Editor’s note: Earlier this month, the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Classic Baseball Era Committee elected Dick Allen and Dave Parker to enter the Hall. While both Allen and Parker definitely deserve their induction into the hallowed confines of Cooperstown, the two Black candidates from the segregated era of the national pastime, pitcher John Donaldson and manager Vic Harris, weren’t selected for induction – and, in fact, received less than five votes each.
The failure to elect Donaldson and Harris means that it’s now been nearly 20 years – since the massive 2006 class of pre-integration African-American figures – that no such early African-American players have earned a place in the Hall of Fame.
The continued snubbing of such worthy segregation-era players prompted me to get the thoughts of good friend Ted Knorr, a Negro Leagues historian and longtime member of SABR’s Negro Leagues committee. Below are those thoughts, lightly edited for clarity.
Ted Knorr: It is an extraordinarily important topic and an area where the biggest beneficiary – even more than long dead players – will be the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. I intend, hope and trust that nothing of what follows is seen as critical but rather suggestive. Thanks for the time.
Before addressing your specific questions, I must respond to the big picture.
There are 137 Hall of Fame players debuting prior to April 15, 1947, and playing in the traditional Major Leagues; according to the Hall of Fame’s yearbooks and Web site, there are only 28 players in the Hall of Fame based on Negro League play – an almost 5-to-1 ratio.
That’s despite the fact that, by virtually all accounts, Black stars [at the time] defeated the white Major League stars [in exhibition games] more often than not. Such a gap in Hall of Fame Black players cries out in 2025 for serious attention, if not total closure.
Now to your questions.
Ryan Whirty: Why do you think Donaldson and Harris not only weren’t elected to the HOF, but also received so few votes overall?
TK: I note that Donaldson/Harris got at least 75 percent against them versus the requisite 75 percent for them required for induction. Seventy-five percent for induction was going to be difficult for all the deceased players not named Richie or Dick. The members of the committee and the deserving names on the ballot doomed the Negro Leaguers.
RW: Do you think everyone on the committee knew enough about Donaldson and Harris to vote objectively and fairly regarding the two candidates?
TK: Clearly not. For candidates of that stature to receive at most eight votes (combined) informs all of us of [committee members’] knowledge about that pair. To be fair, however, with seven or eight deserving candidates on the ballot and a prohibition against voting for more than three, it would have been very difficult to get more inductees than what they did.
RW: Why or why not?
TK:Larry Lester, Leslie Heaphy [both respected Negro League scholars] and, I assume, Steve Hirdt certainly had the requisite knowledge [of Donaldson and Harris]. Of the other [voters], I’m not so sure.
RW: Many Negro Leagues researchers, writers, historians and fans have consistently and for many years for a more transparent, fair and inclusive Hall voting system, one that adequately realizes, acknowledges and sincerely wants to remedy the extreme, disproportionate dearth of segregation-era Black members of the HOF. But has the Hall been even bothering to listen?
TK: The BBWAA vote is more transparent than it ever has been, although that is likely more due to certain intrepid baseball historians, researchers and fans who have done preemptive questioning of voters, which removed most of the mystery in that set of voters.
Now, with a much smaller and higher profile set of voters [on the Classic Baseball Era Committee], it is more difficult to probe their opinions. By delaying the announcement of the ballot until early November and announcement of the voting panel membership until even later (almost last minute), the Hall does all it can to prohibit such [public scrutiny] with the era committee’s ballot.
By delaying the announcement of the ballot until early November and announcement of the voting panel membership until even later (almost last minute), the Hall does all it can to prohibit such [public scrutiny] with the era committee’s ballot.
Thus, I think the Hall remains consistent in the approach [to induction] that it’s had since 1936, with any openness [in the process] either beyond their control or due to outside pressure.
I do feel the Hall of Fame component of The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum needs to get past 2006 to the same degree that Major League Baseball has. After 2006, again according to the Hall’s Web site/yearbooks, the number of Negro League Hall of Famers has been stuck on just 28, while Major League Baseball has declared seven specific Negro Leagues and spans as Major and also included Negro League statistics into the Major League canon.
Action speaks louder than exhibits. The 2000-2006 work of the combined efforts of both MLB and the Hall of Fame that resulted in both 17 new Negro League Hall of Famers and paving the way for today’s continually improving Negro League statistical database needs a revival.
