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Museum Highlights Accomplishment of Baseball's Negro Leagues

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STEPHEN FRAZIER, CNN ANCHOR: One other chapter, now, in the history of civil rights and the sports world. Long before Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier in 1945 there were black players in a league of their own.

CNN's Keith Oppenheim takes us to a museum in Kansas City, Missouri that pays tribute to the Negro Leagues.

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BOB KENDRICK, NEGRO LEAGUES MUSEUM: You learn what they had to endure to build this enterprise, but you also learn what an incredible enterprise they were able to sculpt out of the hardships of segregation.

KEITH OPPENHEIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was a decade ago Negro League players and their backers created an exhibit in Kansas City to tell a story many people simply don't know. The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, now in an updated facility, begins with a view of statues of legendary players seen through chicken wire.

RAY DOSWELL, MUSEUM CURATOR: You're not allowed to get onto the diamond, just as those players were not allowed access to fame or to playing baseball the way they wanted to.

OPPENHEIM: Before you can get on the "field on legends," you learn the stories of ballplayers who make you wonder what they could've done if allowed to play in the majors. Josh Gibson (ph), for example, was called "the black Babe Ruth," and though he died at 35, he hit 962 home runs in his career. You learn the Kansas City Monarchs introduced night baseball five years before the major leagues did. There's even a story about how a black team once played a Ku Klux Klan team without incident.

And there's evolution. Once Jackie Robinson was signed to the Dodgers and baseball was integrated, the Negro Leagues eventually came to an end. This story of sports and civil rights is one that those who remember the leagues feel must be passed on to all Americans.

HANK AARON, ATLANTA BRAVES/HALL OF FAMER: It's a happy moment. It makes me feel good, you know, to walk through there and know that some of the things that the Negro players played for has been preserved, you know, and people can go in there and look at it. OPPENHEIM (on camera): That was, of course, hall-of-famer Hank Aaron, who hit a record 755 home runs in his major league career. But it's important to know that Aaron started in the Negro Leagues playing for such teams as the Mobile Black Bears and the Indianapolis Clowns.

Keith Oppenheim, CNN, Kansas City.

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