Sockalexis and Negro League
Negro League team played in Bangor; game accounts reflect accepted racism
On a Bangor baseball field that no longer exists, almost 100 years ago in May 1907, Louis Sockalexis, the first American Indian to play major league baseball, played for the Bangor town team against a club comprised of barnstorming Negro League players from the Philadelphia Giants, reigning champions of the “colored leagues.” The black players, at that time, were not allowed to compete at the highest level of baseball competition in this country because of their color until Jackie Robinson broke the so-called “color barrier” in 1947.