One of the last bastions of all-male exclusivity recently fell when Effa Manley became the first woman ever elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. A group of 12 historians of the Negro leagues and earlier African-American baseball selected 17 inductees in an effort to right the wrong of previous neglect. Only 18 Negro league players had been previously chosen, and the judgment of Major League Baseball and the Hall of Fame was that worthy candidates still remained outside baseball’s ultimate shrine.

Certainly the process helped to establish greater racial justice within the Hall of Fame, but it also broke down the gender barrier. The hall includes, of course, not only former great players but also others who contributed to the game in major ways, including owners, managers, and umpires (and in their own area of the hall, sports journalists and broadcasters).

Manley was a most unusual individual. Co-owner and business manager of the National Negro League Brooklyn Eagles in 1935 and of the Newark Eagles from 1936 to 1948, she crossed a variety of lines. A white woman who passed for black, a woman owner in a male-dominated business, and a flamboyant fun-seeker who championed civil rights, Manley was far ahead of her time.

Manley was the daughter of white parents, her mother having had an affair with her white employer, but grew up in the black community in Philadelphia where her mother and her black stepfather lived. The other children in the family were black, and Manley, who did not learn of her white biological father until she was in her teens, willingly chose to live her life as a black woman.

Manley later moved to New York City and married Abe Manley, a wealthy numbers banker with a passion for baseball. She took happily to a rich lifestyle, but also adopted a number of charitable and social-justice causes, including efforts to get white businessmen in Harlem to hire black employees for other than menial jobs.

The Manleys bought the Brooklyn Eagles in 1935 and added the Newark Dodgers in 1936, merging the two teams into the Newark Eagles. Meanwhile, Effa Manley continued to express her commitment to justice and civil rights, promoting Anti-Lynching Day at Negro league ballparks, for example, and improving salaries and accommodations on the road for her players, even assisting former players who were in need. She handled virtually all of the off-field financial and managerial details of the Eagles, who were consistent winners through the 1948 season, when dwindling attendance following integration of the major leagues brought an end to the Negro National League.

One of the highlights of her career as a baseball owner came in 1946 when her Eagles defeated the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League in the Negro League World Series.

Among her great Eagles players were Monte Irvin and Larry Doby, both enshrined in Cooperstown. In 1947, Bill Veeck, owner of the Cleveland Indians, wanted to make Doby the first African-American player in the American League. Manley was certainly prepared to let Doby go, but her concern for justice required some compensation. Veeck finally agreed to $15,000. A good businesswoman but also personally interested in advancing her players, she offered Veeck Monte Irvin, who for a decade had been demonstrating his considerable talent with the Eagles, for another $1,000. Veeck unwisely turned her down, but Manley later secured an opportunity for Irvin with the New York Giants.

As young African-American stars began gradually to enter the majors, Manley tried unsuccessfully to persuade Major League Baseball to use the Negro leagues as minor league clubs. Had her advice been heeded, the move would have retained baseball as a major industry in the black community, cementing a large fan base that over the decades has slipped away.

She was much more successful in her lobbying for inclusion of Negro league players in the Hall of Fame, which created a Special Committee on the Negro Leagues in 1971. Manley, who died in 1981, lived to see her star slugger, Monte Irvin, elected to the hall. Traditionalists may decry the addition of a woman to the Hall of Fame, but Manley, an enormously successful owner who helped open the door for others, deserves her plaque on a wall there as well.

Edward J. Rielly is a Westbrook resident, English professor at Saint Joseph’s College, and widely published author with two books on baseball and American culture.