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Re today's announcement from @MLB, I wanna add that while it's great they're *finally* recognizing the Negro Leagues with Major League status, adding Negro League players to official Major League records does little to remedy the full damage caused by this enduring slight.
As integration became imminent, the refusal to recognize the Negro Leagues as major league caliber was the very justification used to not deal properly with the Black teams and leagues while signing away their players.
As Branch Rickey pilfered Jackie Robinson, Johnny Wright, Don Newcombe, and others, his justification was that the Negro Leagues weren't *real* leagues, that Black baseball operated a "racket."
And Happy Chandler refused to jump in and stop him.
And Happy Chandler refused to jump in and stop him.
This dismissal didn't just impact the recognition of pre-integration players like Josh Gibson. It directly impacted the coaches and executives who'd run Black teams in the Negro Leagues and saw their opportunities disappear as soon as baseball's color line began to smudge.
Once again, we're talking about how Black folk are shut out of MLB front offices, and if the league doesn't take the next step & acknowledge how their exclusion of Black folk in the 20s, 30s, & 40s led to the current exclusion of Black execs, this recent effort means little.
I meant what I tweeted earlier, that it's okay that MLB is incredibly late with this acknowledgement, that it's important that it happened at all. But I want to be veeeery clear that this should only be the beginning of their efforts.
Finally: HELL YES that @LarryLester42 and all the other historians are being acknowledged for their work to carefully catalog this important data. They may not get to stand at the front of the stage with the shiny suits on, but this moment does NOT happen without them. 
Actually, one more thing: I wrote a book that discusses a lot of this. It's written for kids aged 10-14, but it's also perfect for adults who need a crash course on the historical record of baseball's white supremacy. Drops Jan 5. 
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250623737
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250623737
