Talk:Negro World Series

Article name/move

I've recently created articles or stubs for the series that didn't have them, and one of the issues I confronted was the name of the series. There were three names being used: (1) Negro League World Series (NLWS) was the name of this parent article describing the series; (2) Colored World Series (CWS) was used for the existing articles on the 1924 and 1942 series, the only series which had their own articles when I began my recent work; and (3) Negro World Series was used in the navigational boxes that had been created for the series championship teams (see Category:Negro World Series championship navigational boxes), except for 1924 and 1942. In thinking about naming conventions, I looked at two categories of evidence: usage in modern books written by researchers and authors about the Negro leagues, and contemporary usage in newspapers during the 1920s and 1940s. A quick summary of the evidence (presented in detail in the next few paragraphs) is that in modern books, all three terms seem to be used, more or less interchangeably, but in the newspapers of the 1920s-40s, there were clear patterns of usage, with CWS more commonly used in the 1920s, NWS in the 1940s, and NLWS was never used in contemporary newsppaers. There is clear evidence that the word "colored" fell out of favor during the 1940s and was pretty much completely replaced by "Negro" by the mid- to late-1940s. Based on this evidence, my recommendation and plan is to rename/move this article to Negro World Series.

• Modern books - Using Google books, I found examples of all three terms being used in books written by modern researchers and authors. While I don't claim that the following list is comprehensive, it does indicate that all three terms are widely used:
  • The term Negro League World Series is used, for example, in the following books: Cuban Star by Adrian Burgos, Jr.; Black Baseball by Kyle McNary; Negro Leagues Baseball by Roger Bruns; Sports Hall of Fame Encyclopedia by Dave Blevins; Extra Bases by Jules Tygiel; Playing America's Game by Adrian Burgos, Jr.; Voices from the Negro Leagues by Brent Kelley; Cool Papas & Double Duties by William McNeil.
  • Colored World Series is used, for example, by: Baseball's First Colored World Series by Larry Lester; Out of the Shadows by Bill Kirwin; Turkey Stearnes and the Detroit Stars by Richard Bak; Negro Leagues Book by Dick Clark & Larry Lester; We Are the Ship by Kadir Nelson.
  • Negro World Series is used, for example, by ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia by Pete Palmer, Gary Gillette, and Stuart Shea; Negro World Series of 1942 by James Riley; Only the Ball Was White by Robert Peterson; Invisible Men by Donn Rogosin and Monte Irwin; The Negro Leagues by Leslie A. Heaphy; Diamonds Around the Globe by Peter C. Bjarkman.
  • Then there elegant variation - a few books actually mix up these names. For example, Shades of Glory by Lawrence Hogan uses all three terms, appearing within a few pages of each other. Willie's Boys by John Klima uses NLWS in the book's subtitle, but NWS in the book's text. I'm not going to try to draw any conclusions except that usage by modern authors allows for any of these terms and doesn't exhibit a strong preference for one over another.

• Contemporary news accounts - Here I used Proquest Historical Newspapers (which I have online access to through a nearby library). While it doesn't cover as many newspapers as the Google News archives, it does have a couple of advantages relative to Google: (1) I was able to look up all the articles it indexes, whereas most of the Google News articles are behind pay walls; and (2) it includes nearly complete coverage of two black newspapers, the Chicago Defender and the Afro American, whereas Google News only includes limited coverage of the Afro American. I split my searches into the two periods when the series was played: 1924–27 and 1942–48. I'll first emphasize, though, that throughout both periods, most articles in the black newspapers didn't use any of these terms, but instead simply referred to the series as the "World Series" (assuming that readers would automatically understand from context that they were talking about Negro league version rather than the white series). Drawing the distinction became more important in the 1940s with integration, when the black papers began to cover the white series when Robinson, Doby, and Paige started playing in it.
  • 1924–27 - The term Colored World Series appears 15 times (7 of them in the black newspapers), whereas Negro World Series appears only 4 times (once in a black paper). Again, the vast majority of articles in the black papers simply use "World Series" without modification. NLWS never shows up in the newspapers.
  • 1942–48 - A big shift as NWS appears 148 times, whereas CWS appears only 22 times. If we split this period, we see the shift occurring during World War II - during 1942–44, CWS appears 19 times, versus NWS 65 times, whereas during 1945–48 the split is NWS 83 and CWS 3. By 1945, the term "colored" had fallen almost completely out of favor. Again, NLWS never appears in the newspapers of this era - it's a term that was coined later on.

