More than 40 years before the Civil Rights Act was passed into law, the Montgomery Grey Sox were fighting for equality on the ballfields of the Negro Southern League, while Black residents of Alabama endured Jim Crow segregation and were denied equal access to accommodations, schools, public services and political representation.

The Negro Southern League was founded by Tom Wilson in 1920, in the same year that Rube Foster created the Negro National League, which is generally regarded as the first organized professional Negro Baseball League.

The Montgomery Grey Sox were a founding member of the Negro Southern League in 1920. Most of the team’s 13-year history was spent as a member of the Negro Southern League.

While American society remained segregated, Negro League Baseball in places like Alabama created an opportunity for Black players, franchise owners and fans to strengthen their community, enhance its culture and provide a sense of dignity through participation and achievement in the country’s National Pastime, paving the way for inclusion in other aspects of society.

The stories below will be updated regularly as we continue to share the stories that deserve to be told. Check back often for new additions.

His humongous afro: It’s the first thing everyone thinks of when they hear the name Oscar Gamble.

In the mind’s eye, those familiar with Gamble can see him standing in the batter’s box with a helmet pressing down on the rounded top of his head, barely able to contain the curly black globe of his hair. On the sides of his head below his cap his kinky locks pop out like a pair of headphones or Mickey Mouse’s ears. When he swings whether he connects with the ball or swings through the pitch, his helmet sometimes pops up in the air and he attempts to catch it with his free hand. When he connects it’s the definition of Afro Power.

Gamble’s hair wasn’t the first thing legendary Negro Leagues player, coach, scout and historian Buck O’Neil noticed when he discovered the gangly teenaged Gamble on the semi-pro sandlot circuit in Alabama. Here is O’Neil’s account excerpted from his memoir, “I Was Right on Time.”

“Here is what a scout lives for: I’m driving in my Plymouth Fury down a dirt road outside of Montgomery. The road is so narrow that I’m thinking I must have taken the wrong fork a few miles back. Then, suddenly, I hear the crack of the bat and the noise of the crowd. Or is that my car backfiring and my engine whining? No, it’s a ballgame sure enough, because when I round the turn, there’s a diamond cut out of the woods.

All around the field on this beautiful Saturday afternoon are people in lawn chairs, dipping into picnic baskets. They’re there to watch semipro teams. I had seen one of the teams a few weeks before, playing Tuskegee Institute. It was the Tuskegee team I was originally interested in, but the little centerfielder for the semipro team had caught my eye, and when I asked his manager where and when his next game was, he told me this field, on this Saturday afternoon.

Most of the players are in their late 20s and early 30s, much bigger and more polished than this teenager. But I like his swing, I like the fact that nobody else in pro baseball has ever seen this kid. Some of his teammates get big hits. One of them blasts a three-run homer into the woods. But they’re not the ones I want. I feel like the prophet Samuel, checking out the sons of Jesse for a new king to anoint. The youngest son works the count to 3 and 2, waiting for the right pitch to hit, and when he gets it, he drives the ball deep to center, where the centerfielder catches it at the fence. He’s the one alright.

That’s how I came to sign Oscar Gamble. He was the best prospect I had seen since Ernie Banks. Though Oscar didn’t make the Hall of Fame, he did go on to a17-year career in the majors, playing in two World Series for the New York Yankees.”

Oscar Charles Gamble was born in Ramer, Alabama, a rural community in Montgomery County on December 20, 1949. He played sandlot ball on teams managed by his brother, Jimmy and his brothers, Tom and Rich were teammates.

As an Alabama kid, he grew up idolizing fellow Alabamans, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays and watched Aaron play for the Atlanta Braves at Fulton County Stadium.

“We lived about two hours from Fulton County Stadium by car, I told my brothers I was going to play in that stadium one day. I was just running off at the mouth,” Gamble told Baseball Digest in 2007.

But he wasn’t just running off at the mouth; Gamble did play at Fulton County Stadium and dozens of other big-league ballparks with seven different teams in his 17-year career. He had his best season with the Chicago White Sox in 1977, hitting 31 home runs with 83 RBI and a .297 batting average. Gamble finished his career with an even 200 home runs, 666 RBI, 1,195 hits and a .265 batting average.

Sam Jones should be more well known than he is.

The 20th Black player to enter the major leagues and the first Black pitcher to throw a no-hitter, (he came very close two more times), “Sad Sam” Jones snuck up on his baseball career relatively late in the game.

In the waning days of the professional Negro Leagues, Jones parlayed his brief success over three partial seasons in organized Black baseball into an intriguing 12-year career as a pioneering African American pitcher in the early days of integrated Major League Baseball.

A hard-throwing power pitcher whose lack of control also served to intimidate hitters; Jones was not afraid to throw inside and possessed a tremendously arcing curveball. This combination of pitches in his arsenal kept opposing hitters on their toes. He was tagged with the nickname “Sad Sam” because of his forlorn facial expression and downward cast eyebrows, but he was nevertheless known by his teammates for his pleasant personality.

“He wasn’t the gregarious type, but he quite often injected humor into what he was doing,” said catcher Hobie Landrith, Jones’s teammate with three different ball clubs from 1956-1961.

