From the Baseball Hall of Fame:
The moment Jackie Robinson stepped onto the Ebbets Field grass on April 15, 1947, the history of American civil rights was forever altered. But the story of that baseball moment had its roots in the lives of thousands of pioneers before Robinson – and the work continued after he was established as a big league star.
Those stories are just part of the Negro Leagues and post-Negro Leagues history that has been made available online as part of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s latest addition to the Hall of Fame Digital Archive Project.
Digitized photos of the Negro Leagues, the papers of pioneering African-American writer Wendell Smith and a Jackie Robinson scrapbook – all from the Museum’s unparalleled collection – debuted online today. Additional digitized material – including photos, audio, video and text – from the Museum collection will be published every other Wednesday as the Museum adds to the PASTIME (Public Archive System To Interact with the Museum Electronically) online collection, which is available at collection.baseballhall.org.
The latest digitized images range from Hall of Famers and Negro Leagues legends like Cool Papa Bell and Oscar Charleston to portraits taken by groundbreaking Cuban photographer Osvaldo Salas during the 1950s as baseball’s integration movement took hold. The searchable database includes many photos from the Museum’s archive never before published by the Hall of Fame. Smith’s papers, meanwhile, document the call for Major League Baseball to allow African-American players and the story of Robinson’s path to the big leagues.
The next group of materials scheduled to be available on PASTIME beginning Oct. 5 will include materials related to the first five Hall of Famers elected in 1936: Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Honus Wagner and Ruth. Future releases will include oral histories, additional scrapbooks and Negro League photos. The Oct. 19 digitized items will feature images and data from the Museum’s Postseason collection.
Read the Complete Announcement
Direct to PASTIME Online Collection
About Gary Price
