Profile
Larry Lester was co-founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) in Kansas City, Missouri, and served as its Research Director and Treasurer for five years (1991-1995). He was instrumental in the development of the Museum's business plan, and its Incorporation in 1990. Along with attorney Thomas Busch, he was the driving force in its licensing program that generated $1.4 million in their start-up years. With only black & white photographs, his research of archival newspapers along with interviews of former players, Lester was able to discover the authentic colors & designs, allowing apparel manufacturers to reproduce retro-vintage caps, jerseys, and jackets from black baseball's heyday. In 1995, Major League Baseball Properties reportedly awarding $143,248 to surviving Negro League players from the sale of memorabilia from its licensed program.
Lester also acquired rare artifacts from the families of Satchel Paige, Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, Archie Ware, Chet Brewer and others for the NLBM's archives. He also works in support of other institutions in securing artifacts. For example, in 1990, he secured full hooded Ku Klux Klan robes for the Black Archives of Mid-America in Kansas City, Missouri, and the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee.
During his tenure at the NLBM, Lester served as Senior Editor for its quarterly newsletter Silhouettes, and its annual yearbook Discover Greatness! The Museum’s current static exhibition and informational kiosks, were developed from Lester’s personal collection of historic photographs, accompanied with his captions written from archival news clippings. Likewise, Lester developed the NLBM's first traveling Negro League exhibit that has been showcased each year at Major League Baseball’s FanFest during All-Star Week since 1993. A similar exhibit “Discover Greatness” owned by the NLBM has been presented at various museums and libraries nationwide since 1999. He left the NLBM in 1995 to start NoirTech Research, Inc., combining his expertise in research and technology to strategically track the African-American experience in sports and entertainment.
Lester is most proud of his partnership with the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum in Cooperstown, New York, from 2000 to 2004, as he co-chaired a comprehensive study of African American baseball from the Civil War up through the mid-fifties, appropriately called “Out of the Shadows.” Project findings are to be released in the near future, with several publications forthcoming from this academic study. In 2006, he served on the Special Negro Leagues Committee for the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum, selecting a record 17 new Negro League players, executives, and managers. See Ted Williams' insightful tribute below.
As a dedicated advocate for equal rights, Lester and Dr. Jeremy Krock, actively campaigns for retroactive pensions for worthy Negro League veterans and raises funds to purchase headstones to be placed on the unmarked graves of athletes. Upon leaving NLBM, he worked with former Brooklyn Dodger pitcher Joe Black and National League President Len Coleman (1997) in securing retroactive Major League Baseball (MLB) pensions for more than 85 Negro League veterans, meanwhile involving approximately 150 former players in MLB Properties’ royalty program from the sale of Negro League caps, jerseys and related apparel in the early 1990s. In 2006, he successfully campaigned with Senator Bill Nelson (of Florida), former player Bob Mitchell, and Satchel Paige's children for Congress to designate May 20th as `Negro Leaguers Recognition Day'.
On a daily basis, Lester remains in contact with more than 90 former players and their families. His research library, amassed from more than 50 years of labor, includes an array of video sport documentaries, personal audio interviews, and more than 78,000 clipping files on Black athletes, and roughly 16,000 photographic images, along with the only known statistical database of batting and pitching records for approximately 3,600 Negro Leaguers from the turn of the century until the breaking of the color barrier in 1947.
Lester's familiar relationship with former players inspired an invitation from President Barack Obama in August of 2013 for a Meet & Greet with the Commander-in-Chief. Read about the former players honored at the White House HERE.
In 2017, Lester was named President of the Greater Kansas City Black History Study Group (GKCBHSG), a branch of the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History (ASALH), founded by Dr. Carter G. Woodson in 1915. The mission of the ASALH is to promote, research, preserve, interpret and disseminate information about Black life, history and culture to the global community.
He is also chairman of the Society for American Baseball Research's (SABR) Negro Leagues Committee which host annually the Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference, the only academic symposium dedicated exclusively to the examination and promotion of black baseball history.
In 2016, Lester received the national Henry Chadwick Award, named after the "Father of Baseball." PRESS RELEASE. Later in 2017, Lester was recipient of SABR's Bob Davids Award, the society's highest honor for his contributions to baseball that reflect the ingenuity, integrity and self-sacrifice of founder L. Robert "Bob" Davids. PRESS RELEASE. The recipient of many honors and awards, Lester considers giving the keynote speech at his 50th class reunion for the Central High School Blue Eagles in 2017, his greatest recognition. Giving credence to its motto, "Nothing shall surpass the '67 Class."
Lester has written forewords to several books, and has served as an editor/fact checker to many doctoral dissertations and theses on sports history. He is listed as a contributing researcher to more than 225 publications on African American history, and has served as a consultant on numerous sports documentaries with HBO Real Sports, ESPN, ESPN2, PBS, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, TV One, CBS, BET and other media outlets. Lester cites literary giants Sam Lacy, Shirley Povich, Lester Rodney, and Wendell Smith as the Mount Rushmore of writers who inspired and mentored him.
As one of the founding members of the 100 Black Men of Greater Kansas City, he continues to give back to his native community via its mentoring and reading programs. It's motto: "Real Men, Giving Real Time!" is employed using four pillars of commitment: 1) Education, 2) Economic Empowerment, 3) Health & Wellness, and 4) Mentoring. The parent organization was started in New York City (1963) and chartered as the "100 Black Men, Inc." to signify a sign of solidarity. These visionaries were business and industry leaders such as future N.Y. Mayor David Dinkins, Robert Mangum, Dr. William Hayling, Nathaniel Goldston III, Livingston Wingate, Andrew Hatcher, and his childhood hero, Jackie Robinson.
Award winning author Lonnie Wheeler, I Had A Hammer (with Hank Aaron), Pitch by Pitch (with Bob Gibson), and The Bona Fide Legend of Cool Papa Bell, called Lester "the de facto chairman of all things Negro League."
For fee-based lectures, seminars, panel discussions, educational forums, workshops, exhibit bookings, presentations, and/or book signings, see contact information below.
TED WILLIAMS' Hall of Fame induction speech in part - June of 1966, in Cooperstown, NY.
“The other day Willie Mays hit his 522nd home run. He has gone past me, and he’s pushing, and I say to him, 'Go get ‘em, Willie.' Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel. Not just to be as good as someone else, but to be better. This is the nature of man and the name of the game. I hope that one day Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson will be voted into the Hall of Fame as symbols of the great Negro players who are not here only because they weren’t given the chance.”
50th Anniversary of Satchel Paige's HOF Induction article by ESPN's Willie Weinbaum
Video Link of Ted Williams
“The other day Willie Mays hit his 522nd home run. He has gone past me, and he’s pushing, and I say to him, 'Go get ‘em, Willie.' Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel. Not just to be as good as someone else, but to be better. This is the nature of man and the name of the game. I hope that one day Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson will be voted into the Hall of Fame as symbols of the great Negro players who are not here only because they weren’t given the chance.”
50th Anniversary of Satchel Paige's HOF Induction article by ESPN's Willie Weinbaum
Video Link of Ted Williams