Born Daniel Pore Franklin on December 14, 1923, in Stewartville, Ohio, he later took his mother, Athelestine Jones’ maiden surname and picked up the nickname “Sam” during his childhood. He did not know his biological father John Franklin who is believed to have been white, as evidenced by Sam’s light complexion, green eyes and red tinted hair.

Sam’s family moved from Ohio to West Virginia when he was 12 years old. As a child, he didn’t even play baseball. In high school, he excelled at basketball and football but did not participate in any organized baseball until he enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1943.

Finally, while stationed at Orlando Army Base and Pinecastle Airfield in Florida, Jones picked up the game, playing first base and catcher on his unit’s teams.

In April of 1946, Jones pitched briefly for the Oakland Larks of the newly formed West Coast Negro Baseball Association.

But the spring of 1947 found him back in Florida with the Orlando All-Stars of the Florida State Negro League. Jones got off to a tremendous start, compiling a 7-0 record with 70 strikeouts in 70 innings.

It didn’t take long for word of his exploits to spread and before long he was recruited by the general manager of the Cleveland Buckeyes of the Negro American League.

Jones joined a star-studded Buckeyes team in June of 1947, two months after Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier. That season he pitched in the second to last Negro Leagues World Series to be played.

Jones returned to the Buckeyes for the 1948 season and was the best pitcher on an underachieving team in the dwindling days of the Negro Leagues. At the conclusion of the 1948 season, Jones joined the Kansas City Royals, a West Coast barnstorming team. Some of his teammates included legends like Satchel Paige, “Cool Papa” Bell, Sam Hairston, and Andy Porter.

The Royals regular opponents on the tour were Bob Lemon’s and Gene Bearden’s major league All-Stars, comprised partially of Paige’s 1948 World Series champion Cleveland Indians teammates. During the next two years Jones played in the Panama Winter League, the semipro Southern Minnesota League, and back in Panama for the winter of 1949-1950.

At the urging of Cleveland Buckeyes business manager Wilbur Hayes, Jones got his big league signing with the Cleveland Indians in the spring of 1950.

He was assigned to the team’s Class A Eastern League affiliate Wilkes-Barre Barons and helped lead the team to the 1950 Eastern League championship. Jones posted a 17-8 record, with a 2.71 ERA, and led the league with 169 strikeouts.

Over the next three seasons, Jones was in the minor leagues. In 195, he struck out a league leading 246 batters in 266 innings pitching for the San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast League. Jones made his major league debut with Cleveland on September 22, 1951, striking out the first batter he faced, the Detroit Tigers center fielder Hoot Evers.

A seemingly tireless hurler, Jones played winter ball for the San Juan Senadores in the Puerto Rican Winter League of 1951-1952, again leading his league with 146 strikeouts I 167 innings, posting 13-5 record with a 2.51 ERA.

In his next big-league appearance, Jones entered the game in the seventh against the Washington Nationals on May 3, 1952, with his former Buckeyes teammate, 39-year-old rookie catcher Quincy Trouppe behind the plate. They made history together becoming the first Black battery mates in the American League.

Jones spent the 1953 and 1954 seasons pitching for Cleveland’s class-AAA affiliate Indianapolis Indians where he put up good numbers, but he couldn’t crack the team’s big-league rotation that featured stars like Bob Feller, Bob Lemon, Early Wynn, Mike Garcia and Art Houtteman.

At the end of the 1954 season, Jones was traded by Cleveland to the Cubs in a blockbuster deal for Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner. Given his opportunity with the Cubs, Jones had a remarkable year.

In his eighth start of the season, on May 12, 1955, Jones became the first Black pitcher to throw a no-hitter in the major leagues. Looking like Nolan Ryan later would, he finished the season with a 14-20 record, leading the National League in losses, walks (185), strikeouts (198), and hit batters (14). He would lead the league in both walks (115) and strikeouts (176) again in 1956. At the end of the 1956 season, he was traded along with his catcher Hobie Landrith to St. Louis and led the NL in walks (107) and strikeouts with the Cardinals again in 1958.

After two relatively successful seasons in St. Louis, Jones was dealt again, this time to San Francisco. Notably, he was exchanged for Bill White, who would go on to become MLBs first Black play-by-play broadcaster and first Black president of the National League.

Jones would enjoy the finest stretch of his career with the Giants from 1959-1961. He led the National League with 21 wins, a 2.83 ERA and 4 shutouts in 1959, and finished second in Cy Young Award voting, behind Early Wynn. He almost threw two more no-hitters during 1959, a questionable one-hitter on June 30th when a ball bobbled by the shortstop was ruled a hit. He also pitched a seven-inning no-hitter in a thunderstorm-shortened game.

Jones was left unprotected in MLB’s expansion draft of 1961 and selected by the fledgling Houston Colt .45s. But before he could play a game for that franchise, he was traded to Detroit in December of 1961 without ever playing for Houston. The Tigers released him at the end of the 1962 season. He pitched for the Cardinals again in 1963. But only one year later he concluded his 14-year major league career with the Baltimore Orioles.

