J. L. Wilkinson Marquee Hall of Fame 2006

J. L. Wilkinson founded the Kansas City Monarchs and kept the club viable through the Depression with a portable lighting rig for night games. He never played professionally. Born in May 1878 and dead in August 1964, he was elected as an executive by the special Negro Leagues committee in 2006.

He founded the Monarchs in 1920 as a charter member of Rube Foster's Negro National League, and he was the only white owner in it. The club won ten pennants, more than any other in the counted leagues, and nine of its players went on to the American or National League from 1947, also the most of any club. Jackie Robinson was one of them.

The lighting rig he bought in 1930, generators on trucks and poles raised at each park, kept the Monarchs solvent through the Depression by letting them play after the working day ended. The first major-league night game was in Cincinnati in 1935.