Black Baseball, 1858–1900

The earliest history of baseball in black America surfaces not just in the pages of the mainstream newspapers if the day—it also survives in black religious publications. A supplement to the three volumes of Black Baseball, 1858–1900, this book elaborates on the exploration of blackball’s complex origins with six essays covering National Emblems, Representation, and Blackball, 1866–1871; The Black Championship, Reconstruction, and Its Aftermath, 1855–1899; The Lost World of Albany (NY)’s Young Bachelor Base Ball Club, 1866–1877; Blackball, Black Women and Resorts of Pleasure, 1866–1891; The Henson (Lone Star) Base Ball Club, 1858–1892; and Blackball in Chattanooga (TN), 1876–1900. Rosters, umpire lists and team profiles provide new material. Appendices give a chronology of state, regional and national championship games.

James E. Brunson III is an art historian who specializes in American Modernism. His work has been published in NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, and Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game. A practicing artist who specializes in watercolor painting, he currently teaches visual culture at Northern Illinois University.

James E. Brunson III
Format: softcover (8.5 x 11)
Pages: 250
Bibliographic Info: ca. photos, appendices, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2023
pISBN: 978-1-4766-9022-3
eISBN: 978-1-4766-4803-3
Imprint: McFarland

• “James Brunson’s latest opus, Black Baseball, 1858-1900 Supplement 1, is that rarest of all publications—A sequel that in some ways surpasses the original (Black Baseball, 1858-1900: A Comprehensive Record of the Teams, Players, Managers, Owners and Umpires, is one or three of the greatest baseball books ever written—Just ask SABR). Brunson has penned several insightful articles on long forgotten individuals and teams such as Henson’s Lone Stars and the Albany Young Bachelors, while compiling the requisite mind-blowing appendixes on umpires; player rosters; team profiles; and championship games. With prodigious effort and painstaking research, Brunson has recovered an entire world of American culture that was once considered lost, and has once again exponentially deepened the scope and foundational knowledge of 19th Century Black Baseball.”—Todd Peterson, editor, The Negro Leagues Were Major Leagues