In 1870 Congress passed the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed all American men voting rights “regardless of race, color, or previous servitude.” In many US cities the ruling Democratic Party reacted with intimidation and threats aimed at stopping African Americans, who overwhelmingly supported Republicans, from voting. On Election Day 1871 African American would-be voters in Philadelphia’s public places were harassed, assaulted and fired upon by roving gangs. Teacher and Civil Rights activist Octavius Catto was walking near the intersection of South Street and 9th, on his way home, when a Moyamensing volunteer fireman and part-time Democratic Party goon named Frank Kelly shot him dead. In 2017 a statue of Octavius Catto with his arms out and palms turned up in a questioning gesture, as eyewitnesses said they were when he died, was placed outside Philadelphia City Hall.

Catto had led successful campaigns to integrate the Philadelphia streetcar system and the Pennsylvania National Guard. But baseball was a tougher nut to crack. In 1867 Catto co-founded the African-American Pythian baseball club. The Pythians defeated local rivals and established themselves as the consensus African American champions of Philadelphia. They went to Washington, D.C., where they beat African American clubs called the Alerts — whose second baseman was Frederick Douglass, Jr. — and the Mutuals. Despite Philadelphia’s abysmal race relations, the Pythians’ success inspired civic pride in some quarters of the white press. When the African-American Philadelphia Excelsiors defeated an African American club from New York in October of 1867, the Philadelphia Sunday Mercury wrote:

“[The New York papers] apply the title of Champions to the Excelsiors, and then abuse and ridicule them, after the fashion of New York. The Pythians, also of this city, are the recognized champions among colored organizations, and should they ever conclude to visit New York, an opportunity will be afforded Philadelphia defamers to see a well-behaved set of gentlemen.”

Amateur baseball was always looking for a few “well behaved gentlemen.” So far, all of them had been white, but baseball’s national governing body, the NABBP, had no actual policy banning African Americans. None of the early African American clubs in New York City or Brooklyn had ever tried to join. In October 1867 the clubs of the Pennsylvania State baseball association, part of the NABBP, were holding their annual convention in Harrisburg. The president of the association happened to be Philadelphia Athletics delegate Hicks Hayhurst, a Quaker and racial liberal who had umpired Pythian games. The Pythians decided that the time was right to test amateur baseball’s principles. They sent Raymond Burr, the son of Abolitionist newspaper editor John Pierre Burr (who was rumored to be the unacknowledged child of U. S. Vice-president Aaron Burr and a Haitian servant) to Harrisburg to apply for admission to the association. Burr was politely treated, but after voting to approve 265 out of 266 applications for membership, the nominations committee postponed consideration of the Pythians until the following day. That night, no doubt trying to head off a divisive conflict, Hayhurst convinced Burr to withdraw the Pythians’ application by telling him that it had no chance of winning in a public vote.

The nightmare of white discomfort was averted, but men of influence in baseball decided to make sure the issue never came up again. At the NABBP national convention, held soon after in Philadelphia, a committee including New York baseball men James Whyte Davis and Dr. William H. Bell authored a resolution that explicitly barred any club with one or more African American members. When it passed, baseball’s first color line was drawn.

After Catto’s 1871 assassination the Pythians announced that “in the death of Octavius V. Catto our organization has lost its most active and valued member.” They promised that they would carry on his struggle for “truth, justice and equality.” But they would not do it through baseball.