With New Breaking Barriers Exhibition, Baseball History Comes Alive

With Breaking Barriers Exhibition, Baseball History Comes Alive

CALIFORNIA MASONS BRING TRAVELING EXHIBITION ON BASEBALL’S BLACK PIONEERS TO SAN DIEGO.

By Ian A. Stewart

Baseball’s Hall of Fame is clear about the historical significance of America’s game: “A snapshot of any point in time of America’s last 150 years includes the fabric of baseball,” it states. “And often, baseball was at the forefront of cultural change.”

Indeed, baseball is a powerful vehicle for understanding history and social change. That’s the idea behind a new exhibition that California Masons are helping bring to students in the San Diego area. This spring and summer, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is staging the traveling pop-up exhibition “Barrier Breakers: From Jackie to Pumpsie, 1947–1959” at the San Diego Public Library, thanks to a grant from the Masons of California and the San Diego Padres Foundation. The partnership comes on the heels of the same groups’ rollout of the Johnny Ritchey Scholarship in 2023, named for the Padres’ first Black ballplayer, known locally as the Jackie Robinson of the West. The exhibition launched April 16 with a special reception hosted by representatives from the Masons, Padres, and the Negro Leagues Museum. It will remain on view at the library through June, and admission is free. Through Foundation support, the library is also hosting student groups from around San Diego to visit the exhibition, and has developed educational programming centered on its themes.

“Barrier Breakers” tells the story of the legendary group of Black and Afro-Latin players, many of whom began in the Negro Leagues, who broke the Major Leagues’ 60-year, self-imposed color barrier, beginning with Jackie Robinson in 1947. Ritchey, a catcher with the Pacific Coast League Padres, made his debut in 1948. In the first decade post-integration, Black players including Robinson, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, Henry Aaron, Ernie Banks, and Willie Mays all won MVP awards. There’s even a Masonic connection, to those in the know: Banks, the legendary and beloved Chicago Cub, was also a Prince Hall Mason with Fidelity Lodge № 103 in Chicago, while Mays belonged to Boyer № 1 in New York.