Cum Posey

Cumberland Willis Posey Jr. grew up in an Italianate brick mansion near the Carnegie Steel Works in Homestead, Pennsylvania, the son of the first black man licensed as a riverboat engineer in the United States. Posey played basketball at Penn State, then at Duquesne under an assumed name, founded the Loendi Big Five and won five Colored Basketball World Championships, owned the Homestead Grays for 26 years, built a dynasty that won nine Negro National League pennants between 1937 and 1945, wrote the "Posey's Points" column in the Pittsburgh Courier for nearly a decade, and remains the only person inducted into both the National Baseball Hall of Fame and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Wendell Smith of the Courier wrote, "No matter what his critics say, they cannot deny that he was the smartest man in Negro baseball and certainly the most successful." The Special Committee on Negro Leagues elected him in 2006, 60 years after his death from lung cancer at 55.

Homestead

Posey was born on June 20, 1890, in Homestead, Pennsylvania. His father Cumberland Willis Posey Sr., known as "Cap," earned a chief engineer license on the Ohio River, became general manager of the Delta Coal Company, founded the Diamond Coke and Coal Company (the largest black-owned business in Pittsburgh), and served as the first president of the Pittsburgh Courier newspaper for its first 14 years. His mother Angelina Stevens was the first black graduate of Ohio State University, a civic advocate and artist who once fired warning shots to defend her husband from robbers. The Poseys were among the richest black families in western Pennsylvania.

Posey attended Penn State from 1909 through 1911, studying chemistry and pharmacy, and became the first person of color to compete in varsity sports there. After leaving Penn State, he enrolled at Duquesne University and played basketball under the alias "Charles W. Cumbert" because his semi-professional athletic career made him ineligible. He led the Duquesne team in scoring for three consecutive seasons under that name. In 1988, Duquesne inducted him into its Sports Hall of Fame under his real name, and in 2013, the university created a $1 million endowment in his honor for minority students.

The Loendi Big Five

Posey organized the Monticello Athletic Association basketball club in 1909 with his brother Seward. The team won the Colored Basketball World's Championship in 1912, and Posey renamed it the Loendi Big Five in 1913 after their sponsor, the Loendi Social and Literary Club. The Loendi won four consecutive championships from 1920 through 1923. Posey's shooting style emphasized outside attempts, an approach so unusual for the era that Claude Johnson of the Black Fives Foundation called him "easily the grandfather of Stephen Curry." The Harlem Interstate Tattler wrote in 1929, "The mystic wand of Posey ruled basketball with as much eclat as 'Rasputin' dominated the Queen of all the Russias."

In 1927, Posey formed a Homestead Grays basketball squad that defeated the New York Celtics, the club that won the American Basketball League championship that season. The New York Age wrote the same year, "His record during this 20 years stamps him as the leading Negro athlete of all time."

The Grays

The Homestead Grays began around 1900 as the Blue Ribbons, a team of teenagers from the steel mills, and became the Homestead Grays by 1912. Posey joined as a center fielder in 1911 while working as a railway mail clerk. He became team captain in 1916, field manager in 1917, and booking agent in 1918. In 1920, he and local businessman Charley Walker purchased the club. Walker provided the money and Posey provided the brains.

Posey chose to remain independent of both the Negro National League and the Eastern Colored League during the 1920s, preferring a barnstorming schedule that let him "raid league rosters with impunity," as biographer Jim Overmyer noted. The 1926 Grays posted a 140-13 record with a 43-game winning streak and defeated a team of major leaguers led by Lefty Grove in three of four games.

After the American Negro League folded in 1929, Posey signed Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, and Judy Johnson. The 1931 Grays are often called the greatest black baseball team ever assembled. Six future Hall of Famers played on the roster, among them Gibson (.390 with an estimated 40 home runs), Jud Wilson (.486), Smokey Joe Williams (20 wins), and Charleston (.346). Posey, as owner, became the seventh Hall of Famer associated with the squad.

The Rivalry

Gus Greenlee's Pittsburgh Crawfords raided the Grays before the 1932 season, luring Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, and Judy Johnson to the rival club. Both men were described as operating "like modern day George Steinbrenner and Theo Epstein" in their willingness to disregard contracts. Posey tried to force Greenlee into a five-year agreement giving the Grays control of the Crawfords' schedule and roster. Greenlee refused. When Posey blocked Greenlee from renting Forbes Field, Greenlee built Greenlee Field, often described as the first black-owned-and-built major league ballpark. Posey deliberately scheduled Grays games on the same days the Crawfords were playing, splitting the local audience and weakening both clubs.

The Depression devastated both organizations. In 1934, Posey brought in Rufus "Sonnyman" Jackson, the king of the Homestead numbers racket, to stabilize the Grays financially. Jackson became president and treasurer while Posey ran day-to-day operations. When the Crawfords collapsed around 1937, Josh Gibson returned to the Grays, and Posey rebuilt.

The Dynasty

The Grays joined the second Negro National League in 1935 and won nine pennants between 1937 and 1945, compiling a 573-332 record across fifteen NNL seasons with only one losing year (26-36 in 1935). They won the Negro World Series in 1943 and 1944, both times defeating the Birmingham Black Barons. Vic Harris managed the club through most of the dynasty years, and Candy Jim Taylor managed in 1943 and 1944.

Posey signed Buck Leonard in 1934, and Leonard paired with Josh Gibson to form the offensive core of the dynasty. His eldest daughter Ethel married Grays pitcher Ray Brown at a home plate ceremony on July 4, 1935, and Brown went on to lead the Grays pitching staff to eight pennants in nine years. Posey moved the club's primary home games to Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., in 1940 through a relationship with the Griffith family, and from 1943 onward the Grays played more than two-thirds of their home games there. Posey once said, "Any time the Grays made less than $30,000 a year we considered it a poor season."

Posey served as NNL secretary beginning in 1937 and wielded heavy influence at league meetings. W. Rollo Wilson wrote, "Giants crumbled and quit before the fragile-looking Posey. The word 'quit' has never been translated for him."

The Column

Posey wrote sports columns for the Pittsburgh Courier beginning in December 1931, first under the title "Pointed Paragraphs" and then as "Posey's Points" from May 1936 through June 1945. The columns covered black sports, promoted the Negro Leagues, and offered sharp criticism of league policies even as Posey served simultaneously as a league officer. He published his annual All-America team selections through the column and helped generate interest in the East-West All-Star Game, which he claimed to have helped conceive at a meeting with Roy Sparrow and Bill Nunn at the Loendi Club in the summer of 1933.

Posey also served on the Homestead Board of Education for 13 years, the first black member of that body. Pittsburgh Mayor David L. Lawrence said at Posey's death, "His passing is a severe blow to our community."

Posey died of lung cancer on March 28, 1946, at Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh, at 55, after spending his final three weeks confined to a hospital bed. Homestead closed its schools for his funeral. His brother Seward disbanded the Grays in 1951, citing "financial setbacks and the egress of the best Negro talent into organized baseball." Jim Overmyer, Posey's biographer, ranked him among "three most important owners in Negro League baseball" alongside Rube Foster and J.L. Wilkinson.