When the Wichita Monrovians Beat the Klan at Baseball

On a hot Sunday in June 1925, two baseball teams met on a dusty diamond in Wichita, Kansas. One wore the colors of a Black semi-pro club, the Wichita Monrovians. The other represented the Ku Klux Klan.

By the end of nine innings, the scoreboard read 10–8. The Monrovians had beaten the Klan at America’s favorite game, in a city where the Klan was trying hard to prove it owned the town.

That single scoreline has gone viral a century later. But the real story is bigger than a meme about racists losing a ballgame. It is about how the Klan tried to use sports for respectability, how Black Kansans built their own baseball world, and how one strange, tense afternoon captured a fight over who got to claim America.

The Wichita Monrovians were a Black semi-professional baseball team active in the 1920s. In June 1925 they played and defeated a team representing the Ku Klux Klan 10–8 in Wichita, Kansas. The game was both a publicity stunt and a small act of resistance in an era of segregation and racial terror.

Why was the Ku Klux Klan playing baseball in 1925?

When people picture the Ku Klux Klan, they usually imagine night rides, cross burnings, and lynch mobs. Less remembered is that in the early 1920s, the Klan also ran picnics, parades, women’s auxiliaries, and, yes, sports teams.

This was the era of the so-called “Second Klan.” Revived in 1915 and turbocharged after World War I, the Klan spread far beyond the South. By the mid-1920s it had millions of members nationwide. Kansas was one of its strongholds. Wichita had an active Klan presence, with rallies, political influence, and a drive to present itself as a respectable, mainstream civic force.

The Klan wanted to look like a patriotic fraternal order, not just a terrorist group. That meant uniforms in parades, charity events, and community entertainments. Baseball fit that strategy. It was the national pastime, a shorthand for American-ness, discipline, and fair play. If the Klan could field a baseball team, it could claim to be part of normal American life.

Newspapers from the period show Klan teams playing in local leagues or charity games in several states. These teams were usually all-white, drawn from members or sympathizers. They were not professional-level clubs, but the point was visibility, not trophies.

So when a Klan team took the field in Wichita in 1925, it was not a random oddity. It was part of a broader push to normalize the organization through everyday culture, including sports. That push made the choice of opponent, and the outcome, matter even more.

So what? The Klan’s foray into baseball turned a simple game into a public relations tool, which meant that losing to a Black team carried symbolic weight far beyond the box score.

Who were the Wichita Monrovians?

The Monrovians did not come out of nowhere to play the Klan. They were part of a rich Black baseball scene that existed alongside, and often in the shadow of, the better-known Negro Leagues.

In the early 1920s, Black baseball in America ranged from formal leagues like the Negro National League to looser networks of independent semi-pro teams. The Monrovians fell into that semi-pro category. They were based in Wichita’s Black community and played regional opponents around Kansas and neighboring states.

The team took its name from Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, a symbolic nod to Black autonomy and pride that would have been obvious to many Black fans at the time. Naming a team “Monrovians” was a quiet statement: we have our own history, our own heroes, our own geography of meaning.

Like many semi-pro Black teams, the Monrovians hustled for games, gate receipts, and respect. They scheduled contests against local white teams when possible, and against other Black clubs when segregation or hostility blocked mixed play. They were good enough to draw crowds and press attention, but they were not a formal Negro League franchise.

Black baseball teams in Kansas had a longer history too. The state had produced teams like the Kansas City Monarchs, one of the powerhouses of Black baseball. Even if the Monrovians were not in that elite tier, they played in a baseball culture shaped by those giants. They knew what it meant to represent Black excellence on the field.

So what? The Monrovians were not just a one-off novelty; they were part of a larger Black sporting world, which meant their win over the Klan fed into an existing tradition of using baseball to claim dignity and visibility.

How did a Klan team and a Black team end up on the same field?

To modern eyes, the matchup sounds impossible. Why would the Klan agree to play a Black team at all? And why would a Black team risk it?

The short answer is that this was a stunt with money and publicity attached. Contemporary reports indicate that the game was arranged as a special attraction, with admission charged and proceeds going to charity or to the teams. The exact financial terms are murky, but it was not a casual pickup game. It was advertised, planned, and promoted.

For the Klan, the game offered a chance to show off its strength and “fairness.” Beating a Black team in a public, supposedly orderly contest could be spun as proof that the Klan was confident, disciplined, and in control. Even agreeing to the game could be framed as magnanimous: look, we will play them on the field, under the rules, like gentlemen.

For the Monrovians and the Black community, the calculation was different. Playing the Klan was risky. The Klan had power in Wichita. Violence was always a possibility. But there was also a chance to win money, draw a crowd, and make a point. If they could beat the Klan at baseball, they could puncture the Klan’s aura of invincibility, at least for one afternoon.

Newspapers described the game as taking place on June 21, 1925, at a local ballpark in Wichita. The Klan team was all white. The Monrovians were all Black. The stands were likely segregated by custom if not by law, with Black fans and white fans watching the same game from different sections and with very different hopes.

So what? The very fact that the game happened shows how both sides used sport as a stage: the Klan to project power and respectability, and the Monrovians to challenge that image in the one arena where the rules, at least in theory, applied equally.

