J.C. Watts: “Mr. Speaker, when the National Association of Baseball Players on December 11, 1868, voted unanimously to bar ``any club…”

“Mr. Speaker, when the National Association of Baseball Players on December 11, 1868, voted unanimously to bar ``any club which may be comprised of one or more colored persons,'' a racial barrier was built, but an opportunity was born. A few years later, the Cuban Giants in New York became the first black professional baseball team. The men in this fledgling organization played independently of any structured league, but started what would become a model for the first half of the 20th century. There actually were some black players on integrated teams in the late 1800s. Brothers Moses Fleetwood Walker and Welday Walker played in the major leagues in 1884. But as a new century dawned, the systematic exclusion kept a lot of good talent off a lot of diamond-shaped fields. In 1920, a man by the name of ``Rube'' Foster founded the eight-team Negro National League at a YMCA in Kansas City, Missouri. To this day, he is referred to as the Father of Black Baseball. Three years later, a pioneer named Ed Bolden formed the Eastern Colored League. In 1933, echoing the major league structure, the Negro National League and the Negro American League were born.”