In the 1880s, organized baseball had featured a small number of African-American players—about a dozen, with brothers Moses Fleetwood Walker and Weldy Walker in the “major league” American Association. By all accounts, fans were accepting of black players, who instead faced harassment from other players, both opponents and teammates. By the end of the decade, all of the black players had been forced out and no new ones signed to replace them. There was no formal segregation policy in place with either of the major professional leagues at the time, the American Association and the National League. It was instead the result of a “gentlemen’s agreement”; team owners essentially agreed among themselves to force African-American players from the leagues. That agreement held strong even as ownership changed hands, and maintained its grip on the American League once it was formed in 1901.
There were sporadic calls to reintegrate baseball as the 20th century progressed, and they became more aggressive as the United States entered the Second World War. The war exposed contradictions in American society, because as troops fought for freedom in Europe and the Pacific theater, there were citizens in America that lacked basic freedoms. In 1942 the African-American weekly Pittsburgh Courier started what they referred to as the “Double V Campaign”—black Americans not only had to fight for victory in the war, but also fight for equality on the home front. Baseball was a popular target; one of the arguments for the integration of baseball was that it would lead to desegregation in other areas of society. (In fact, the military was desegregated a year after Robinson broke the color barrier.)
MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis inadvertently fueled the campaign when, during the summer of 1942, he claimed that there was no formal ban on African-Americans in baseball and that it was up to individual team owners to sign black players. This encouraged a number of African-American journalists to take the lead, but as had been evidenced by the prior half-century, no owners were exactly champing at the bit to be a trailblazer.
The writers at the Cleveland Call and Post, an African-American weeklynewspaper in the city, used Landis’s statement as the basis for their sales pitch to Indians owner Alva Bradley, who had been team president since 1927. When the paper asked Bradley about the commissioner’s comments, he echoed Landis by saying any owner could sign a black player at any time, and added that the Indians would consider it. (The Call and Post also reached out to Indians player-manager Lou Boudreau, who said that he supported the integration of the team, but would ultimately leave that decision up to Bradley.)