Kauffman Foundation gives $500,000 to Negro Leagues Baseball Museum

With the help of a $500,000 grant announced Thursday, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum will next year open the long-awaited Buck O’Neil Education and Research Center and debut an exhibit on the integration of the major leagues.

The grant, from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, will also support museum operations, programs and exhibits. It will also go toward the O’Neil Center in the former Paseo YMCA in the 1800 block of the Paseo, near the museum at 18th and Vine streets. It was at that Y that the Negro Leagues were formed in 1920.

Museum president Bob Kendrick says the first floor of the center will open in the spring.

“Talk about spreading holiday cheer,” Kendrick said in a release announcing the grant. “Our board and staff would like to thank the Kauffman Foundation for its generosity and continued support of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. This significant grant will support several major 2016 initiatives that will increase attendance, heighten national awareness and further position us as one of the nation’s most important cultural institutions.”

One of those initiatives is an exhibit called “Barrier Breakers,” which will be one of the first permanent exhibits on the first floor of the O’Neil Center when it opens. It will chronicle the integration of every team in Major League Baseball from 1947, when former Kansas City Monarchs player Jackie Robinson debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers, to 1959, when the Boston Red Sox became the last major-league team to add an African-American player.

According to the museum, the O’Neil Center will focus on providing “an in depth understanding of the connection between Negro Leagues and social history.” It will contain more than 40,000 square feet of archives, exhibits and educational areas, including a student curriculum that explores the “Math and Science of Baseball.” The museum was proposed before O’Neil’s death in 2006.

“You can’t help but believe that somewhere in that great somewhere ol’ Buck is smiling because his dream of building an education center is closer to realization,” Kendrick said.

The grant is one of 195 the Kauffman Foundation made in Kansas City this year, totaling more than $62 million. The foundation supports entrepreneurship, education, research and civic causes.

This story was originally published December 17, 2015 at 5:44 PM with the headline "Kauffman Foundation gives $500,000 to Negro Leagues Baseball Museum."