Black History Month: FAMU grad Bill Lucas shattered baseball's glass ceiling to become first black general manager

FAMU grad William Devaughn “Bill” Lucas on September 19, 1976, became the first black executive in Major League Baseball after then Atlanta Braves owner Ted Turner promoted to him to vice president of player personnel. Though Turner, somewhat oddly, kept the official title of general manager, Lucas assumed the job's responsibilities, overseeing the Braves’ roster. As a former minor-league player who had climbed through Atlanta's front office, Lucas was a typical hire, except for one fact: he was black.
 
Nearly three decades after Jackie Robinson had become the first black player in the modern Major Leagues and two years after Frank Robinson had become the first black on-field manager, Lucas had shattered baseball’s “C-Suite” barrier. 
 
Lucas’s tenure as the Braves’ top baseball executive didn’t last long: He died at age 43 of a sudden brain hemorrhage in 1979, after only two and a half years on the job. The Braves, moribund when Lucas took over, wound up winning the National League West in 1982 with a roster Lucas helped build.
 
Since his death, there have been hundreds of black Major League players and several dozen black managers but only five black GMs.
 
Lucas was born on January 25, 1936 in Jacksonville, Florida to working-class parents. His family emphasized education throughout his childhood, and he attended Florida A&M University, where he starred as an infielder and met wife Rubye. After college, Lucas signed with the Milwaukee Braves but soon put his career on hold to serve two years as an Army officer. He returned for four more seasons in the Braves’ farm system, topping out at the Triple-A level before retiring in 1964.
 
Lucas was a natural leader with the type of affable, disarming personality that endeared him to people regardless of race. And, of course, he was a battle-tested baseball man, who had proven his value. “He knew baseball,” says Dick Cecil, a longtime Braves executive who first hired Lucas back in the mid-’60s. “He could talk the language, he understood players, he understood the minor leagues, he understood development. And he had a good personality.”
In Lucas’s brief tenure as general manager, he called up budding superstar outfielder Dale Murphy, drafted All-Star third baseman Bob Horner, and hired future Hall of Fame manager Bobby Cox. 

Rubye remembers how Bill would fight Turner’s notorious impulsivity with reason and prudence. “They had a wonderful relationship,” she says of Lucas and Turner. “Ted respected him because he would stand up to him and say, ‘No, that’s not the way we’re going to do it. You don’t know a thing about baseball, so let me handle it.’”

But after building one of the best farm systems in baseball, Lucas died before his roster could flourish. According to The New York Times, Lucas had complained of pain in his chest and arms, but Braves doctors had found no problem before the hemorrhage hit.

Snyder, who went on to work for the Braves until 2007, credits Lucas with setting up the franchise for success in the early ’80s and even into the ’90s, when the team won five NL pennants and a World Series. “He planted a seed, and we just carried through with it,” Snyder says. “He wasn’t here for the good times, but we were here for the good times, and I think a lot of that was because of [Lucas’s] direction in the beginning.”

Next month, the Atlanta Braves will honor the legacy of Lucas with the first annual Ralph Garr-Bill Lucas HBCU Baseball Classic weekend series, a best-of-three series between Grambling State University and Florida A&M University, the alma maters of Braves Hall of Famers, Ralph Garr and Bill Lucas.

 

This story is based, in large part, from a story in the Atlantic Magazine:  The Forgotten Legacy of Bill Lucas