tonight, an evening of african-american history. cleveland sellers talks ability his work with the student non-violent coordinating committee and recounts the 1968 orangeburg massacre where south carolina state troopers fired on students protesting segregation. three students were killed and mr. sellers was among the nearly 30 wounded. former charleston, south carolina mayor, joseph riley conducts the interview at the citadel where he's now a professor. watch tonight beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern an watch "american history tv" every weekend on c-span3. each week american artifacts takes viewers into archives, museumtion and historic size around the country. next we visit the baseball americana exhibit in washington, d.c. to learn about baseball's origins and early days.

>> welcome to the library of congress. this is a collaboration the library did with major league baseball, espn and the baseball hole of fame in cooperstown. we've got incredible things on display, things you've probably never seen before. let's start with some of the earliest. right now we're standing in the front of the exhibit lookth at origins and early days where we've got some interesting artifacts that suggest baseball has a history that's much longer than the 19th century. in fact, we have an example from a medieval manuscript, little miniature figures that were part of a border of a book produced in 1344. you see we have a monk and a nun with a ball and a bat and a couple of monks and nuns in what would have been a very primitive outfield. what this shows bat and ball games were played for centuries before europeans began calling different kinds of games baseball.

our next stop here is this cute little book i absolutely adore. it's one of the favorite items in our collections. it's a little pretty pocket book from 1787, and it includes here a little wood cut drawing of children playing baseball with three posts. the word "baseball" is printed there and there's a little poem suggesting a boy runs home with joy. the lexicon showing up. the word baseball, the word home, first produced in 1744 in britain. it's not until it comes to the united states in 1787 that the word first shows up in print in america. as a parallel item to that, we've got a diary, original page from student diary from 1786, john ray smith, who is attending the college of new jersey. that later becomes princeton university.

on march 22nd he writes, fine day, played baseball. i'm beaten because can't catch or hit. he's not a great player. the following year the college faculty will ban baseball as being unbecoming of a gentleman. this is the earliest written reference we have to baseball. so already the game is on college campuses. already played by boys much older than children. these are probably older teenagers playing this game. a couple of other things to note in the early going of the game. we've got examples of 1850s of the new york game and massachusetts game. you can see in the new york game the diamond we're used to, but massachusetts had a competitive rival game which was in the shape of a rectangle. these two battled for supremacy in the 19th century. it's the new york game with the

popularity of the new york press, their enthusiasm of the game, constant coverage of the game. eventually it's the new york game that's going to win out. of the things that we've just shown you, everything in here is original with the exception of this blowup of the illuminated manuscript. these are all from original pages. one of the things that surprises a lot of people when they come to the library of congress and they see this exhibit or hear us talk about it is that we have very large sports collections. we're a premier secret sports archive if you will. through copyright, we have received everything from early rule books to team directories, to handwritten histories of leagues and things, so there's a great deal of material we have here to work with in documenting not just baseball but a number of sports. next i want to show you something that was recently rediscovered that had been hidden away in a desk drawer for

years and no one really realized the importance of it until recently. these are the founding documents of american baseball. so here we are in front of what's been called baseball's magna carta. these are the founding documents that were used at the 1857 baseball convention in new york city that laid out the rules of the game that we have come to know as american baseball. and what happened was the knickerbocker's baseball club of new york gathered about a dozen other teams and they presented a series of rules that they could all adopt to develop a standard uniform game. up until that time teams played by different rules. you couldn't have meaningful competition while this was going on. doc adams leader of knickerbocker baseball club drafted what he calls the rules of baseball. those were combined with william

grannell's conditions of the field and umpires. through those documents they put together this red ribbon's document, laws of baseball, that the rules committee used at the convention. it's here out of these sessions that several major essential fundamental rules were developed. nine players to a side, nine innings in a game, 90 feet between the bases. some of the things we have come to accept as the essentials of baseball. this is where they are agreeing to those rules. this is where they are coming from. they are not known to exist until then. the granddaughter kept them in a desk drawer, collected in a box of maps and went on auction in 1999. no one realized their value then. then when they went on auction in 2016, historians were able to do some forensic and historical analysis and determined these

