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 Amy Essington

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...
December 4th, 2008

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...
February 1st, 2009

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....
February 1st, 2009

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...
February 24th, 2009

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,...
February 26th, 2009

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...
March 8th, 2009

Shani Davis (1982- )
Shani Davis became the first African American to win a gold medal an individual event in the Winter Olympics and...
April 22nd, 2009

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...
May 9th, 2009

Vonetta Flowers (1973- )
The first person of African descent, male or female, to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics was Vonetta...
May 9th, 2009

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...
November 5th, 2010

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...
February 26th, 2015

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...
March 2nd, 2015