As a follow up to episode 165 America’s Favorite Pastime: Baseball, we’re proud to share an interview with Bob Kendrick, the President of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, MO. Founded in 1990, the NLBM is the world’s only museum dedicated to preserving and celebrating the rich history of African-American baseball and its profound impact on the social advancement of America.

It’s the perfect time to share more about the history of the Negro Leagues because, in the spring of 2024, Major League Baseball officially incorporated the statistics of over 2,300 Negro Leagues players from 1920–1948 into its record books. These statistics are now a permanent part of American professional baseball history. Read more about this milestone and peruse some of the updated records at MLB.com. You can also read about the rigorous process by historians to gather and validate these records in this 2020 memo from MLB.

Want extra innings? Become a premium member to hear an extra segment from this conversation with Bob Kendrick, where we talk about Major League Baseball, finally adding player stats from the Leagues into the official record.

Bob Kendrick has been associated with the museum in one way or another since its founding. He was first a volunteer during his 10-year newspaper career with The Kansas City Star. Then he became the museum’s first Director of Marketing in 1998 and held various other leadership roles before being appointed president of the organization in 2011. And while he doesn’t fashion himself to be a historian, Bob has become one of the leading authorities on the topic of Negro Leagues Baseball history and its connection to issues relating to sports, race and diversity. 

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"As I hit the ball, every muscle in my system, every sense I had, told me that I had never hit a better one . . . I didn't have to look. But I did. That ball . . . hit . . . exactly the spot I had pointed to."

This is the story of the most American sport: baseball. 

Americans have been playing ball for a good long while now—even General Washington enjoyed an occasional game of catch—but baseball as we know it only emerged around the 1850s. That’s also about the time when people started forming leagues: the National League, the American League, the Federal League, yada yada, you get the picture. There are quite a few, and they’re mostly the same, except for the Negro League, headed by Andrew “Rube” Foster (pitcher and president extraordinaire). Professional baseball remains segregated until Jackie Robinson breaks the color line in the late 1940s. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves! 

Baseball evolves from its colonial beginnings to become an entertainment staple by the early twentieth century. In the 1920s, the good name of the game has just been sullied by the 1919 World Series scandal, but baseball’s popularity hasn’t taken a serious hit. This era boasts a panoply of players, and people can’t seem to stay away from the stands. You see, George Herman "Babe" Ruth has just been traded to the New York Yankees, and he’s always playing to win.

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“Harlem is the queen of the black belts, drawing Aframericans together in a vast humming hive . . . from the different states, from the islands of the Caribbean, and from Africa . . . It is the Negro capital of the world.” 

This is the story of the Harlem Renaissance. 

In the early twentieth century, many Black families and individuals down South are finding that the only way out is up—to the North. Driven by Jim Crow discrimination and harsh economic realities, hundreds of thousands of African Americans head to cities like Chicago (the “promised land”) or Harlem (“Black Mecca”). This Great Migration fosters communities of gifted artists, and eventually, the rest of the country takes notice. 

By the 1920s, Black culture is truly blooming. Up-and-coming writers including Zora Neal Hurston and Langston Hughes are crafting literature we still consume some 100 years later. Master musicians like Cab Calloway and Ella Fitzgerald are scattin’ up a storm in New York clubs. And let’s not forget the visual arts! The Harlem Renaissance features countless artists that contribute mightily to American culture and Black identity: let’s meet just a few. 

(Audio of Cab Calloway was recorded in 1982 at the White Plains Public Library in White Plains, NY, and used with their permission. We are grateful to the library and encourage listeners to support their local public library for the services they provide.)

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“Miller, Lyles, and I were standing near the exit door . . . Blake stuck out there in front, leading the orchestra—his bald head would get the brunt of the tomatoes and rotten eggs.”

This is the story of American musical theater and the dawn of modern Broadway. 

