Moneyball? New Cleveland Fed exhibit honors the Negro Leagues

How does Black baseball align with the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland?

In 1920, “Rube” Foster convened a meeting of eight African American baseball team owners in Kansas City to form the Negro National League. The centennial of that meeting – delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic – has been commemorated with a set of three coins by the U.S. Mint: a silver dollar, a half dollar and a five-dollar gold piece. That’s one reason for the new “Triple Play” exhibit at the Fed’s Money Museum Downtown. Another is that the league’s teams were based in the same regions as the most active Federal Reserve banks.

"I don't think we found a team west of Kansas City until, I think, almost the end of the Negro Leagues,” said Mike Galka, the Cleveland Fed’s senior exhibit designer. “For the most part, teams were playing in Kansas City, St. Louis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Detroit, Chicago, Birmingham. It kind of overlays the Federal Reserve map, and it's really unique how it kind of fits with Negro League baseball."

There’s a reason for that too, according to Khaz Finley, the museum’s manager of education.

“I think the Great Migration started in 1910,” he said. “Folks were moving up north during that time period. It kind of coincides with the Harlem Renaissance. All of this stuff coincides during that 10-20-year period prior to the Great Depression.”

The U.S. Mint's Negro League coins include a silver dollar (left), $5 gold coin and clad half dollar. [Burwell and Burwell Photography / U.S. Mint]

Along with the coins, the exhibit features photos and text about the league, enveloped in a scaled-down baseball diamond. There’s also an exploration of the league’s innovations.

“The Negro Leagues were actually responsible for having night baseball games during the Depression,” Galka said. “The Kansas City Monarchs installed lights so that they could get the working class into the stadiums and get more attendance and ticket sales. They wanted the people that couldn’t attend games during the day – because they had jobs – to come in the evening. It wasn’t until five years later that they actually installed lights at Crosley Field in Cincinnati and Major League Baseball went to night games.”

Finley said they’re planning to welcome students to this space to visit and maybe come away with an experience that you can’t get from a textbook.

“It may spark something that they haven't talked about,” he said. “Many of our exhibits actually are topics that kind of can miss the target in the book because it's not what's on the test. So, when it's not on the test, people kind of just don't have time for it. But it is a part of American history.”

The display at the Cleveland Fed's Money Museum is a scaled-down baseball diamond, inspired by an exhibit at the Kansas City Fed. Much of the information and artifacts came from the Baseball Heritage Museum at League Park. [Kabir Bhatia / Ideastream Public Media]

Previous exhibits told the histories of Confederate money and Holocaust money. Finley says during the pandemic, the Fed team reimagined its museum space.

“I think people just didn't understand what we did at the Fed,” he said. “It starts with not only the beginning and the conception of the Fed, but it also ties in kind of historical markers of the Fed. If you know anything about the Cleveland Fed, in particular, we're one of a few Feds that have had female leaders. We highlight those points, and we highlight cyber security and other business lines that operate out of the Fed.”

The Money Museum’s “Triple Play” exhibit will be up at least through next spring before Galka, Finley and their team begin planning for the centennial of the Cleveland Fed itself next August.

The museum is at 1455 East 6 ^th St., and it is open Monday through Thursday from 9:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Admission is free.

Copyright 2022 WKSU. To see more, visit WKSU.