When historian and author Larry Lester summarized Rube Foster’s life, he referred to the driving force behind the Negro National League in almost messianic terms.
“I call Rube Foster the godfather of black baseball. I don’t say that lightly,” said Lester, the chairman of the Society for American Baseball Research’s Negro Leagues Research Committee. “He was the king among kings.”
At a time when black people in Chicago and across the country were confronted with violence, Foster leveraged his sizable baseball acumen and considerable determination to found the first successful league for black baseball players 100 years ago.