Our Guest Speaker Today

Our guest speaker today is Larry Lester. For more than 50 years he has researched, promoted and written about black baseball history. Lester is the co-founder and former Research Director of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, where he developed its business plan, and its licensing program for caps, jerseys and jackets. Lester also served as treasurer where he personally financed the museum’s operations during its early years.
You will find his name as author or editor on more than a dozen books and has been honored to write the forewords to seven books. He is listed as a contributing researcher in more than 225 books on sports history. Lester has interviewed dozens of Negro league veterans and many family members. Recently, Lester served as a historical consultant for the documentary The League produced and directed by three-time Emmy winner Sam Pollard.
In 2006, he co-chaired a special National Baseball Hall of Fame committee that elected a record 17 players and executives. The same year he co-found the 100 Black Men of Greater Kansas City to provide mentoring to inner city youth. He served as a consultant to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, for its Souls of the Game: Voices of Black Baseball exhibit that debuted in May of 2024 and is a member of Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred’s Negro Leagues Statistical Review Committee.
Over the past 12 years he has campaigned to raise funds to place more than four dozen headstones on unmarked graves of Negro league veterans. He also lobbied and won retroactive Major League pensions for more than 85 former Negro Leaguers. 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, in the Blue Room, at the White House.
You may have seen him on Stephen A. Smith's show Quite Frankly or with Charles Barkley in Birmingham. He has appeared with Michael Smith of His & Her in Chicago, and with Michael Wilbon of PTI in Indianapolis. Other media appearances include Harold Reynolds on MLB Network, with Bryant Gumbel on HBO’s Real Sports with Jericka Duncan on CBS News and with Roland Martin on TV One.
The recipient of numerous awards and honors, historian John B. Holway claimed, “Larry Lester might know more about the Negro Leagues and their players than anyone else. He’s certainly among the top five scholars.” Award winning author Lonnie Wheeler, who wrote biographies about Hank Aaron, Bob Gibson and Cool Papa Bell, called Lester "the de facto chairman of all things Negro League."
Lester is currently president of the Greater Kansas City Black History Study Group and a member of M.A.G.I.C., Midwest Afro American Genealogy Interest Coalition.
His traveling exhibits have included The HELP (about Black Maids), Currency of Change (Black folks on monetary instruments), Black sitcoms: A Laughing Matter (1950 to 2000) and Stamps of Recognition (Black Americans on postage stamps).
For more information visit LarryLester42.com :
His mantra is “We are drowning in information but starving for knowledge.”
Please welcome Larry Lester.