Bob Kendrick is coming to William Woods University on Monday to share the history of segregated professional baseball and the connection between sports, race and diversity.
Kendrick, who is the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, will appear at Cutlip Auditorium 6:30 p.m. Monday as part of the William Woods President's Concert and Lecture series.
The event, which is free and open to the public, is one of several events the university has planned for Black History Month. Other events held this month include film screenings.
The NLBM is the only museum focused on celebrating African-American baseball. Black players excluded from professional teams formed their own teams and leagues throughout the first half of the 20th century.
The leagues helped build economic development in black communities.
The integration of Major League Baseball, which began when Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, led to the end of the African-American baseball leagues by the 1960s.
Kendrick first became involved with the museum as a volunteer. At the time, he was working as a senior copywriter for the Kansas City Star's promotions department.
Kendrick organized an advertising campaign for the museum's first traveling exhibit in 1993. Since then, he's served on the museum's Board of Directors and worked for the museum in several capacities over the years. He's served as president since 2011.
In 2014, Kendrick was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame for his work in the promotion and preservation of sports history.