ABSTRACT
By signing Jackie Robinson to a contract with Montreal without compensating the Kansas City Monarchs for their loss, Branch Rickey presented the Negro leagues with a wrenching choice. As businesspeople and capitalists, the black team owners naturally were outraged by Rickey’s “theft” of one of the leagues’ better players and fearful he might take more. They hurriedly met in Pittsburgh to determine how to best protect their interests. The other option, of course, was to facilitate integration in any way possible in fulfillment of their leagues’ founding mission and to move yet closer to the larger social goals of the black community at large. In short, the owners could either publicly endorse the color barrier’s breach and, therefore, encourage further dilution of their product, or they could fight for fair compensation and face condemnation from all quarters of the black community, including the black press.
