could put up with all the hardship he was
going to face. We had a boy from Dallas named William "Bonnie" Serrell. He could flat play. He
played for the Kansas City Monarchs. Jackie Robinson couldn't beat him out on the Monarchs.
The fans in Dallas didn't know much about what was going on in the Negro baseball leagues.
That's how I got in the newspaper business. I used to officiate college football games all through the
southwest. And you would never know what the other team would do because there was never anything
in the newspaper. I started a thing called the Southwest Sporting News. I didn't know anything about
newspapers but that' s how I got in this business. The white papers only started covering black athletes
in the last twenty years.
A lot of people talk about these things. I know them because I lived them.William Blair is now
publisher of the Elite
News, a Dallas newspaper
which focuses on AfricanAmerican
issues.
Jackie Robinson's entry into major league
baseball in 1948 was the beginning of the end for the
Negro Leagues. The Negro National League folded
in 1949 with several of the franchises absorbed by
the Negro American League. The Negro American
League hung on until the early 1960s, but the days of
big crowds were over.
The color line would remain intact in the
Texas League until 1952, when Dave Hoskins was
signed by the Dallas Eagles, five years after Jackie
Robinson broke into the major leagues.10 Discrimination
and social issues aside, the color line at the
very least deprived baseball fans of appreciating
some of the greatest players of all time. How can we
know this? Even after Robinson broke in with theDodgers, only a few black players began to trickle
into the majors, yet their impact was immediate and
significant. Beginning with Robinson, six of the
next seven Rookie of the Year Awards went to
players who came out of the Negro Leagues. Jackie
Robinson won the National League's Most Valuable
Player Award in 1949, starting a string of nine
MVPs in the next eleven years going to former
Negro Leaguers. Popular players such as Satchel
Paige came into the league well past their prime.
Many of the great names are now enshrined
in baseball's Hall of Fame. But as William Blair
laments, there were talented players everywhere
who are now forgotten. And that, sadly, includes
many who came from Dallas.
'Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White (New York: Oxford University Press,
1970), pp. 16- 17
I2bid., p. 17
I3bid., pp. 18 - 21
41bid., p. 29
'Ibid., pp. 30 - 37
6The Dallas Morning News, July 24, 1894.
7Peterson, Only the Ball Was White, pp. 72 - 91
8The Dallas Express, March 21, 1925.
91bid., March 28, 1925.
'"Larry Bowman, "Breaking Barriers,"Legacies, Spring 1991. (3:1), pp. 14 -19
17
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Dallas County Heritage Society. Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 6, Number 1, Spring, 1994, periodical, 1994; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth35112/m1/19/?q=dallas+business+journal+and+2008: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Historical Society.