Popular entertainment is evolving fast in the early twentieth century. Minstrel shows just aren’t drawing the same numbers anymore (for good reason), and burlesque and variety shows abound. The earliest “official” musical, The Black Crook takes several notes from these sometimes scandalous shows, as do Flo Ziegfeld’s new “revues.” By the 1920s, composers, writers, and choreographers are experimenting with what a musical production can do: using songs to advance the plot (thanks Hammerstein!), and incorporating new music genres like jazz. 

Big players including George Gershwin, Noble Sissle, and Irving Berlin all play a role in crafting the perfect environment for the American musical to emerge, but the production Show Boat really gives a glimpse of the future of musical theater. It entertains even as it tackles heavy topics, and the score is seriously moving. It’s difficult to anticipate how audiences will receive this new form—less pompous than a European operetta, but definitely more substantial than one of Ziegfeld’s musical revues. So, without further ado . . . take your seat, the show’s about to begin. 

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“Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain’t heard nothing yet!”

This is the story of the silver screen. 

In the late nineteenth century, technology is advancing rapidly. Eadweard Muybridge’s trip-wire camera work, made famous by a “motion study” of a galloping horse, is giving way to smoother and longer projections. Some see these short films simply as a curiosity, an “invention without a future” as early filmmaker Louis Lumière famously says, but Thomas Edison knows there is serious money to be had. He’s quick to patent his inventions (and to sue anyone trying to circumvent his Motion Picture Patents Company), but even he can’t keep motion pictures under wraps forever. 

Independent filmmakers like Carl Laemmle and William Fox turn their actors into stars and move out to sunny Hollywood to operate far from Edison’s watchful eye. LA explodes in the 1910s and 20s as moviemakers and actors flock to the area, and though their decadent lives and debatable morals worry the public, audiences keep consuming the studio’s silent productions. That is, until synchronized sound enters the scene. 

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Cheers to Professor Jackson’s post Prohibition conversation with distinguished author Daniel Okrent! Dan is the the author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, winner of the American Historical Association’s prize for the year’s best book of American History when it was published in 2011. Last Call was a go-to book in the HTDS bibliography for episodes 157-160 as we researched and selected the stories to tell in these four podcast episodes we’ve just completed.

Dan was also the first Public Editor of The New York Times, where he was charged with being the public’s advocate for accurate and objective journalism by the paper. So Prof. Jackson couldn’t resist the opportunity to get his perspective on the state of news reporting today which, as astute HTDS listeners know, is often called the first draft of history. Spoiler alert: they both agree one must be a critical thinker when it comes to the potential bias of the news media one consumes – helpful tool here from AdFontes.

Dan Okrent is also author of The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America, and Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center, a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in history. 

Before his tenure at the Times, Okrent spent 13 years at Time Inc., where he was successively editor of Life magazine; corporate editor of new media; and corporate editor-at-large. Earlier in his career, he worked extensively in book and magazine publishing in various editorial and executive positions. He has held fellowships at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard (where he was, in addition, the Edward R. Murrow Visiting Lecturer in 2009-2010).

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“Only Capone kills like that.”

This is the story of the rise and fall of Al Capone, and the last gasps of Prohibition. 

No other gangster compares to Scarface. He’s remained prominent in the American consciousness for 100 years due to his overt violence and lavish lifestyle, funded by *ahem* unsavory business practices. He brazenly orders murders like the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, but he also doesn’t hesitate to get his own hands dirty when it comes to traitors. Capone seems to have jumped onto the mob scene ready-made, cutting his teeth on hustling New York shoeshine boys as a teenager. The consummate crime lord rises to the top of Chicago’s seething criminal underworld at just 26 years old, and boy, does he excel. He’s raking in millions from an unholy combination of alcohol sales, brothels, gambling halls, etc. 

The well-dressed mafioso looks invincible, but Chicago’s “untouchables” (clean cops) are doing their best to bring Capone down. However, even though he’s taken to court, he’s got most of the Chicago police force in his pocket and witnesses keep disappearing—is it such a stretch to think that he’ll walk? And can the courts make the charges stick to this bootlegger when there’s talk of repealing Prohibition? 

