Kansas City Monarchs were a professional baseball team that played from 1920 to 1965. The Monarchs were the best-organized, most popular, and most successful team to play in the Negro leagues of the United States. The Negro leagues were for Black players, who were barred from playing alongside white players because of racial segregation . For much of the team’s history, the Monarchs played their home games at Muehlebach Field (later called Municipal Stadium) in Kansas City , Missouri.
J. L. Wilkinson, a white Kansas City businessman, established the Monarchs. They were one of eight teams included in the 1920 founding of the Negro National League (NNL). The NNL was the top professional baseball league for Black players. The Monarchs won NNL titles in 1923, 1924, 1925, and 1929. In 1924, the Monarchs defeated the Eastern Colored League champion Hilldale Club (of Darby, Pennsylvania) in what is considered the first Negro World Series. Wilkinson and the 1920’s Monarchs stars José Méndez and Bullet Rogan were later elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame .
The Monarchs left the NNL in 1930. The league folded after the 1931 season and was re-formed, without the Monarchs, in 1933. The Monarchs survived as an independent “barnstorming” ball club, playing games when and where they could. The team owned a portable lighting system that enabled them to play night games in any town. Financially, the club survived the Great Depression , a worldwide economic slump of the 1930’s, largely by renting this system to a white barnstorming team called the House of David.
In 1937, the Monarchs became a founding club of the Negro American League (NAL), a rival of the NNL. Kansas City won NAL titles in 1937, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1946, and 1950. The team won the 1942 Negro World Series, in which they defeated the NNL champion Homestead Grays . It was the first Negro World Series held since 1927. Monarchs stars of this later era included future Hall of Famers Willard Brown, Satchel Paige , and Hilton Smith. In 1945, Jackie Robinson played his first professional season with the Monarchs, two years before he became the first African American player in modern Major League Baseball (MLB). In 1950, Ernie Banks , who would go on to stardom with the Chicago Cubs, played his first professional season with the Monarchs
After the integration of professional baseball in 1947, MLB teams signed star players from the Negro leagues, sending the Negro league teams into decline. The NNL folded, but the NAL and the Monarchs continued to compete. The team moved to Grand Rapids , Michigan, in 1956 but kept the Kansas City Monarchs name. The NAL dissolved in the early 1960’s, but the Monarchs continued, as an independent team, until 1965.
