Gus Greenlee
Encyclopedia
William Augustus "Gus" Greenlee (December 26, 1893 – July 7, 1952) was a Negro League baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

 owner and an African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 businessman.

Gus Greenlee was born in Marion, North Carolina
Marion, North Carolina
Marion is a city in McDowell County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 7,943 at the 2008 estimated census. It is the county seat of McDowell County.-Geography:Marion is located at ....

 in 1893 and migrated to the Hill District of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...

 in 1916. After working several menial jobs, he established a bootlegging
Rum-running
Rum-running, also known as bootlegging, is the illegal business of transporting alcoholic beverages where such transportation is forbidden by law...

 business that he operated from his taxi. He later made his reputation as a numbers runner and racketeer, as well as the owner of the Crawford Grill
Crawford Grill
Crawford Grill was a renowned jazz club in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA's Hill District. Its heyday was the 1930s to 1950s.The club was founded by Gus Greenlee, who first made his reputation as a numbers runner and racketeer, then later as the owner of the Negro League baseball team the Pittsburgh...

 nightclub and the Pittsburgh Crawfords
Pittsburgh Crawfords
The Pittsburgh Crawfords, popularly known as the Craws, were a professional Negro league baseball team based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Named after the Crawford Grill, a club in the Hill District of Pittsburgh owned by Gus Greenlee, the Crawfords were originally a youth semipro team sponsored by...

 baseball team the. In 1933 Greenlee organized the annual East-West Classic, an all-star baseball game in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 between Negro League stars, which became the centerpiece of the baseball season. That same year he was the primary founder of the second Negro National League, which he served as president for five seasons.

For a while the Crawfords were the best-financed team in black baseball. Revenue generated from his gambling
Gambling
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods...

 and bootlegging operations allowed Greenlee to sign black baseball's biggest names. The 1935 squad may be the best ever to play in the Negro Leagues, as it fielded five Baseball Hall of Fame players. Money also enabled Greenlee to build his own ballpark. When he bought the Pittsburgh Crawfords in 1930, he was insulted that his players were not allowed to use the dressing rooms at white-owned or -controlled venues like Forbes Field
Forbes Field
Forbes Field was a baseball park in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from 1909 to 1971. It was the third home of the Pittsburgh Pirates Major League Baseball team, and the first home of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the city's National Football League franchise...

, Ammon Field
Ammon Field
Josh Gibson Field is a baseball venue located in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Until 2008 the field was known as Ammon Field, which served as the home of the Pittsburgh Keystones of the Negro National League in 1922, their only season in the NNL...

, and others. In 1932 he opened Greenlee Field
Greenlee Field
Greenlee Field in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, was the first black-built and black-owned major league baseball field in the United States.The field was the dream of Gus Greenlee, owner of the Pittsburgh Crawfords. In 1931, construction started on Bedford Avenue between Chauncy and Duff in...

, the first black-owned and black-built baseball park in America.

Following the 1938 season, Greenlee left baseball. He sold the baseball team and razed the ballpark, partly because he had lost the best players and partly because he owed money on a heavily played number.(Riley) In 1945, he made a comeback in alliance with Branch Rickey
Branch Rickey
Wesley Branch Rickey was an innovative Major League Baseball executive elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1967...

, related to Rickey's projected integration of the major leagues. They established the United States League in competition with established Negro leagues and operated for two seasons. Greenlee left baseball permanently after 1946 but continued to operate the Crawford Grill until its 1951 destruction by fire.(Riley)

Greenlee was known as a philanthropist who helped fellow blacks in his community with scholarships for schooling and with grants to buy homes.

He died of a stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...

 July 7, 1952. He is buried in Pittsburgh's Allegheny Cemetery
Allegheny Cemetery
Allegheny Cemetery is one of the largest and oldest burial grounds in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.It is a nonsectarian, wooded hillside park located at 4734 Butler Street in the Lawrenceville neighborhood and bounded by Bloomfield, Garfield, and Stanton Heights...

.

Sources

  • (Riley.) William "Gus" Greenlee, Personal profiles at Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. – identical to Riley (confirmed 2010-12-12)
  • Thompson, Nathan (2003). Kings: The True Story of Chicago's Policy Kings and Numbers Racketeers An Informal History. Bronzeville Press. ISBN 0972487506 (2003) — see also POLICYKINGS.COM

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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