Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 1902-1931: The Negro National and Eastern Colored Leagues (Sports and Entertainment)

As the companion volume to Black Baseball Entrepreneurs,1860–1901:
Operating by Any Means Necessary, Lomax’s new book continues to
chronicle the history of black baseball in the United States. The first volume
traced the development of baseball from an exercise in community building
among African Americans in the pre–Civil War era into a commercialized
amusement and a rare and lucrative opportunity for entrepreneurship
within the black community. In this book, Lomax takes a closer look
at the marketing and promotion of the Negro Leagues by black baseball
magnates. He explores how race influenced black baseball’s institutional
development and how it shaped the business relationship with white clubs
and managers. Lomax explains how the decisions that black baseball
magnates made to insulate themselves from outside influences may have
distorted their perceptions and ultimately led to the Negro Leagues‘ demise.
The collapse of the Negro Leagues by 1931 was, Lomax argues, “a
dream deferred in the overall African American pursuit for freedom and
self-determination.”