RW: What is the solution to this recurring, unjust method of Hall selection? How can we finally achieve racial parity in the Hall’s inductee membership? What will it take to finally, at long last, achieve full justice for the African-American men and women who pursued America’s pastime before 1947?
TK: The first thing to do is to determine what full justice or racial parity means. As I began to allude to above, the Museum component of the NBHoF & M has done spectacular work. Its exhibits for 40 years have been great, their new exhibit continues such, and the East-West Classic [exhibition game] in ’24 was a thing of beauty (not sure if they plan on continuing but not doing so would be an unforced error). In addition, inviting SABR’s Negro League Committee (i.e. the Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference] to hold their annual convention was another 2024 achievement.
However, let us be real … it is a great museum, one of the world’s best sports museums, but to the common baseball fan it is a HALL OF FAME first, and the five-to-one ratio of traditional Major League players debuting under segregation to 28 Negro Leaguers in the Hall sends a bad (and incorrect) message, one I trust can be rectified, in quick order, by (ideally with MLB’s financial involvement, perhaps by providing funds directly to Seamheads and Retro sheet [databases], as they did to the Negro League Researchers and Authors from from 2000 to 2006) revisiting the highly-successful-among-historian-types approach (if not the average fan; who after all is the most important target group then and now, the group that the NBHoF&M, as a 501 c 3 educational non-profit, is to educate, and one that’s becoming more and more diverse, i.e. non-white, annually).
But back to the question. Despite the resulting disparity, I feel that there should be at least 55 total Negro League players in the Hall of Fame – five per position plus 15 pitchers. To get there, beginning next December, I recommend a ballot of at least 21 candidates (ideally 39 in honor of the 2006 effort, which concluded with that many not elected by that year’s election process) should be considered, on an up/down vote, by a 12- or 16-person, diverse, knowledgeable voting panel.
These 21 candidates can be found in the 20 remaining on the ’06 ballot, plus Vic Harris. In the only change from 2006, I’d recommend that failure to garnish 75 percent should remove the candidate from the next ballot. I see no reason why such elections should not take place as early as next December and continued annually until justice is reached.
Again, at least 55 total segregation-era Black players – 28 of whom are already inducted – would be justice in my mind, but I’m one person and I’m sure opinions will vary on the number of Negro League players that should be in the Hall. (The 75-percent requirement will remain thus ensuring that no one is inducted who’s not deemed deserving.)
In closing, at 74, I’m very aware that I’m not the same judge on this topic that I was even a decade ago; accordingly, I’m not a candidate for that voting panel but … I’d love to assist the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum in developing both a diverse, knowledgeable voting panel and a 39-person candidate ballot.
It is great that Dick Allen and Dave Parker were elected, but I’m disappointed.
While Dave Parker isn’t my favorite candidate for the Hall of Fame, I’ve warmed up to his case and appreciate the Committee electing a living candidate. Fellow selection Dick Allen is a great example. Allen died in 2020, between consecutive cycles finishing one vote shy of election.
The fact that Tommy John finished third is a clear indication that the Committee focused on living candidates—which is admirable. But that is only a small part of the responsibility of this Committee. The Classic Baseball Era encompasses nearly 150 years of baseball — from the origins to 1980.
Furthermore, it is the only Era Committee that needs to consider players, managers, umpires, pioneers and executives all on one ballot (the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee is split into two ballots — one for players and one for non-players).
It’s too much baseball for one ballot.
As a Negro Leagues researcher, I was thrilled to see that the door was finally re-opened to Negro Leagues candidates in 2021 through the Early Baseball Era Committee. This committee covered candidates of all categories through 1950 (but unfortunately was only scheduled to meet once per decade).
Negro Leagues candidates were not eligible at all between 2006 and 2021 (15 years!) and then were only going to be reviewed every 10 years. The Classic Baseball Era Committee changed that cycle to every three years, but increased the scope of the Committee while shrinking the ballot to eight names.
There are two key issues I have with the state of Negro League candidates and the Hall of Fame. The first is that there is not a single Negro League candidate inducted as a manager. There are, of course, candidates from other categories (like Rube Foster, an Executive/Pioneer) who managed.