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“Don’t ask me nothin’! You hear me? Don’t ask! And don’t bring anybody in here for me to identify. I won’t identify them even if I know they did it!”

This is the story of the nation’s up-and-coming criminal underground. 

By 1920, with few exceptions, producing, buying, and selling alcohol is outlawed, but that doesn’t stop enterprising Americans. Many feel perfectly comfortable flouting the law and continuing to drink at their leisure, albeit with the added thrill that comes with evading halfhearted lawmen. Some cops are even in on it!

But even as law enforcement steps up their game with undercover agent extraordinaire, Izzy Einstein, criminals get organized and start doing serious business—serious as in murderous. Home-brewers like Maude Vogan can be found in rural America, but in the big cities, Prohibition provides a marketplace for organized crime to flourish. There is money to be had, if one can ignore that the likelihood of getting killed just shot up dramatically. Notorious gangsters George Remus, Legs Diamond, and Lucky Luciano run this underworld, double-crossing each other, planning takeovers, and making millions off of booze-loving Americans. But can law and order triumph over these mafiosos? For now, fuhgeddaboudit.

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“You’re Bill McCoy.” “Never heard of him.”

This is the story of a crazy decade-plus when America outlawed booze…but the liquor kept flowing. 

The Prohibition era marks a partial return to the Golden Age of Piracy, with bootleggers frequenting old haunts in the Caribbean, including Nassau, capital of The Bahamas. These sailors are also buying, selling, and drinking copious amounts of—you guessed it—rum. But how does all this booze get from the Bahamas to speakeasies in New York? 

William “Bill” McCoy is a legendary rumrunner, one of the best. He’ll be our captain as we explore Nassau’s offerings, buy from the Bootleg Queen of The Bahamas, Gertrude “Cleo” Lythgoe and set out on a 1923 voyage up “Rum Row” to New York, carefully avoiding the actual pirates and the US Coast Guard. Once we square away a buyer, we’ll take our haul to shore with Maisie Manders and enjoy a few well-earned drinks in Manhattan. All aboard! 

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Episode Description:

“Farewell, you good-for-nothing, God-forsaken, iniquitous, bleary-eyed, bloated-faced old imp of perdition, farewell!”

This is the story of the path to prohibition.

Early America drinks a lot – I mean, A LOT. Alcohol doesn’t give you dysentery, it’s used as a medicine, and in the first decades of the Republic, whiskey is cheaper than coffee or tea. But some are starting to think that maybe Uncle Sam needs an intervention. First, it's the American Temperance Society, then the Washingtonians, and by the late-nineteenth-century, it’s the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. These ladies are particularly keen to see the nation lay off the bottle, particularly as drunk men are laying their paychecks on saloon bars and fists on their wives and children. But no one is perhaps more invested or influential than the Anti-Saloon League’s Wayne B. Wheeler. 

From Founding Father Luther Martin’s likely drunken appearance before the Supreme Court, to Carrie Nation busting up saloons with a hatchet, and Wayne Wheeler proving himself a master lobbyist and king-making in Congress, this is the “how” and “why” behind the US Constitution’s 18th Amendment. 

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“I believe I can swing it.”

This is the story of the Coolidge Administration.

Calvin Coolidge isn’t the most talkative guy–he’s painfully shy, to be frank–but “Silent Cal” does care deeply about public service. Over the years, the thrifty, hard-working New Englander moves up the ranks, from municipal offices to state offices, until, as Massachusetts Governor, he’s asked to join Warren G. Harding’s run for the White House. When the scandalous, playboy President meets an untimely end, family man Cal suddenly finds himself President of the United States.

Cal slashes government spending and taxes while pursuing peace abroad. He also sees terrible heartache with the loss of loved ones. Meanwhile, the nation is debating if evolution should be taught in schools, the Mississippi floods, and the sculpting of Mount Rushmore begins. Cal might not be a hands-on president, but much is happening during his time in office that will reverberate into the years ahead. 

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