History of Segregation in Baseball

Baseball was segregated well before the official ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, and the effects of the Reconstruction period saw the emergence of Jim Crow laws that institutionalized racial discrimination. Even as early as 1867, attempts were made to include African American teams in major leagues, but these were consistently met with rejection. The first African-American player in Major League Baseball, Moses Fleetwood Walker, played in 1886, but soon after, segregation took firm hold, preventing black players from participating alongside their white peers. This set the stage for the eventual creation of the Negro Leagues as a response to this systemic exclusion.