Is there any evidence of an "official" name? I've looked at Lester's book on the first 1924 series, and don't see anything that looks like an official document. Maybe the closest such document is the official souvenir program, which is reproduced in the book; it uses the title: "East versus West for World's Colored Championship: 1924"—that is, no use of the term "World Series." Nevertheless, the term "world series" was ubiquitous in the contemporary news articles about the series, so the alternate name in the program isn't really helpful. All things considered, contemporary usage led me to my decision to use CWS for the 1920s series, but switch to NWS for the series in 1943 and later. I think the fact that NWS displaced CWS and was used for at least as many series as CWS makes it the most appropriate name for the parent article. While I typically would allow more time for discussion before moving the article, in this case a "speedy rename" tag on the Category:Negro World Series article is pushing me to go ahead and make the move now (though I remain open to moving it back if anyone raises an objection). Let me know if you'd like to discuss these article names further. BRMo (talk) 04:21, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

I was always under the impression that, like you stated above, "colored" was favored early on and in later years "negro" became preferred. Therefore, again just my impression, I thought that "Negro league" was a good umbrella title for this article since it covers two essentially unconnected championship series. My thought would be to include some of your words above into the intro under each section for the '24-'27 games and the '42-'48 games explaining, like you did above, the different terminology; also in the lede include a note that NLWS was not generally used at the time but it is used in retrospect (or something). Move this article back to NLWS, but the individual articles would be either "colored" or "negro" as appropriate. Using this logic, the speedy rename of the category is sensible, too. That's just my impression, but I've never spent more than this paragraph justifying my logic, so I'm not necessarily married to it. Thinking some more, another possibility would to have 2 separate articles, one for CWS and one for NWS, but I'm not sure that is a good idea. Rgrds. (Dynamic IP, will change when I log off.) --64.85.217.227 (talk) 13:38, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

I guess if there was evidence that NLWS has become the predominant term used in the modern literature, I'd be inclined to go with what you've suggested. But when I look over the list of books above, it seems to me that the many of the most knowledgeable researchers tend to use NWS (or CWS if they're focusing on the earlier series). Not that anyone is saying NLWS is wrong or anything, but it hasn't displaced the other terms. Given that, I'd prefer to use one of the terms that was actually used at the time. But it's really just a preference, not an issue of right or wrong. (There does seem to be a rule that category names have to be consistent with the parent article, so whatever we decide here will have to be reflected in the categorization.) I don't think I'd favor making two articles - although it's true that the 1920s series didn't have any official institutional tie to the 1920s one, the press certainly seems to have a treated it as a restoration of the series between the eastern and western champions, even though the league names had changed.BRMo (talk) 15:01, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

It wasn't that long ago that on WP we always capitalized "League" in "Negro League" but we have since corrected that, so maybe then it should be "Negro league World Series" (little-"L").

Another idea is to rename this article something similar to "Negro league post-season play" and include all of the split-season play-offs, all of the World Series(es), and any notable exhibition championship challenges in years void of any organized play-offs. That way the World Series competitions can link to the specific article to deal with what to call it. Just a thought.

Back on topic, naming this NWS is fine as long as the text of the article explains the evolution from "colored" to "negro". Like I said before, you should incorporate some of your words above into the text of the article. So I'm inclined to not oppose your rename to Negro World Series. Rgrds. (Dynamic IP, will change when I log off.) --64.85.220.93 (talk) 16:19, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Looking through my newspaper research on the 1942 series, I note that the Chicago Defender referred to the Series as the "Negro World Series", though occasionally just calling it the "World Series"; the Baltimore Afro-American always called it simply the "World Series" (the Afro also referred to the other one as the "white World Series"); the Kansas City Call called it the "Negro World Series", though sometimes just called it "the series", as if it were just a set of unnamed games.

When I first created the article on the 1942 Series, I used the naming convention of the 1924-27 series of "Colored World Series" and didn't really look further; having looked more carefully at some of the newspapers that were used for sources, I stand corrected. I have never seen any Series referred to "Negro League World Series" contemporaneously, and I believe that to be a construct of later writers. I think it would be appropriate to rename articles about the series of the 1940s as "Negro World Series" -- Couillaud 23:27, 12 January 2013 (UTC)