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OMAHA — Lawrene Shaw wanted to know what was causing all the commotion on that Tuesday night in Superior in 1949. So, she and her father headed toward Lincoln Park Field.
“We stopped by to see what was going on,” said Shaw, now 102 and still living in Superior. “It was a very large crowd.”
The Kansas City Monarchs were playing the Houston Eagles in a regular season Negro American League contest. A newspaper account two days later reported the game drew an estimated 1,500 fans from south-central Nebraska and northern Kansas.
Superior was a baseball town back then, and it still is, said Bill Blauvelt, longtime Superior Express newspaper editor and publisher. The small town a mile north of the Kansas border once hosted a farm system team for Major League Baseball’s Washington Senators, Blauvelt said.
So even in an era of segregation, it wasn’t unheard of for Superior to host a Negro League contest – and pack the stadium in the process.
But 1949 was different. It marked an explosion of Negro League games in Nebraska – seven exhibition matches and 15 regular season ones – compared to just one the year before. Major League Baseball has yet to recognize those 1949 contests as official major league games, despite a recent recommendation to do so.
The surge in Negro League action in Nebraska actually stems from integration two years earlier. Jackie Robinson’s entry into the MLB in 1947 gradually opened the door to other top-caliber Black players, who followed Robinson.
Bleeding big league talent and home game attendance, Negro League teams such as the Monarchs and Eagles traveled the country in the late 1940s and early ‘50s to make additional money.
Nebraska, and especially Omaha with the completion of Municipal Stadium in 1948, was a logical destination, said Larry Lester, co-founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.
“The Kansas City Monarchs had won several league championships and were a household name in the breadbasket of the country,” Lester said. “They were a natural gate attraction.”
Those 22 games in 1949 included 11 at Omaha Municipal Stadium. The ballpark, later renamed Rosenblatt Stadium, was the home field for the class “A” Omaha Cardinals. When the Cardinals were out of town, promoters such as Johnny Rosenblatt would fill those open dates by booking barnstorming teams, including the Monarchs.
Steve Rosenblatt, Johnny’s son, remembers tagging along with his father to games at the ballpark that would later carry his name. “Negro League teams played a very high brand of baseball. They had a lot of very talented players.”
The Kansas City Monarchs made eight trips to Nebraska during the 1949 season. They typically would match up with another Negro League team for a series of games across the state. Every trip to Nebraska included a stop in Omaha, said Phil Dixon, a historian and co-founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. “There was always a legacy in Omaha of getting the best African American teams.”
Omaha featured a bustling Black community, Dixon said, so traveling Negro League teams – who wouldn’t have been welcomed by most white hotel owners – found places to stay, such as the Patton Hotel, a well known Black-owned hotel.
That often wasn’t the case outside of Omaha, where there were far fewer accommodations, Dixon noted. That and a desire to get to the next destination often meant the Monarchs slept on their iconic touring bus, which had reclining seats with high backs and air cushions.
“It was an interesting way to travel,” Dixon said.
The Monarchs, as did other Negro League teams, relied on the Green Book when they traveled the country, Lester said. “The Negro Motorist Green Book,” a guidebook for African American travelers, was founded by Victor Hugo Green, a postal worker in New York City, who published it annually from 1936 to 1966.
The 1949 Green Book listed Ainsworth, Fremont, Grand Island, Omaha, Lincoln and Scottsbluff for having places where Blacks were welcome.
“They never had any problems because they knew which side of the railroad tracks to stay on,” said Lester, the Negro League museum co-founder.
The trip that included the game in Superior was typical. The Monarchs often stopped in rural communities in between games at bigger venues, Lester said.
“It was an opportunity to stop off in a small town and pick up a paycheck. … Baseball fans, Black and white, wanted to see the best and rarest talent on the field,” he said.
After playing at their home park in Kansas City on Monday, the Monarchs played in Superior on Tuesday, Grand Island on Wednesday and then Omaha on Thursday.
