The Monroe Monarchs were a professional baseball team based in Monroe, Louisiana, which played in the Negro leagues from the late 1920s to about 1935, mostly as a minor league team loosely associated with the Kansas City Monarchs. The team was created by Fred Stovall, a Texan oil drilling millionaire, who later financed the Negro Southern League. In the 1930s, a time of acute segregation in most of the U.S., the team's games were watched by crowds of black and white people alike. Hall of Famer Hilton Smith played for the team.