Wichita Monrovians

The Wichita Monrovians (1922) were an all-Black professional baseball team named for the capital city of Monrovia, Liberia on the continent of Western Africa.  Not only did the Monrovian organization have its own baseball park (located at 12th and Mosley streets), it used its enormous success on the ball field (regularly defeating both Black and white teams) and at the box office to help raise funds for the *Phyllis Wheatley Children’s Home (Wichita).  Wichita, like most of this society, was a predominantly racially segregated environment for well over half of the Twentieth Century.  An important exception to this statement is the fact that a Ku Klux Klan baseball team, known as the Wichita Klan Number 6, played the Wichita Monrovians in June of 1925.  The final score was Wichita Monrovians 10 and the Wichita Klan Number 6 8.  The fact that the game was played at all could have far reaching implications for this research.  At least the ROBW investigators think so!  We believe that the story of the Wichita Monrovians, the First Kansas Colored Infantry and other important self-initiatives (strength perspectives) such as these could possibly have useful educational, sociocultural, economic, political, and spiritual implications for this investigation.  Please see this website periodically as the ROBW evolves.

 Sources: Pendleton, J. (1997/Summer).  Jim Crow strikes out: Interracial baseball in Wichita, Kansas 1920 – 1935.  Kansas History, 20, 86-101; Dreifort, J.E. (Editor). (2001). Baseball history from outside the lines: A reader.  University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, NE.

* Note: Several sources indicate that the poet's first name is spelled "Phillis" after the slave ship The Phillis on which she arrived in America. The children's home in Wichita, Kansas spells Phyllis with a "y" as cited. (update 9/26/2008)