Effa Manley, the only woman in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, was an advocate for black athletes, an avid supporter of black league baseball, a champion of civil rights and equality … and well ahead of her time .
At a time when few women were involved in the management of the sport, Manley was the commercial director of the Newark Eagles of the Negro National League. In the 1930s and 1940s, when she and her husband owned a Negro League team, she challenged the other owners, who were all men. She later faced Major League Baseball, prompting her to recognize Negro League players, who had been ignored by the Hall of Fame.
And his self-confidence was unwavering.
Kim Ng, the only female CEO of Major League Baseball, is inspired by the largely unrecognized figure of a time when people of color faced widespread discrimination and women faced overt sexism.
“One of the reasons that Effa Manley’s story is so incredibly compelling and inspiring is that so much of her work was done over 70 to 80 years ago,” says Ng, who has been named general manager of the Miami Marlins in 2020. “… She worked behind the scenes and at the forefront of our industry to fight for equality. The fight was real and fierce.
“She’s really inspiring.”
Manley defends the black community
Born March 27, 1897, Manley grew up in Philadelphia, daughter of Bertha and John Brooks. In a 1977 interview with a University of Kentucky oral history project, Manley said she was the product of her mother’s affair with John Marcus Bishop, a wealthy white man. But researchers could not confirm the identity of his father. The 1870 census lists Efa’s mother as mixed race, according to research by Jim Overmyer, author of Manley’s first biography, and the Society for American Baseball Research.
But Manley has lived her life identifying as a black woman, tirelessly supporting the African American community. “Everything in my life has been black,” Manley told sports reporter Henry Hecht of the New York Post in 1975.
In his biography of Manley, Queen of the Negro Leagues, Overmyer describes his advocacy for African Americans. In 1934, as a member of the Harlem Citizens League for Fair Play, a civil rights organization, Manley aimed to hire black people at LM Blumstein, a white-owned department store on 125th Street. . In a discussion with store management, Manley lobbied for an African American to be hired as a salesperson.
In a meeting with a member of the Blumstein family and his lawyer, representatives of the store backed down. “You know, Mr. Blumstein,” said Manley, “we think of our colored girls as much as you think of your young white girls. And there just isn’t a job for them… The only thing they can find to do is work for someone as a housekeeper or become a prostitute.
Blumstein’s lawyer was appalled. “Well that’s the truth,” Manley said. “I’m only telling you what’s true.” Blumstein eventually hired African American workers, used black mannequins, and hired an African American to represent Santa Claus.
“She was like this before she was in baseball, and she was like this after she was in baseball,” says Overmyer. “If she thought that was the way it should be, she chased him.”
READ MORE: Black women pioneering sports
Manley’s involvement in baseball begins
Effa Manley, co-owner of the Newark Eagles, poses with bats in the shelter of Ruppert Stadium in Newark, New Jersey, in 1948, the year the Negro League team disbanded.
Mark Rucker / Transcendent Graphics / Getty Images
At a New York Yankees World Series game in 1932, Manley met Abraham Manley, whom she married a year later. In November 1934, Abraham – who was making his money as a “numbers banker” in Camden, New Jersey, and spending generously on his wife – bought the Brooklyn Eagles of the Negro League.
Abe was interested in baseball but disliked front office work. He eventually asked Effa to take on more duties until, she said in the 1977 interview, “bit by bit I found myself doing more and more, and I finally found myself doing more and more. completely involved “. Manley had no management training. In 1916, she graduated from high school in Pennsylvania and studied hat making, making hats for women.
In 1935, the Manleys bought the Newark Dodgers, combined the team with the Eagles, and moved to Ruppert Stadium in Newark. Effa became de facto treasurer of the Black National League; Abe had the title, but no interest in the office.
Effa oversaw the operations of the Newark Eagles, from marketing to finance. She did media interviews, negotiated contracts, made sure players were paid, booked trips to black-only hotels, and ordered uniforms. (Effa made sure his players got them from the same company that supplied MLB.) Manley even helped players find off-season jobs.
