Larry Doby and Cleveland Baseball: Breaking the American League’s Color Barrier
Tuesday, April 1 at 7:15 p.m. at Kendal, Oberlin Heiser Auditorium
When Larry Doby signed with the Cleveland Indians in July 1947, he became the second African American player in Major League Baseball and the first in the American League. Though Doby played on some of the greatest teams of all time, he never quite received the same media attention as Jackie Robinson, who had broken MLB’s color barrier in April of 1947. This illustrated program will explore Doby’s life, how Cleveland was well-positioned to field an integrated team by the late 1940s, and how Bill Veeck, the Indians’ team owner and team president at the time, chose Doby from all of the stellar Negro League players to integrate baseball in Cleveland.
This free public program, sponsored by the Oberlin Heritage Center, is presented by Dr. Mary Manning, PK-12 Education Manager, Youth Entrepreneurship Education Project Director, and Region 3 Ohio History Coordinator at the Western Reserve Historical Society. Dr. Manning is also a former AmeriCorps / Ohio History Service Corps member who served in Oberlin from 2015 to 2017, and an avid fan of Cleveland baseball.
This program is also supported by the Wilson Bruce Evans Home Historical Society and the Oberlin African-American Genealogy and History Group.