While the arrival of Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby as the first Black players in the National and American League garnered the lion’s share of attention regarding the integration of Major League Baseball in 1947, there were others that advanced the collective effort more anonymously.

Four months after Jackie made his historic racial barrier breaking debut, Dan Bankhead, became Major League Baseball’s first Black pitcher as well as Robinson’s teammate and roommate with the Brooklyn Dodgers on August 26, 1947, becoming the Dodgers second Black player and just the fifth Black player to integrate the major leagues.

Bankhead came from a family of ballplayers; his father was an accomplished first baseman in the Cotton Belt League, older brother Sam was a star Negro Leagues shortstop for nearly 20 years and was the first Black manager in organized baseball with the Farnham, Quebec team of the Provincial League in 1951.

During parts of five seasons from 1940-1944 with the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League, Bankhead compiled a 15-3 record with a 2.65 ERA in 153 innings. After missing the entire 1945 season while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, Bankhead signed with the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro National League appearing in eight games over parts of two seasons in 1946 and 1947.

With the Dodgers in the throes of the 1947 National League pennant race and the team in dire need of starting pitching, at the urging of scouts Clyde Sukeforth and George Sisler, general manager and president Branch Rickey flew to Memphis to see Bankhead pitch for the Memphis Red Sox in the Negro American League on August 23, 1947. Three days later Bankhead was standing on the pitcher’s mound in a Dodgers uniform at Ebbets Field.

According to Rickey biographer Lee Lowenfish, Rickey and Sisler traveled to Memphis to observe Dan Bankhead On August 22. The next day Bankhead struck out 11 Birmingham Black Barons bringing his season total to 124 with 11 wins and 5 losses. Rickey later announced that the pitcher had been purchased from the Red Sox for $15,000.

In his inauspicious debut, Bankhead was tagged for eight runs on 10 hits by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 3.1 innings, pitching in relief. On the bright side Bankhead became one of a select few players to hit a home run in their first major league at bat, connecting for a solo blast off Pirates hurler Fritz Ostermueller in the bottom of the second inning.

In parts of three seasons with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Bankhead posted a 905 record with a 6.52 ERA in 52 games. The book on Bankhead was that he lacked control of the strike zone and was afraid to pitch hitters inside. Negro Leagues veteran player, coach and historian Buck O’Neil explained this in front of writer Joe Posnanski — “See, here’s what I always heard. Dan was scared to death that he was going to hit a white boy with a pitch. He thought there might be some sort of riot if he did it.”

While Bankhead’s time in the major leagues may not have been as successful as his Negro Leagues career, he played a significant role in the integration of major league baseball paving the way for those who followed.

Larry Doby became the American League's first African American player, debuting with the Cleveland Indians on July 5, 1947, just 11 weeks after Robinson. Doby was the first player to advance directly from the Negro Leagues to the Majors. After seeing very limited action in his half season, he joined the team in Tucson in the spring of '48, and upon arrival, he was informed that he would not be allowed to stay with his teammates at the Santa Rita hotel.

The Indians played home exhibition games at Randolph Municipal Baseball Park, and while Tucson may have been more hospitable than Florida, segregation was still prevalent in the region at the time.

"At Tucson, I discovered, the bleachers weren't segregated, but the hotel was. We weren't able to talk the management into allowing Larry to stay with us his first year, although we did make it clear -- and they agreed -- that in the future, they would take all of our players, regardless of race, creed or previous condition of servitude," wrote Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck, in his book Veeck as in Wreck.

Doby later recalled that African American players weren't allowed to stay with the team until 1954. In the meantime, he lived with the family of Chester Willis, the African American foreman of the company that supplied the Santa Rita with its clean sheets and towels, at his home in Tucson's Dunbar School District, where the city's African American children attended a segregated school.

In his first full season with Cleveland, Doby was instrumental to the team's success as the Indians won the 1948 World Series. Doby's .318 batting average in the World Series was the highest among Cleveland's starters, and he hit a game-winning home run in the team's 2-1 Game 4 victory.

A photograph of Doby and starting pitcher Steve Gromek hugging each other in the locker room after the game appeared on the front page of the Cleveland Plain Dealer the next day and would become an iconic image.

"That picture of Gromek and Doby has unmistakable flesh and blood cheeks pressed close together, brawny arms tightly clasped, equally wide grins," wrote columnist Marjorie Mackenzie for the Pittsburgh Courier, an African American newspaper. "The chief message of the Doby-Gromek picture is acceptance."

This image, asserted Mackenzie, "is capable of washing away with equal skill, long pent-up hatred in the hearts of men and the beginning of confusion in the minds of small boys."

Doby remained eternally aware of the photo's social significance.

"The picture finally showed a moment of a man showing his feelings for me," he said. "But the picture is not just about me. It shows what feelings should be, regardless of the differences among people. And it shows what feelings should be in all of life, not just in sports. I think enlightenment can come from such a picture."

Doby spent eight spring seasons with the Indians in Tucson from 1948-55 and returned in '58 after spending 1956-57 with the Chicago White Sox. When his playing days were through, Doby worked in numerous capacities as a scout and coach before becoming the Major League's second black manager, following Frank Robinson.