Amy Essington
Lecturer in the history departments at California State University, Fullerton, and Cal Poly Pomona
Amy Essington is a lecturer in the history departments at California State University, Fullerton, and Cal Poly Pomona. She is the author of The Integration of the Pacific Coast League: Race, Baseball, and the West (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). Amy has presented, written encyclopedia entries, and completed book reviews on topics of race and baseball that include Effa Manley, the Negro Leagues, the West Coast Baseball League, and the integration of Pacific Coast League.
Articles by
John Franklin Ritchey (1923-2003)
John Ritchey integrated the Pacific Coast League, the AAA-level minor baseball league on the West Coast, when he played as...
Frank Robinson (1935-2019)
Frank Robinson played twenty-one seasons as a major league baseball player and was the first black manager in both the...
Moses Fleetwood Walker (1857-1924)
Moses Fleetwood Walker, often called Fleet, was the first African American to play major league baseball in the nineteenth century....
Charles W. Follis (1879-1910)
The first African American professional football player, Charles W. Follis, was born February 3, 1879, in Cloverdale, Virginia. The Follis...
John Baxter Taylor, Jr. (1882-1908)
The first African American to win an Olympic Gold Medal, John Baxter Taylor was born November 3, 1882, in Washington,...
Alice Marie Coachman (1923-2014)
Alice Coachman became the first African American woman from any country to win an Olympic Gold Medal when she competed...
Shani Davis (1982- )
Shani Davis became the first African American to win a gold medal an individual event in the Winter Olympics and...
Frederick Carlton “Carl” Lewis (1961- )
Carl Lewis was a successful track and field athlete whose career spanned two decades from 1979 to 1997. He won...
Vonetta Flowers (1973- )
The first person of African descent, male or female, to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics was Vonetta...
Sarah E. Goode (c.1855?-1905)
Sarah Elisabeth Goode was one of the first African-American women to obtain a patent from the United States government in...
Howard Franklin Jeter (1947- )
Howard Jeter, U.S. Ambassador to Botswana and later to Nigeria, was born in Maple Ridge, Union County, South Carolina on...
Linda Thomas-Greenfield (1952- )
Linda Thomas-Greenfield is the new United States Ambassador to the United Nations, a Cabinet-level post in the President Joseph Biden...
