The stories baseball almost forgot.
Larry Lester is a Kansas City MONARCH—an author, historian, and co-founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. A contributing researcher to more than 260 books on sports history and a consultant on documentary films, he brings the history of Black baseball to life through research, storytelling, and preservation.
A historian who went looking for the players nobody counted.
Larry Lester is a Kansas City MONARCH: a Maven, an Orator, a Negro Leagues Archivist, an Author, a Researcher, a Curator, and a Historian. He is the author and editor of several books, a contributing researcher to more than 260 books on sports history, and a film consultant on several documentaries. Co-founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Lester served as a curatorial consultant for The Souls of the Game exhibit at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and as an advisor to Major League Baseball’s project to incorporate Negro Leagues statistics into its official records. For more than five decades, Larry Lester has worked to preserve and restore the history of Black baseball. An acclaimed author, historian, curator, statistician, consultant, and co-founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, his research helped bring long-overdue recognition to Negro Leagues players and their achievements.
In 2020, Major League Baseball changed its own history books.
Lester’s compilation of Negro Leagues records from 1920 to 1948 was officially recognized by MLB in December 2020, elevating thousands of players into the major league record. He served on Commissioner Rob Manfred’s Negro Leagues Statistical Review Committee and was honored with a lifetime season pass.
Read the Op-Ed →Twelve books. One century of Black baseball.
Encyclopedias, game histories and biographies built from period newspapers and primary-source box scores. Every title available through Amazon.
Research services for museums, media and authors.
Founded in 1995. NoirTech provides sports scholarship to news media, professional teams, museums, universities, libraries and corporations — focused on barrier breakers and historical firsts.
Box scores, stats & bios
Verified statistics and player biographies compiled from period newspapers and league records. The specialty is primary research nobody else has done.
- Player & team statistics
- Biographical research
- Newspaper archive retrieval
- Photographs for publications & documentaries
Exhibit design & curation
Concept, content and artifact curation for museum exhibitions and traveling installations, from the NLBM to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
- Exhibit narrative & copy
- Artifact sourcing
- Panel & label design
- Lectures & workshops
Fact-checking & editing
Manuscript review and historical verification for publishers, documentaries, journalists and graduate scholars.
- Dissertations, theses & books
- Forewords & contributions
- Documentary consulting
A few of the projects.
Souls of the Game: Voices of Black Baseball
View (opens in a new tab)2023The League
View (opens in a new tab)Hidden Figures
Researching Negro Leagues Stats on HBO Real Sports
View (opens in a new tab)Shadow Ball chapter in Baseball, the Ken Burns documentary
"Can U Read, Judge Landis?"
Was Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis baseball’s gatekeeper of segregation, or a hostage to social norms? Lester’s examination of the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” that kept African Americans out of Major League Baseball for sixty years.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.Edmund Burke
More writing by Larry
On the walls, not just on the pages.
Curated exhibitions telling Black history through sport, screen, currency and culture — including the Hall of Fame’s Souls of the Game. Scroll →
The scholars’ scholar.
Larry Lester might know more about the Negro Leagues and their players than anyone else. He’s certainly among the top five scholars.
The de facto chairman of all things Negro League.
Josh Gibson or Babe Ruth? Satchel Paige or Cy Young? Larry Lester, the great scholar of the Negro Leagues and time-traveler, compares Black ballplayers from long ago to their White counterparts, back then and today.
Larry Lester's dedication to the study of the Negro Leagues is inspirational. His scholarship is impeccable. He is a national treasure for which we all should be grateful.
Larry Lester’s impact on baseball history has been transformative. Preserving black baseball’s legacy, he’s woven it into the fabric of the American pastime. Tirelessly championing those who played, managed, and lived the game during segregation and its aftermath, Larry Lester changed how we understand this remarkable past
Larry Lester is the dean of Negro Leagues research on this planet and has done more than anyone to advance the cause of NLB in this country. He is a five-tool historian, an incredible person and I consider myself tremendously fortunate to know him.
Why Jackie? Why now? Why every April 15.
Tributes, fast facts and the story behind the number every team retired. Larry's #42 work honors the man who broke the line and the leagues that made him ready.
No player rests unmarked.
For more than a decade Larry has partnered with Dr. Jeremy Krock and SABR’s Negro Leagues Baseball Grave Marker Project to fund and install over 50 headstones on the unmarked graves of Black ballplayers.
Sol White Dedication
The Hall of Famer who wrote the first history of Black baseball rested unmarked for nearly 60 years. On May 10, 2014, at Frederick Douglass Memorial Park on Staten Island, he received the project’s 30th headstone.
Read the story →Everything a booker or editor needs.
Speaker bio, book fact sheet and published articles, ready to download.
Bring the story to your room.
Fee-based lectures, seminars, panel discussions, educational forums, workshops, exhibit bookings and book signings. Larry has appeared with Charles Barkley, Bryant Gumbel, Roland Martin, Stephen A. Smith and Michael Wilbon.
Send Larry a message →- Company
- NoirTech Research, Inc.
- P.O. Box 380146, Kansas City, MO 64138
- Phone
- 816-589-7940
- larrylester42@gmail.com