Kansas City Monarchs Baseball
J. L. Wilkinson was a white founder in the Negro Leagues and a night game proponent. Wilkinson grew up in Iowa and died in Kansas City in 1964. To friends J. L. was known as Wilkie, an innovator who should have been honored for his contributions. He served as the only white founder in the Negro Leagues, leading the Kansas City Monarchs to professional and financial success as a club owner for nearly 30 years.
He developed a lighting system in the 1930 to draw fans to night games during the Great Depression, five years before Major League Baseball followed suit. He signed Robinson to his first pro contract in 1945. Yet Wilkinson's name is obscure to all but the most history-minded baseball fanatics. Tom Fredrick who is a Kansas City area author who is writing a biography of Wilkinson. "He is the invisible man among invisiable men."
He had an All Nations team in 1912. Players from nine nations from Japan to Europe used the draft-depleted remanants of the All Nations team to develop the all-black Kansas City Morarchs, which joined the fledgling Negro National League in 1920. He was a white man in a black man's game. He shunned racism, bunking with his coaches and players when hotels were short of rooms.
Buck O'Neil said he knew two men without prejudice-one was his father and the other was J. L Wilkinson.
The Monarchs won two World Series and 10 pennants under Wilkinson, He left baseball in 1948 after seeing the segrated game start to fade following Robinson's success with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Today Wilkinson is honored in the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City.
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