THE 42 FOR 21 MINIFESTO
Formed in 2021, the mission of the 42 for 21 Committee is to see that the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown addresses its serious underrepresentation of Negro Leaguers and other Black players from the Segregated Era. (The number 42 should need no explanation.)
To do so, dozens of great Black players from the Segregated Era who have so far been passed over by the Hall of Fame must receive full and fair consideration in the near future.
The current Era Committee setup ensures that very few Black candidates from the Segregated Era will appear on the Classic Baseball Era Committee ballot in the next decade, with no one or almost no one being elected.
We also want to change the narrative around the inclusion of great Black ballplayers from a distracting debate about how many should be inducted to a detailed discussion about their individual qualifications.
The Hall of Fame has a long and regrettable track record of denying, debating, and delaying the admission of Black players from the Segregated Era instead of making good-faith efforts to achieve meaningful inclusion.
The 2022 induction of Buck O’Neil, Bud Fowler, and Minnie Minoso into the Hall was welcome but did little to reduce the backlog of great Black players who deserve a fair process that isn’t stacked against them. Shortly after that election, the Hall of Fame changed the rules to make elections of future Negro Leaguers far less likely, and no players from the Segregated Era were elected by the 2024 Classic Era Committee.
Recent comments by Hall of Fame president Josh Rawitch make clear the Hall’s misguided belief that there are already enough Negro Leaguers in Cooperstown. Yet careful analysis by multiple authors and scholars in recent years shows that Negro Leaguers are substantially underrepresented when compared to AL & NL players of the same era.
It is long past time to do something to redress that imbalance. Our motto is “Justice for Negro Leaguers”; our campaign for justice is important because membership in Cooperstown’s shrine to baseball means so much to so many millions of fans.
Without inducting more great Black players from the Segregated Era, the Hall of Fame will remain only partially integrated, continuing to offer "Diversity without Inclusion" & "Equality without Equity."
More importantly, future generations of baseball fans will be cheated out of a true appreciation of the glorious patrimony that the Negro Leagues bestowed upon our game.
As peerless Negro Leagues researcher Gary Ashwill said in 1921, “It [won’t] change history. But it might change current perceptions of history, by directing attention to players and teams and leagues that were much easier to ignore before.”
It is far past time for the Hall to take Spike Lee’s advice and “Do the Right Thing”!
L to R: Rap Dixon, Dick Lundy, and Newt Allen
Gary Gillette, Ted Knorr, and Sean Gibson have joined together to form a new committee—named "42 for 21"—to publicize deserving Negro Leagues & Black Baseball candidates for upcoming Hall of Fame elections.
The recent election of Buck O’Neil, Bud Fowler, and Minnie Minoso to the Hall of Fame by the 2021 Early Baseball era committee is a positive step, but is only a first step, however. It is not sufficient to address the deficit in Hall of Fame membership of those who toiled in segregated baseball for all or almost all their careers.
If the current schedule is not changed, the next election in 2031 will take place 111 years after the founding of the Negro National League in 1920 and 83 years after the last Major Negro League game was played in 1948. The passage of time and the fading of memories will almost certainly hurt the chances of inducting additional Negro Leagues & Black Baseball individuals.
Another startling statistic illustrates the point: even if 42 more deserving candidates were to be inducted, it would bring the percentage of Negro Leagues & Black Baseball from the Segregated Era only to about 34% (depending on the mix of players and non-players). That would still be far below the corresponding level of the Integrated Era.
Waiting another decade to hold the next election for the Negro Leagues & Black Baseball is not a reasonable way to address this glaring disparity.
