A Tough and Dirty Job

ID: 2785 ~ Source: Burley, Dan. “Confidentially Yours: Negro Umpires Organize for Better Working Conditions.” New York Amsterdam News. New York, October 27, 1945, 14. ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Black Newspaper Collection; Heaphy, Leslie, Interviewed by Regina Wenger, October 5, 2020, by phone in Waco, Texas.Baylor University Institute for Oral History, Waco, TX.
This file appears in: Crush Holloway

Historian Leslie Heaphy details the working conditions of semipro and pro umpires in black baseball, a job Holloway performed after his playing career ended. In 1944, Holloway told a reporter that he did not aspire to be an umpire in the Negro Leagues due to the abysmal pay and poor treatment they received.

This file appears in: Crush Holloway

By Regina Wenger
Two popular amusements at the turn of the twentieth century—staged locomotive collisions and baseball—came together in the life of Crush Holloway. As the story goes, Holloway’s father went to see the Crash at Crush, only to be informed at the event…