What actually happened in the 10–8 Monrovians victory?

Here is where the modern meme version of the story runs ahead of the surviving record. We know the score and the date. We know the teams. We know the basic context. What we do not have is a detailed inning-by-inning account with box scores and play-by-play.

Contemporary press coverage in Wichita was limited and, in some cases, colored by local politics. Some reports simply note that the Monrovians won 10–8. Others give hints of a lively, competitive game, with the Klan team not entirely overmatched but outplayed.

There is no evidence that the Klan threw the game or that the contest was rigged. The simplest reading is the most likely: the Monrovians were a practiced semi-pro club, used to playing serious baseball, and they beat a group of white men whose main qualification was membership in a racist organization, not athletic skill.

We also do not have clear records of crowd size or behavior. Given the tensions of the era, it is hard to imagine the atmosphere was relaxed. Every close call by the umpire, every hard slide, every cheer or jeer would have carried racial overtones.

Yet the game seems to have ended without a riot. The Monrovians scored more runs. The Klan team lost. People went home. On paper, it was just another semi-pro game, one of hundreds played that summer across the Midwest.

So what? The lack of drama in the aftermath is its own kind of drama; the Monrovians’ win showed that, at least for nine innings, Black excellence could prevail in a public contest with the Klan without the world collapsing, which quietly chipped away at the myth that white supremacy was unchallengeable.

How did Wichita and the Klan react after the game?

If you are looking for a story where the Klan collapses the next day because of a baseball loss, you will be disappointed. The Klan remained a force in Wichita and Kansas for several more years. Its decline had more to do with internal corruption, national scandals, and political shifts than with anything that happened on a ballfield.

Local papers did not treat the Monrovians’ win as a civil rights milestone. They reported it as a sports result, sometimes with a hint of surprise, sometimes with dry humor, but not as a turning point. White-controlled media had no interest in framing it as a moral defeat for the Klan.

Within the Black community, the story likely had more resonance. Oral histories and later retellings suggest that Black Kansans remembered the game as a rare, satisfying reversal. In an era when the Klan could terrorize Black families with near impunity, seeing those same men lose a fair contest would have been a small but real emotional victory.

The Klan, for its part, did what organizations do when they lose a PR stunt. It moved on. There is no sign that Klan leaders publicly dwelled on the defeat. They focused on rallies, political campaigns, and other forms of influence. The baseball experiment did not become a central part of their identity.

So what? The muted immediate reaction shows how white power structures could absorb small symbolic defeats, but it also hints at why those defeats mattered most to the people who were supposed to be intimidated by the Klan in the first place.

How has the Monrovians–Klan game been remembered and misremembered?

For decades, the 1925 game sat in old newspapers and fading memories. It did not enter standard histories of the Klan or of baseball. Only with the rise of digital archives and social media did the story resurface and spread.

Today, the matchup is often reduced to a punchline: “The KKK once fielded a baseball team and lost to an all-Black team, 10–8.” That version is not wrong, but it flattens the context. It can make the game sound like a quirky anomaly instead of part of a larger struggle over power, respectability, and public space.

Some modern retellings also exaggerate or invent details. You will see claims about thousands of fans, dramatic confrontations, or fiery speeches that are not backed by sources. The temptation to turn the story into a movie scene is strong. The real history is less tidy but more revealing.

There is also a tendency to treat the game as if it “defeated” the Klan. It did not. The Klan remained dangerous. Black Kansans continued to face discrimination and threats. The Monrovians themselves did not become famous heroes. The team faded, like many semi-pro clubs, as players aged and economic conditions shifted.

What the game did do was offer a clear, documented moment when Black athletes beat the Klan in a public, rule-bound contest. That matters for how we remember both Black resistance and Klan culture. It reminds us that the Klan tried to be normal and that normal life sometimes pushed back.

So what? The way the game is remembered today, often as a meme, shows how small historical events can be repurposed as symbols, and it challenges us to keep the messy reality in view while still recognizing the emotional power of that 10–8 score.

Why this 1925 baseball game still matters

Strip away the viral framing, and you are left with a simple scene: two teams, one Black and one representing a white supremacist organization, playing baseball under the summer sun. No laws changed that day. No politicians fell. But something real happened.

The Monrovians’ win showed that Black communities in the 1920s were not just passive victims of Klan terror. They organized, competed, and sometimes beat their enemies on shared cultural ground. Baseball was not just entertainment. It was a way to claim Americanness on their own terms.

The game also reveals how the Klan tried to weave itself into everyday life. It did not only operate in the shadows. It put its name on teams and events, trying to make white supremacy feel ordinary. That strategy is worth remembering whenever extremist groups today try to soften their image through sports, charity, or pop culture.

Finally, the story reminds us that symbolic victories matter, especially to the people who live under threat. A 10–8 win did not dismantle the Klan. But for Black fans in Wichita, it was a rare chance to cheer while the men who claimed to rule their city walked off the field beaten.

So what? The 1925 Monrovians–Klan game matters because it captures, in nine innings, a larger struggle over who belonged in America, how white supremacy tried to normalize itself, and how Black communities used even a ballgame to push back.