Wearing a Birmingham Black Barons hat on a recent walk through Birmingham, Ala., proved to be problematic for the comedian Roy Wood Jr. “People were literally trying to snatch it off my head,” Mr. Wood, the former star of “The Daily Show,” said of his black and red New Era throwback.
Mr. Wood, who has personal and professional connections to Birmingham, was in town for a game between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals at Rickwood Field — the oldest professional baseball stadium in the country and the home of the Black Barons for three decades — as part of Major League Baseball’s effort to honor the contributions of the Negro leagues to professional baseball. The game, which was played on June 20, came on the heels of M.L.B. incorporating Negro leagues statistics into its official database, rewriting huge portions of the sport’s record book.
The game also served as a coming-out party, of sorts, for the intriguing and enthralling iconography of the Negro leagues — in the form of throwback jerseys and hats — which appears to be gaining in popularity not only among fans but also people looking for fashion options that speak to a social conscience.
For the Rickwood Field game, the teams wore reproductions of Negro league uniforms that were created for the event by Fanatics. The Giants wore the uniforms of the San Francisco Sea Lions, with navy and orange trim and a stylized bear cub adorning the torso. The Cardinals dressed as the St. Louis Stars, with simpler jerseys that featured only the home city’s name across the chest.
And fans around Birmingham could be seen wearing hats, jerseys and shirts from companies like Ebbets Field Flannels and Homage that recreated the look of numerous Negro leagues teams of the 1920, 1930s and 1940s.
“We’ve seen a resurgence,” said Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo. He said the game at Rickwood helped. “I am thrilled that people are wearing the gear. It triggers the desire to learn.”
Throwback sports jerseys have been popular for decades, particularly in the hip-hop community, with stars like Jay-Z making frequent sartorial references to sports stars of the past. Mr. Wood and others hope that a renewed interest in Black history, and a newfound appreciation for authentic craftsmanship, can lead to a surge in demand for gear that honors the Negro leagues.
“I think they’re more fashionable, I think they’re more powerful,” Mr. Wood said of Negro leagues reproductions in comparison to conventional throwbacks. “It feels like you’re wearing a piece of history.”
That history has attracted a spotlight in recent years thanks in part to M.L.B.’s recognition that the Negro leagues, with stars like Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige, were major leagues in their own right on the same level as the National and American Leagues. Events like the June game at Rickwood Field are intended to bolster that connection.
“These kinds of celebrations are tremendously important,” Mr. Kendrick said.
The integration of Major League Baseball, which began in 1947, followed by the rise in the popularity of football and basketball, could have led to the Negro leagues fading into permanent obscurity. But their memory was kept alive over the years by historians like Mr. Kendrick and former players like Buck O’Neil, as well as memorabilia collectors and baseball aficionados.
One of those aficionados was Jerry Cohen, who gave up his dream of becoming a rock star in the late 1980s, choosing instead to faithfully recreate the baseball jerseys of the past, including those of the Negro leagues, for a company that would come to be known as Ebbets Field Flannels.
A native of Brooklyn, Mr. Cohen named the company, which he and his then wife, Lisa Cooper, started in their Seattle apartment, after the Flatbush ballpark where Jackie Robinson debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
“There was nobody saying, ‘There’s a market for obscure team jerseys and hats,’” Mr. Cohen said in a recent phone interview. “It didn’t exist. We had to create it. There was nobody doing this.”
Mr. Cohen began scouring library archives and private collections, creating a definitive historical record in the process.
Early Ebbets Field catalogs touted the company’s authenticity, which was an increasingly rare commodity in the 1990s. One issue of the catalog featured an excerpt from a Los Angeles Times article praising the company as a redoubt against “the trashy baseball-apparel boom.” The product listings also served as miniature history lessons, with one for a Roy Campanella Baltimore Elite Giants jersey touting the Hall of Fame catcher’s ability to handle “the trick pitches common in the Negro Leagues.”
Mr. Cohen’s plan worked, with the company counting the director Spike Lee among its early customers.
Ebbets Field Flannels came to be regarded as the industry standard for historical recreations and Mr. Cohen was asked to make the Negro leagues uniforms for “42,” a 2013 film about Mr. Robinson. He sold the company in 2021.
But the authenticity that Ebbets Field and its rivals offer comes with a price.
A gray flannel Montreal Black Panthers 1936 jersey, with its snarling feline at the breast, costs $215 from Ebbets Field. The company’s recreations of Negro leagues hats cost more than $50, with throwbacks from New Era, like the one Mr. Wood wore in Birmingham, costing only slightly less.
With high demand for the reproductions, many other outlets have attempted to tap into a growing awareness of Black history and a perennial desire for all things vintage.
“A lot of people want to show that they recognize these guys,” said Kane Kinnebrew III, who runs It’s a Black Thang, an online marketplace. His polyester Negro leagues jerseys sell for $99. Negro leagues iconography has also been embraced by high-end designers like Jerry Lorenzo, whose grandfather played for the Atlanta Black Crackers.
At a slightly lower price are offerings from Homage, a clothing company founded in 2007. Homage T-shirts are comfortable and affordable, if not always up to Mr. Cohen’s exacting historical standards. Some include illustrations of Negro leagues stars like Cool Papa Bell of the Homestead Grays and Mr. Paige of the Kansas City Monarchs, all rendered with a retro sensibility.
At a time when fashion is increasingly under the pressure of algorithmic conformity, the clothes of the Negro leagues offer a splash of human creativity and craftsmanship — much as they did a century ago.
“They had really interesting-looking uniforms because that was part of their draw,” said Gary Cieradkowski, a graphic designer based in the Cincinnati area who has worked on recreations of Negro leagues logos. “They wanted something that was flashy, that would draw crowds.”
There was some necessity involved, too, because Negro leagues teams often had to make do with scant resources. Why did the Sea Lions jerseys the Giants wore at Rickwood Field last month sport a bear cub instead of a marine mammal? Because the uniforms had previously been used by the San Francisco Cubs, a semipro team.
For last month’s Giants-Cardinals game, Mr. Wood — who recently hosted an NPR podcast about Rickwood Field, Birmingham and the fight for civil rights — wore a Black Barons jersey, similar to the one Willie Mays donned as a teenage outfielder for the team in the 1940s. Mr. Mays, considered by many to be the finest all-around player in baseball history, died two days before the game at Rickwood.
Mr. Wood said Negro leagues recreations, like his Black Barons gear, were important as “an acknowledgment of what America used to be.”
“I just think that’s far more clear and delineated with a Negro leagues jersey than a traditional football or basketball throwback,” he said.
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