They gathered in a conference room in Vero Beach, Fla., a 12-person committee that would be both judge and jury. The weight of their task — considering the Hall of Fame worthiness of 39 Negro leagues and pre-Negro leagues players, managers, and executives — was perhaps greater than any they had carried in their careers.
“They had a speaker in the middle of the table, and Frank Robinson was brought on to talk to us,” said Leslie Heaphy, a professor of history at Kent State University, the founding editor of the Black Ball journal, and the only woman appointed to the Hall’s Special Committee on African-American Baseball.