Walter "Dirk" Gibbons, a pitcher with the Indianapolis Clowns, said, "Nobody wants to believe we were as good as they say we were, but I can vouch for it, I was there. I know these guys were really that good. All we wanted was a chance to prove we could play the game. I knew sooner or later it would happen, but we had to go through so much before it really did happen." Walter Gibbons should know what good is; by his own account, he was a 19-game winner with 229 strikeouts in one season. The Indianapolis Clowns were also the team that produced Hank Aaron. In considering what happened, Gibbons succinctly noted, "It was segregation, and that is just the way it was."

At one time, much of what went on in the Negro Leagues was ignored. In fact, Gibbons claimed that Jackie Robinson wasn’t the best player in the leagues. "He was good, but he wasn’t the best," said Gibbons. Other players, like Satchel Paige and Larry Doby have a place in the history of baseball once they entered the majors, but what about their accomplishments when they were locked out of the all-White leagues?

At the end of the Civil War, the Negro Leagues started to develop with the creation of unofficial and unorganized teams. The first Black professional team took the field in 1885 in Babylon, New York. White reporters named the team the "Cuban Giants" in an attempt to attract White teams to play them. By the end of the 1860’s, there were a number of Black baseball teams in the Philadelphia area that would play against any other team, professional or not.

By 1885, Black baseball started to organize with the official formation of the Southern League of Base Ballists. In 1888, the Middle States League appeared and admitted two all-Black teams, the Cuban Giants and the New York Gorhams. After a long and blurry history of organizational forming, dissolving and reforming, Bill Veeck attempted to buy the Philadelphia Phillies, announcing that he would recruit Black players for his club. The National League stepped in and bought the Phillies, handing the club over to William Cox, who had no such intentions.