But nobody is in as a manager. That made Vic Harris such an obvious candidate this time around. He not only hit .300 over a 25-year career, he was also a seven-time pennant-winning manager for the Homestead Grays. Hall of Fame calls do not get easier than this. He came close in 2021, but lost all momentum this year.
This brings me to my second issue: there has not been a Negro League candidate inducted as a player since 2006. That is despite the incredible amount of statistical research happening that culminated with the Seamheads Negro Leagues database being included by Baseball Reference, MLB and others.
Fowler and O’Neil, both great choices, are in as Pioneers. Even the candidates that come close are not due to their major-league statistics. While Harris was a great player, his career as a manager is his first bullet point. While Donaldson has eye-popping numbers, they were outside of the “majors.”
Side note on Donaldson — he can be pretty polarizing due to the fact that his incredible stats happened against non-major teams. I happen to still think he is Hall-worthy based on his importance as a barnstorming pioneer and his wild success and fame there. He just isn’t my No. 1 priority as a candidate.
So what’s the solution? I’m not sure yet. Maybe the non-player ballot should be for all of history rather than 1980 to present. Maybe 1980 is too recent, and moving the dial back to 1970 would help. Maybe it is working as intended, with the focus being on recent and living candidates.
There are very few candidates from the white majors between 1900-1950. So I cluster the Classic Era into three types of candidates: 19th-century pioneers, Negro Leagues players and non-players, and post-integration stars that have been overlooked (your Ken Boyers and Luis Tiants).
Personally, my highest priority of the three is the Negro Leagues because they went so long without being eligible, have seen the most research that impacts cases, and are way behind their white contemporaries in terms of Hall population. I think you could induct 10 to 20 with no issue. Some say 40+.
Who do I like? I think the Hall has identified many. Vic Harris is the best manager candidate, but Candy Jim Taylor should also be inducted. Executive Gus Greenlee seems way too important to the Negro Leagues story to not be in Cooperstown.
But we are a long way from that. It’s not working.
Thanks for reading. If you’d like to talk to me about this topic for an article or a podcast, I would jump at the opportunity. This is very important to me (and to a lot of families).
Editor’s note: The following article was graciously written by friend and fellow Negro Leagues fan Johnny Haynes. It’s a concise, on-point evaluation of the two segregation-era Black players on the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s recently-released ballot of candidates for the Hall’s Classic Baseball Era Committee.
Earlier this month, the Baseball Hall of Fame named eight players for consideration in the next class to be enshrined in Cooperstown. Much has been written about six of the men, but knowledge of the two Negro Leagues nominees seems to fall woefully short outside of Negro Leagues research circles. I will attempt to distill as much as I can into a more complete picture of the two pioneers up for selection into baseball immortality: John Donaldson and Vic Harris.
By Johnny Haynes, Article Contributer
John Donaldson’s groundbreaking career received some introduction to a new generation of fans in the popular MLB The Show video game series. His career spanned more than 30 years, though most of it occurred outside the confines of the organized Negro Leagues. By the time Rube Foster was organizing the first Negro National League in 1920, Donaldson was nearly 30 years old and had been pitching for more than a decade. As an aside, it was Donaldson who suggested naming the Kansas City entry the “Monarchs,” according to owner J.L. Wilkinson.
A brief statistical snapshot only tells a sliver of John Donaldson’s story; a casual fan looking up his statistics would find a .296 batting average in 817 at bats spread across five seasons. His recognized pitching statistics appear more mediocre: a 6-9 record and 4.14 ERA in just 22 games. According to Baseball-Reference, his comparable statistics place him closer to the likes of 1920s Indians backup outfielder Pat McNulty. The Seamheads version of his records paint a clearer picture but still only accounts for eight seasons of mostly independent ball.
However, one must consider the impact of John Donaldson on the game before and after his appearance in the “major leagues.” For decades after Cap Anson’s boycott of a game featuring Black players led to the infamous “gentleman’s agreement,” Donaldson remained an anomaly – a Black player on white teams. In addition, his barnstorming appearances on the All-Nations and Monarchs B side teams helped draw in fans and keep the lights on.
