The Negro League baseball history fact for today

African American newspapers had an important but contradictory relationship with Negro League baseball.  The Pittsburgh Courier, Chicago Defender, Baltimore Afro American, Kansas City Call, and other black print media on the one hand kept the Negro Leagues in front of black baseball fans.  They promoted black baseball teams, which were generally ignored by the major white newspapers.  However, black sportswriters (Wendell Smith, Sam Lacy, and others) also kept pushing for the racial integration of Major League baseball.  When the “invisible color line” was eventually broken and African Americans began playing in the Major Leagues, it was the beginning of the end for Negro League baseball.