Negro Southern League: 1920-1923, 1926, 1931-1936
Negro National League: 1924-1925
Negro American League: 1937-1962 (did not play in 1939)
Tombstone
Born: July, 1919
Folded: August, 1963
First Game: July, 1919
Last Game: 1963
League Titles: 4
Negro World Series Championships: 0
Stadium
Rickwood Field: 1919-1963
Opened: August 18, 19101Rickwood Field: A Century in America’s Oldest Ballpark, by Allan Barra, p. 34, W.W. Norton Company, New York, NY, 2010)
Ownership
Owners:
Frank Perdue and L.L. Barber: 1919-1939
Tom Hayes: 1940-1952 (with Abe Saperstein 1940-1947)
Floyd Meschack: 1952-1956
Dr. Anderson Ross: 1956-1960
Arthur Dove: 1960
Wardell Jackson: 1960-1963
Background
The Birmingham Black Barons debuted in 1920 as a charter member of Rube Foster’s Negro Southern League (NSL). However, the team was established a year earlier, with at least two different industrial league teams using the name. One of those, sponsored by the American Cast Iron Pipe Company, formed the basis for the pro team that joined the NSL. As was common in the day, their nickname was derived from the city’s white baseball club, in this case, the minor league Birmingham Barons, then of the Class-A Southern Association. The earliest appearance of the Black Barons nickname can be found in the July 8, 1919, edition of the Birmingham News: “The Bold Black Barons from Edgewater [had] shut out the copper colored Giants from Chattanooga the previous afternoon,” reported Zipp Newman.
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On February 13, 1920, the Negro National League (NNL) was established in Chicago by Rube Foster.2National Negro Baseball Ass’n Formed in East, The Desert News, Feb. 16, 1920 A month later, Foster established the NSL as a loosely affiliated farm system for the NNL. Birmingham joined the NSL with a team officially named the All-Stars. No one called them that, though, according to author Bill Plott, who appeared on the Good Seats Still Available podcast in 2019 to discuss his book, Black Baseball’s Last Team Standing: The Birmingham Black Barons. (Player below)
The Black Barons finished in the middle of the NSL pack in 1920 with a record of 43-39. Still, at the gate, they drew well, and not just among the black community. White fans turned out to watch the Black Barons at Rickwood Field when the Southern Association Barons were on the road.
Major move
In 1923, the Black Barons, along with the Memphis Red Sox, joined the major Negro National League mid-season. The Black Barons stayed in the NNL for two seasons. Financial difficulties, however, forced them back to the NSL in 1926. The following year, they were able to rejoin the NNL. That season marked the major league debut of star pitcher Leroy Paige, better known by his nickname, Satchel. The young ace helped propel the Black Barons to the NNL second-half title. That set up a playoff series against the Chicago American Giants, who swept Birmingham 4-0 to advance to the Negro World Series.
After the collapse of the NNL, the Black Barons returned to the Negro Southern League in 1932. For that season, the NSL was considered a major league, since that’s where all the top talent wound up. In 1933, the NSL returned to minor league status with the establishment of the second Negro National League. Birmingham stayed in the NSL until 1937, when they joined the newly formed Negro American League.
New beginnings
In 1939, the team suspended operations due to financial difficulties. In 1940, Tom Hayes, a Tennessee-based funeral director and owner of the Memphis Red Sox, bought the Black Barons. Abe Saperstein, famous for running the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, also became an investor. They won back-to-back pennants in 1943 and 1944. They won the pennant again in 1948, setting up a meeting in the Negro World Series with the Homestead Grays, propelled by a rookie teenage outfielder called Willie Mays. The Black Barons lost the series four games to one.
In 1949, the Negro American League took in four teams from the NNL, which had disbanded after the conclusion of the 1948 campaign. The NAL continued on as a minor league until it ceased operations in 1962. The Black Barons continued for one more season as a barnstorming team before they called it quits.
In 1964, the AA Birmingham Barons, who had disbanded after the 1961 season along with the rest of the still racially-segregated Southern Association, were re-established with an integrated roster. The team joined the South Atlantic League and became an affiliate of the Kansas City A’s.
Our friends at the Good Seats Still Available podcast did an episode on the Birmingham Black Barons. Host Tim Hanlon interviewed Bill Plott, author of Black Baseball’s Last Team Standing: The Birmingham Black Barons.3Birningham to Enter South Atlantic Loop, AP via The Tuscaloosa News, Sep. 21, 1963