Thesis 1.0: The Chicago Project

"While at Schorling Park, interracial crowds numbering as high as 10,000 consistently exceeded the numbers at Comiskey Park or at Cubs games, even on the same day."
Davarian Baldwin, from his book Chicago's New Negroes

After weeks of deliberation on my part, I've come to the conclusion that my thesis research wouldn't be complete unless it addressed the impact early 20th century Chicago had on the development of athletics in the African-American community and the greater American professional sporting scene at large. In 1916 alone, Chicago received upwards of 50,000 new African-American residents seeking employment in industry after WWI closed the country's doors to immigration, leaving factories undermanned throughout the country. 

This massive influx of people was part of a collective movement amongst African-Americans called The Great Migration, in which hundreds of thousands of freedmen and women from the South headed northward above the Mason-Dixon Line to not only seek equitable work in industry, but to create new lives and identities in the metropolis. The Great Migration was the genesis for both the Harlem and Chicago Renaissances, periods in which - according to James Weldon Johnson's Black Manhattan - actors, musicians, intellectuals, and athletes, emerged as key cultural 'producers'. It is in Chicago that we see the development of Negro Baseball Leagues, the formation of The Harlem Globetrotters (yes, they originated in the Midwest), and new styles of play, built around speed, defence, savvy, and showmanship; tactics generated by African-Americans to mitigate the impact and control racially bias or corrupt White officials had on particular games or matches. The city is also the home of The Chicago Defender, perhaps the most influential African-American newspaper in the early 20th century.

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Defender Telegraph, page 6, No. 001