‘Play Harder: The Triumph of Black Baseball in America’ – The Source
Written by Black Hot Fire Network on April 12, 2025
Generally considered the first Black professional ballplayer, Bud Fowler (top row, center) spent the 1885 season with the Keokuk (Iowa) Hawkeyes. (Photo: National Baseball Hall of Fame Museum)
Frederick Douglass disapproved of base ball (as the name was written in the 1860s). To the great abolitionist, who had escaped enslavement in 1838, sports — alongside fiddling, dancing and drinking whiskey — seemed frivolous. Time was better spent advancing the cause of freedom.
But Douglass’ youngest son, Charles, loved the game. After the Civil War, while working in the Freedman’s Bureau in Washington, D.C., Charles helped organize a . . .