were incredibly valuable papers. they have not been seen widely this is the first on display. i'm excited we're in the library. almost as important in some ways as some of our other founding documents. next, we'll take a look how baseball spread across the united states. we're continuing here with baseball's origins and early days. a good way to demonstrate that is with the earliest baseball coverage of intercollegiate games between williams and amherst in burglary 1989 playing by the massachusetts rules and the scoring was clearly a little bit different. amherst 73, williams 32. the importance of this document, which is probably the only original that still survives, this is an early stab at sports

writing. a lot of the coverage, how they arrived at the site, their hotel, how they looked their accommodations. it's an unusual document. the game was part of a double-header. baseball and chess. one day they played baseball, the next day a chess match. coverage of the chess match on the other side as well. we had also here a really early box score. it showed the names of the players, tallies, the number of times they came home and the number of outs they made. after the civil war what we have here is considered a prototype for baseball cards. the earliest existing baseball card. the brooklyn atlantics, champions of america. went to the studio, had photos taken. made copies. they would pass to fans and admirers as well as opposing teams. it's not for another 20 or more years before manufactured

baseball cards, as we come to know them, are being produced. this is probably the earliest example of a trading card. up here, this is an example of the game spreading across the united states. the civil war was actually a huge catalyst for spreading baseball. a lot of the northern soldiers introduced it to southerners in prison camps. this is an original print that was produced during the war. union prisoners at salisbury, north carolina. you see a game going on. as the war continued, the likelihood they were playing baseball in prison camps greatly diminished. early in the war, there are documented instances of this happening. finally after the war, just a few years later, 1869, cincinnati red stockings become the first baseball team, the first time openly paid. not long after that other club owners decide we're not going to have amateurs in the game anymore. we're paying everyone.

this is a commemorative print of the first team in 1869. next, now that we've got professional teams and soldiers after the war who are taking the game westward, more and more people are playing. let's take a look at who those folks are. this is a section we have on who is playing back in the 19th century. just about everyone is, but the only people being paid for it are white men on major league baseball teams. what we have here from 1887 is an uncut sheet of baseball cards from the first year they are produced. tobacco companies would tuck in individual cards into their cigarette packages as a way of promoting not only their product but you could collect a number of packages and then submit it later for a nicer bigger card. what's interesting about washington baseball club cards here is they are uncut. these are pretty rare. you don't find them often.

this was submitted for copyright at the library of congress. just as a juxtaposition you see another set from 1894, a larger cut. some of the poses have stayed the same. the diversity of the players has changed tremendously. we've got a lot more black and hispanic players which you certainly did not have in the 1880s in the major leagues. one of the most important people of that era and in fact in baseball history is john montgomery ward. he wrote the book, "base-ball: how to become a player." he was the first to write the book. it was an attempt to look at the actual historical origins of baseball. he spends most of his time as a pitcher and later a shortstop, working to improve the life of the average baseball player who usually picked up low paying jobs in the off-season as a farmer and railroad worker, and he fought against what was known

as the reserve clause in baseball. this was a clause included in all contracts for players in which their rights were held by the club in perpetuity. so unless a player was traded or sold to another team, he had no say in where he played or even how much he was paid. this reserve clause is something that baseball players are going to battle throughout much of the 20th century as well. it really starts with john montgomery ward. in 1890, he almost single-handedly forms the players league in opposition to players league and association. it became the third major league in baseball. it only lasted one year. even though he was able to attract a lot of star players to his league, they could not complete financially against the established teams in the national league and american association. ultimately it fell apart after a year. this was an early attempt among baseball players to control their own destiny and to determine how much they were paid and how much they were worth.

so from the 1880s on until 1947, major league baseball was played only by white men, but that starts to change. we'll take a look at the negro leagues over in the next case. so for black players who were not permitted to play in the major leagues, a lot of them started their own barnstorming teams. we have an example of a team in 1880s in danbury, connecticut. it's not until 1820 that foster establishes the negro leagues, a professional league. there were a number of incarnations, a number of teams participated in that. we have examples from indianapolis clowns, a program from one of their games. a signed baseball by satchel page, a phenomenal pitcher who got his start and spent many years in the negro leagues, doesn't become a rookie in the