When Manley was not sitting in the stands with fans at games, she could be found hanging out with celebrities such as pianist and songwriter Eubie Blake, actress and civil rights activist Lena Horne and champion of boxing Joe Louis.
At an off-season Negro League meeting, a heated argument erupted when Abe and Effa advocated hiring an African-American agent to book games at Yankee Stadium. Other owners, some of the early black businessmen of the day, disagreed. So, Effa called them “a bunch of handkerchief heads”.
Cumberland Posey, a powerful owner of the Homestead Grays, stormed out of the meeting, telling Abe to keep his wife home.
“At first the men were a bit, I think, disturbed by this woman coming on the scene,” Effa said in the 1977 interview. “But not for long. They received me very well. And they saw how important I was to Abe, and everyone was crazy about him.
Manley Feuds with Dodgers GM Branch Rickey, MLB
Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey has pulled Jackie Robinson from the Black Leagues, fueling tensions with Effa Manley.
Bettman via Getty Images
In the 1940s, when Major League Baseball chased Black League stars, Manley got into a fight with the management of big league teams. One of his opponents was Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey, who signed Negro League star Jackie Robinson, the player who broke the MLB color barrier in 1947. Rickey also attracted Roy Campanella. and Don Newcombe, who also went on to become Dodgers stars.
Rickey called the advancement of black players to the big leagues “emancipation” – Manley called it theft. “He didn’t give us five cents or say thank you,” she recalls.
When Rickey attended a 1946 Black Yankees-Eagles game in New York City with two of his scouts, Manley confronted him in the stands. From a story in the Camden Courier-Post on July 6, 1946, Manley told Rickey that she might “get him into trouble” over the Newcombe deal and that she expected compensation if other players left for the majors.
When Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck offered Manley $ 10,000 for Larry Doby, the American League’s first black player, she told Veeck that she would get $ 100,000 if Doby was white.
READ MORE: Four black players who followed Jackie Robinson’s lead in 1947
Manley even suggested to MLB that Black Leagues should be part of their minor league system. But the minor league president sent his wife to discuss the matter, Manley said in 1977, and the black leagues were never affiliated with MLB.
“[MLB’s] the excuse was that black people weren’t good enough, ”she said.
But Manley firmly believed that the Negro League players were the best in baseball. No team, she said, could have beaten its 1946 Negro League champion, the Newark Eagles, who produced seven Hall of Fame members during their 13-year association with the team.
Eventually, the move to MLB by stars like Robinson led to the demise of the Black Leagues. The Manley Eagles were disbanded after the 1948 season.
Baseball Hall of Fame inducts Effa Manley
Effa Manley’s niece Connie Brooks (second from right) attended her aunt’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006. She is pictured with MLB Commissioner Bud Selig (right) and Hall of Fame Dale Petroskey and Jane Forbes Clark.
Jim McIsaac / Getty Images
After Abe’s death in 1952, Manley moved to Washington, DC, and then to Los Angeles. She married two more times (calling both mistakes) and remained active in disability causes, the arts, and the African American community. In 1975, she and Leon Herbert Hartwick co-wrote Negro Baseball… Before integration.
In his later years, Manley was bitter that generations of fans “didn’t know there had never been this wonderful, beautiful black baseball.” She worked tirelessly to defend black baseball players.
“Prejudice is something that I guess will always be with us,” said Manley, who was 84 when she died in 1981. “And I think (in) the majors, the men who owned the teams They were well versed. They knew what it was about. And I think they knew what was going to happen is exactly what happened. The niggers would come and start destroying records.
Former Negro League stars Hank Aaron and Willie Mays, among others, have gone on to become MLB stars and are ranked among the greatest of all time.
In 2006, Manley was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Partly because of her advocacy on their behalf, she was joined by 34 other leading figures in the Negro League, including Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, Satchel Paige and Buck Leonard. At the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, visitors can even purchase a Manley bobblehead doll.
Overmyer believes Manley’s success ultimately opened doors for Ng. But the Marlins general manager says Effa faced much higher hurdles.
“My battle has been perception,” says Ng. “[Manley’s] the battle was against a whole system, legal and otherwise.
“I am humbled and honored to be mentioned in the same breath as her.”
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