The
color line in American
baseball, until the late 1940s, excluded players of
Black African descent from
Major League Baseball and its affiliated
Minor Leagues.
Racial segregation in professional baseball was sometimes called a
gentlemen's agreement, meaning a tacit understanding, as there was no written policy at the highest level of baseball organization. Some older leagues did have written rules against teams signing black players, with color lines drawn during the 1880s and 1890s.