The Kansas City Monarchs (1920 - 1950)

The Kansas City Monarchs are one of the best known and most successful teams in Negro League history & were owned by J.L. Wilkinson, a white businessman. The Monarchs won a total of ten pennants, tying for the most with the Homestead Grays, and suffered only one losing season during their entirety with the Negro Leagues. That one season was during World War II, when the roster was decimated by the loss of players to military service.

The Monarchs also are the first team to win the initial Negro League World Series in 1924 between the Negro National League & Eastern Colored League, and again in the reinstated World Series in 1942 between the Negro National League & Negro American League. Won three consecutive pennants (narrowly missing a fourth) from 1923-1925 & 1929. They would drop out of the Negro National League, and would be a independent team until 1937, when the Monarchs joined as a charter member of the new Negro American League. They would win the pennant in it's first season 1937, and go on to win four consecutive pennants from 1939-1942 & one more in 1946.

In 1942, the first World Series since 1927, the Kansas City Monarchs would sweep the Homestead Grays in four games. In 1946, the Monarchs would lose a hard-fought seven-game series to the Newark Eagles.

After the 1948 season, Wilkinson would sell the franchise to Tom Baird, who continued to operate the Monarchs through the 1950's, but by then the league has lost it's major status & was strictly a minor-league operation.