History of the Negro League
The McKeesport History and Heritage Center is set to host a lecture on the history of the Negro League in Pittsburgh,
African Americans have been playing baseball since the 1860s. Teams were formed in Western Pennsylvania as early as then1870s. But the heyday of Negro League or Black baseball was the 20th century – from 1910 to 1950. In Greater Pittsburgh, two significant teams developed – The Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords. Both teams where franchises in the Negro National League, formed by Rube Foster in 1920. Both fielded Hall of Fame players. And both teams were the pride of African Americans in Pittsburgh. Join us to hear from Samuel Black, the Director of African American Programs at the Senator John Heinz History Center.
About the Speaker:
Samuel W. Black is the Director of the African American Program at the Senator John Heinz History Center. He is a former President of the Association of African American Museums (2011-2016) and served on the Executive Council and the Advisory Council of the Association for the Study of African American Life & History (ASALH) as well as the program committee of the American Alliance of Museums. Black is a member of the Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society of Pittsburgh and the former vice president of the ASALH Dr. Edna B. McKenzie Branch. He serves on the board of directors of the International Black Business Museum. He is the recipient of the Dr. John E. Fleming Award of the AAAM in 2016, a 2018 graduate of the Jekyll Island Management Institute of the Southeastern Museums Conference (SEMC) and a 2019 Fulbright Germany Transatlantic Seminar Curator of the Smithsonian Institution and Leibniz Association of Germany.
Black is the curator of award winning exhibitions, “Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam Era” America’s Best Weekly: A Century of the Pittsburgh Courier” “From Slavery to Freedom” and “The Vietnam War 1945-1975” (2019). He is the curator of African American historical and cultural content at the Heinz History Center including the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum.
He is the author of a number of essays, book reviews, and narratives including, “African American Photographers of Cleveland, 1930-1965” in Yet Still We Rise: African American Art in Cleveland, 1920-1970; “The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center: Museum of Conscience” in Ohio Valley History Journal. His pending articles and reviews include “African Americans in the Vietnam War” in Oxford University Bibliographies.
Black is the editor of Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam Era (2006) and co-author of Through the Lens of Allen E. Cole: A Photographic History of African Americans in Cleveland, Ohio (2012) and editor of The Civil War in Pennsylvania: The African American Experience (2013).