Major League Baseball
(MLB) is elevating the
Negro Leagues
of 1920 through 1948 to "Major League" status,
MLB
Commissioner
Robert Manfred
said on Wednesday, calling the move a correction of "a longtime oversight".
The records and statistics of the Negro Leagues, in which Black players competed after being forced out of MLB competition due to
racism
and "
Jim Crow
" segregation laws, will be incorporated into MLB history a century after the formal introduction of the Leagues.
"In the minds of baseball fans worldwide, this serves as historical validation for those who had been shunned from the Major Leagues and had the foresight and courage to create their own league that helped change the game and our country too," Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, said in a statement.
MLB said it was working with the Elias Sports Bureau to review the move's "ramifications on statistics and records".
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