Exploring how sports, racial history intertwine in an Ontario community

FromOn Account of Darkness

Travelling from town to town, barnstorming promoted one of the earliest forms of integrated sport. Black teams primarily faced white opponents, earning respect in at least some circles. Dizzy Dean, the National League MVP who led his St. Louis Cardinals to a World Series title in 1934, was outspoken in his praise of Black baseball players. He maintained that if "big leaguers believed that they were better than the best Negro players they had another thought coming."

During the Depression, barnstorming allowed professional players to make extra money. Future Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige, then playing for the Pittsburgh Crawfords, was a noted barnstormer, jumping from team to team, often as the main attraction drawing crowds and opponents.

In 1932, the Chatham Coloured All-Stars, successors to the Chatham Coloured Giants, began their inaugural season of play by barnstorming through towns and across borders, both real and imagined. Crowds of up to 4,000 people would surround the diamond to see them play, many taking the day off work to be part of the event. For some it was sport; for others it was a minstrel show, Black performers providing entertainment that reinforced white superiority.

"They were coming to see us get beat and they also wanted to clown about it," said Wilfred "Boomer" Harding, Chatham-born star of both baseball and hockey, in a 1977 interview archived within the University of Windsor's Breaking the Colour Barrier research project. "When we went to Strathroy they used to write on the sidewalks that we was coming to town. But I guess, and everything else they were out to beat us."

In an interview in Chatham-Kent This Week (June 10, 2017), Boomer's daughter-in-law Pat Harding said, "There was prejudice . . . back then when they played in different towns they wouldn't let [the players] sleep in town."

Blake Harding, Boomer's son told me the hostility, as the team travelled from town to town, extended to the stands. "Before I was born, my mother Joy Harding, she would go with her sister and sister-in-law to all these games, and they would have to sit on the stands and listen to all this garbage. The boys would be playing ball, they'd be doing what they had to do on the field between the lines. And they'd be sitting up on the bench and they'd be getting into it, they had to fight just as much as the boys, and they would fight. She took it harder than my dad, and I remember her just sitting there and saying, 'Boomer, you be careful out there'."

Boomer's sister, Beulah Cuzzens, recalled one particular game. "The Stars were treated just like Jackie Robinson. I went into Blenheim one day to watch the Stars play ball. I taught down in Shrewsbury, so I got there a little early and the kids along the road said, 'Well, I see the darkies are arrivin'. That was me. And a little later, our team came along, and we were called all the names that they called people in those days."

Leaving town following a game, the All-Stars would often literally fight their way out, standing back-to-back and shoving through hostile mobs, throwing punches where necessary. Gradually, however, crowds that came to jeer left with respect, recognizing that many of the players on this team were professional caliber. Earl "Flat" Chase was a major league talent in the eyes of everyone who saw him. Following one stellar performance, the Chatham Daily News dubbed Chase the "Kolored King of the Klout," recognizing his achievement even as it invoked the Ku Klux Klan. In an interview with The London Free Press published on September 7, 1978, Boomer Harding said, "There's no question in anybody's mind who ever saw him [Chase] that he would have been a major leaguer had it not been for the colour barrier."

Ferguson Jenkins Sr. was another talented player for the All-Stars who would only see Major League Baseball through the eyes of his son, Fergie Jenkins Jr. After spending the 1932 season exclusively barnstorming, the 1933 Chatham Coloured All-Stars were admitted into Chatham's City League with the help of white business owner and local Ontario Baseball Amateur Association representative Archie Stirling. The following season, 1934, the Coloured All-Stars defeated the C.C.

Braggs Insurance team three games to none to win the Chatham City League. Stirling continued his support of the team after they captured the city league title, setting his sights on the provincially sanctioned playoffs. In addition to owning a variety store in Chatham's East End, and founding the city's first playground and pool, Archie Stirling would spend a lifetime building baseball and hockey teams that became ongoing sources of civic pride. As the sponsor of the team, Stirling offered free ice cream to any youth bringing back a home-run ball from an All-Stars game.

In most leagues of the time, including Major League Baseball and the Ontario Baseball Amateur Association (OBAA), the colour line was well defended but unwritten. Stirling made sure his team got a chance to compete for a provincial title by removing "Coloured" from the team's name as it appeared on the entry form. "They worried that they may not be accepted because of their colour, but we got around that," said Stirling, who would later be nicknamed Mr. Baseball in Chatham. "We just signed the certificates and mentioned nothing of the Coloured All-Stars. They were entered as the Chatham All-Stars."