major leagues until 42 and continues to pitch until he's 59 in the major leagues actually. while that's going on, while african-americans are having to make their way with their own leagues, other brands of baseball are developing. what we have here is an image of the world champions indoor baseball team from 1905. indoor baseball was invented in 1887 in chicago. it was way for teams to keep in shape in the off-season in the winter. almost immediately indoor baseball moves outdoors. what characterizes indoor baseball is larger balls, smaller bats, smaller diamonds. it's not until 1926 indoor baseball adopts the name softball. another thing to point out is while black players were not getting nearly the publicity that white players were, they also were not appearing on baseball cards issued by tobacco companies. that was the domain of white players. we've got a fantastic collection of really early baseball cards

from 1887 to 1914. all of these cards are original. they all represent a different set or brand of cards that appeared. we've got tie cobb batting and mathisen pitching. the turkey red were premium cards. if you sent in enough cigarette packages to show you had bought all these tobacco products, you could trade that in and receive a large premium card this is a phenomenal collection not only baseball cards, but trapeze artists, circus performers, billiards players and all kinds of athletes appeared on these cards, but it was baseball that won out. the popularity of baseball was such that most people were

interested in collecting those cards the other people not featured on baseball cards were female players. there are were women playing on organized teams and organized leagues early on as well. we'll go to the next case and take a look at them. this is a fantastic team from 1913, new york female clients. the cap stan, the woman holding the bats excelled in every sport including cliff diving, had a short showbiz career on the stage in broadway and in hollywood doing silent films. what most people have learned about women's baseball is the first professional leagues, the all american girls professional baseball league, it was established as a way to entertain the home front during

the car and provide professional baseball while most of the men were away. here we have the original jersey that dottie ferguson wore for the rockford peach. she led the league in steals. difficult that she was having to slide in such a short uniform. some of the sleeves here show some of the wear and tear over the years. she wound up stealing 461 bases in her ten-year career. then we also shed some light on girls breaking into little league. a number of lawsuits were filed in the early 1970s, and so it's not until 1974 that girls were able to join little league teams, and then when you take that to its furthest degree,

here we have mo'ne davis on the cover of "sports illustrated" after she threw a winning game in the world series in williamsport for little league. so black ballplayers finally had a shot at the major leagues in 1947. the first one to break the color line is jackie robinson, and larry doby will do that two month later in the american league. jackie robinson in playing for the dodgers in the national league. the library is very fortunate to have the branch rickie papers and the jackie robinson collection, and that is where we were able to draw a couple of items including this letter from jackie in 1950 written to branch rickie who was leaving the dodgers, and robinson is writing to let him know just how grateful he is for the breaks branch ricky gave him in signing him to the dodgers, letting him know that he was a trusted friend and that he hopes that ricky will think of them as a friend in return. it's a very heartfelt letter thanking him for everything that

he had done for himself and for his family. so what we have here is the original first page of jackie robinson's letter, and then on the back is a reproduction. in order to preserve this letter and keep it from being affected by the lights and kind of the wear and tear of being on exhibition, we will eventually swap these out and what we'll have on display then will be the original signature of jackie later on in the exhibition's run. so what we've seen here so far today is only about half of the exhibit. so there's a lot more to see. so if you're in washington, d.c., please come to the library of congress and check out the exhibition. >> you can watch this or other american artifacts programs at any time by visiting our website c-span.org/history.

tonight on the communicators, a look at smed and content moderation with jessica melugin from the competitive enterprise institute. >> republicans tend to be very upset about the content moderation being too much and that it seems to them to be politically motivating and putting conservative voices at a disadvantage online, where a lot of the democrat members of congress see very upset that more content isn't being taken down. they feel that dangerous or untruth things are being left up

and that's creating all sorts of other problems that spill over into our off-line world. while i think a lot of washington can agree that content moderation is something everyone is upset about, they kind of come at it from two very seventy ways. >> jessica melugin tonight on "the communicators" on c-span2. each week, american artifacts takes viewers into archives, museums and historic sites around the country. next we visit the baseball americana exhibit at the library of congress in washington, d.c. to learn about the origins of the modern game including the birth of several baseball traditions, the impact of immigrants and the increasing importance of statistics. welcome to the library of congress, i'm susan rayburn, curator of the exhibition, baseball