ALBERT “HAPPY” CHANDLER (1898-1991)
Baseball Hall of Famer Played Baseball for Grafton

The Major League baseball commissioner who first allowed integration in the big leagues played semi-pro baseball in the northern Red River Valley in the early 1920s. Unlike Major League baseball, these Red River Valley teams were not opposed to playing against rivals that had black players. Could it be that Happy Chandler’s experience of playing ball against African-Americans motivated him to drop the unwritten “whites only” policy when he became Major League baseball commissioner in 1945?