Negro Leagues Baseball Museum to celebrate meeting’s 100th anniversary

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum will celebrate the 100th anniversary of a Kansas City meeting that sparked the league.

A year-long celebration is planned. The Kansas City Star reports that the museum in the 18th and Vine District has announced the festivities will begin Feb. 13, 2020.

That’s the anniversary of a meeting of interested owners that was led by Andrew “Rube” Foster at the Paseo YMCA.

The Negro Leagues provided professional baseball played exclusively by African Americans. The Leagues disbanded in the early 1960s  after integration  had opened major league baseball to black players.

Museum president Bob Kendrick says that starting the league “against the backdrop of American segregation is monumental and richly deserves to be more than just a footnote in baseball history.”

Events will include a centennial art exhibition, a visual history of the Negro Leagues.