Allowed into the competition, Chatham was not to be defeated, first ousting the Sarnia Red Sox, then the Welland Terriers. As the team continued winning, the tone of the local media started to change. By the time the All-Stars faced Milton in the semi-finals, the newspapers considered the team as a representative of Chatham and a source of civic pride. The crowds grew larger, with a number of genuine white baseball fans dotting the fences and stands.

The team beat Milton and advanced to the Ontario championship representing the Western Counties. No Chatham team had ever won an Ontario baseball title, and no all-Black team had won a Canadian provincial championship. Once the Ontario title was in sight, the Chatham All-Stars became even more determined. In the first game of the OBAA final, the All-Stars defeated Penetang in extra innings in front of throngs of hometown supporters. After they lost the next game in a hotly disputed one-run contest, thestage was set for a third and deciding game, scheduled to take place on neutral ground in Guelph.

In his interview with the University of Windsor's research team, Boomer Harding described that final game. "They wouldn't have us in Penetang, they were very prejudiced, that was the only trouble. In Guelph on that day, we moved into the same hotel they were, and they moved out as soon as they found out we moved in."

On a sunny afternoon in mid-October, the teams took to the field, neither willing to concede. Tied 22 in the top of the eleventh inning, the Chatham All-Stars came to bat and scored a run, edging ahead 3-2. The players and crowd could feel victory approaching. Flat Chase had already struck out twelve batters; now he had a chance to close out the series.

Penetang came to bat and Chase threw a dagger. Strike one. A few pitches later, Chase had struck out the first Penetang batter. The All-Stars' dugout hummed with nervous excitement; a celebration was only minutes away. Victory seemed imminent until the home plate umpire and the umpire standing behind second base simultaneously raised their arms, stopping the game. They called the game "on account of darkness," inexplicably reverted the score to a 22 tie, and hurriedly left the field.

"It's hard to believe but I can still see the two guys throwing up their arms in the air, they must have had a pre-arranged signal because they just took out running. There was no talking to them, they just jumped in their cars and were gone. There was no way we were going to win that game," Harding recalled.

As Harding's son Blake explained to me, "The Penetanguishene series. Why'd they call the game on account of darkness? Well, it was on account of darkness, dark because there were nine Black players out there, that's why it was too dark."

With a fourth and deciding game now slated for the next day, Archie Stirling had a new umpire and officiating crew brought in from Hamilton. This time, the Chatham All-Stars overwhelmed their opponent, winning 137 and capturing the provincial title.

On the mound, Flat Chase bested Penetang's Phil Marchildon, who would go on to play seven seasons of Major League Baseball in the 1940s. Flat Chasewidely recognized as a Major League-quality talentwent back to driving a garbage truck and playing as an amateur. Later, he'd become the first Black player in team history to win a Canadian title with the renowned London Majors.

Every town loves a winner, even if they don't love the players on the team, and 2,000 people greeted the champions when they returned to Chatham. "When they won the series and they came into town they were riding on the sides of the cars and everything and the whole town was jammed at King and Fifth Street to meet them. And they just hollered and cheered them because nothing like that had ever happened in Chatham before and they had all kinds of white fans, coloured fans . . . They were all-Ontario winners and everybody jumped on the bandwagon," said John Olbey, the younger brother of All-Stars member Cliff Olbey during a 2016 interview for Breaking the Colour Barrier.

Mayor Isaac Davis opined that, "Chatham will win other ball championships, but we'll always remember it was the coloured boys who led the way." In nearby Buxton, where several members of the All-Stars were born, the win was celebrated with equal zeal. The Black community was not only visible, it mattered. "We won!" said Pauline Williams, whose uncles, Hyle and Stanton Robbins, were members of the 1934 team. "It was a happy timea big, big, big thing. Buxton won."

In Legacy to Buxton, Arlie Robbins writes, "The winning of this Championship brought a great boost to the morale of the coloured people of southwestern Ontario whose spirits were at a low ebb because of the discouraging effects of the Depression and local prejudices."

Excerptedwith permission,Tidewater Press, from Ian Kennedy's "On Account of Darkness - Shining Light on Race and Sport"Chapter 5 'The Home Team wears White."