While the reinstatement of Major League Baseball was a massive victory for equality, the results ended up destroying the Negro Leagues and creating a setback for involvement of African Americans in professional baseball. After signing Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers, Branch Rickey was often considered a civil rights hero. This door allowed Jackie Robinson to pave the way for many other African Americans and other non-white baseball players to join the ranks of the Major Leagues. When discussing this piece of history, one fact that is less talked about is the impact it had on the Negro Leagues. By ignoring the Negro Leagues and hiring Jackie Robinson, Branch Rickey became the catalyst for the destruction of the Negro Leagues and, ultimately, the decline of African-American participation in professional baseball. baseball, led by Edward W. Bolden. A year later, from 1916 to 1919, the Great Migration occurred. This period saw approximately 500,000 African Americans leave the South and move to more urban environments in the North. This, of course, resulted in an increase in the African American population in the major cities of the North. Examples include Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit. These migrations contributed to the birth of the first African-American professional baseball leagues. The first, the Chicago-based league led by Andrew “Rube” Foster, the Negro National League in February 1920. The next league was led by Bolden, the Eastern Colored League. Unfortunately, African Americans generally saw economic misfortune by the mid-1920s. As a direct result of this, the Negro Leagues fell into a state of decline. Muc......middle of paper......American baseball player in the National League. Debunking this, Rickey instead countered that he intended to improve the quality of African-American professional baseball. A new African-American baseball league, the United States League, was announced here. At the press conference, Rickey suggested that Major League teams could potentially recruit the best players in the USL. In his autobiography, Jackie Robinson talks about Rickey and the United States League. Robinson writes that while many people questioned and criticized Rickey's intentions with the USL and accused Rickey of actually using the league to keep the Dodgers further from integration, no one knew his true intentions. According to Robinson, Rickey's true intentions behind the USL were to begin actively seeking out African-American baseball players to recruit for the Brooklyn Dodgers.