Admittedly, competition was mixed, but The Donaldson Network, which has chronicled the most complete snapshot of any Negro Leaguer’s career, lists him with 413 wins and 5,081 strikeouts across all levels of competition. For a stretch of time, no-hitters for Donaldson were nearly a yearly occurrence, including three in a row in 1914 and four in 1915. Double-digit strikeout totals were even more frequent on days he started.
John Donaldson
Perhaps his achievements can be best measured in the accounts of his peers and the media of the day. So important was his appearance in a game in August 1925, a fan set up a camera and began filming as he worked on the mound. Consider that cameras in those days were expensive, cumbersome and rare. One can assume that the nameless fan that day was keenly aware of the greatness in front of him.
The highest honors were bestowed by his contemporaries. In 1943, Hall of Fame pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander, who spent years on the barnstorming circuit alongside Black players himself, described Donaldson as among the greatest he had ever seen.
According to Buck O’Neil, he also pioneered the use of the slider, later teaching it to Satchel Paige.
In the waning last days of the Negro Leagues, the Pittsburgh Courier saw fit to name an “All-Time All-American” team in 1952. Of the seven pitchers named, only Donaldson is not in the Hall of Fame.
A bittersweet end to his administrative career post-integration is his tenure as the first Black scout for the Chicago White Sox. In an illustration of the quota system in major league baseball throughout the post-integration landscape, younger players such as Willie Mays and Ernie Banks were sometimes intentionally overlooked. It was the signing of Banks to the crosstown Cubs that led to his resignation and disgust with
*******
The second name on the list is even lesser known among baseball fans: Vic Harris. It’s worth noting that in MLB’s brief write up of Harris, they noted that Harris’ “exact numbers are hard to pin down,” which should elicit a chuckle from anyone in the baseball research community who has been studying the game for a long time.
Consider 19th century star Cap Anson. MLB notes that his hit total is 3,011, Baseball-Reference credits him with 3,435, and ESPN has a tally of 2,995. This discrepancy arises from a brief rule in which walks were hits and the inclusion of earlier portions of his time in the National Association. The Hall of Fame itself lists the Baseball-Reference numbers in his biography page.
As for Harris, a retrospective look at his career statistics is more complete than Donaldson’s, but I will admit that they too require additional context to understand clearly. Aside from brief stints with other teams early in his career, including the Cleveland Browns and Chicago American Giants, Vic Harris played for all three of Pittsburgh’s Black major league franchises: the Keystones, Crawfords and Grays. It is with the Homestead Grays that he made his greatest impact on the game.
A register of everyone he managed lines up with a list of nearly every recognizable great player in Black baseball history: Leon Day, Satchel Paige, Buck Leonard and Josh Gibson are just a few of the names on a list that includes 13 members of Cooperstown. This and his record places Harris among the all-time greats to ever manage in the major leagues — regardless of race, era or league.
At the plate, Harris also maintained a steady presence in the Grays lineup. Mostly playing leftfield throughout his career, his currently listed statistics in league play include a .303 batting average, 738 hits and an OPS of .798 over 17 seasons. How’s all that for “hard to pin down” numbers?
As for my personal thoughts on the selection process in general: these two pre-integration Black men have deserved their due for a long time, as have many other players, managers and executives from that time in baseball history. The players on this ballot are all certainly deserving of consideration, but they benefit from playing in a time in which their careers occurred in an integrated game with much more exposure due to readily available accounts including television and radio.
Outside of the timeline and geography defined as the Negro Major Leagues, Harris made additional impacts as a coach on the 1949 Baltimore Elite Giants (who won an additional title following the merger between the NNL and NAL) before ending his career in 1950 after a season with the Birmingham Black Barons. In addition, Harris managed in the Cuban and Puerto Rican winter leagues.
Most baseball fans are aware of the likes of Dave Parker and Luis Tiant for this very reason. To include Donaldson and Harris among better known names — who come from a different time period — threatens to bury and diminish their accomplishments again.
Let’s keep in mind that the Negro Leagues were only recently recognized as a major league caliber operation by the same establishment that kept them out for 60 plus years, and the recognition occurred after most of the people who took part were dead. Coincidentally, another worthy post-integration Black nominee, Dick Allen, also faces consideration after he is dead. To be selected, a player must appear on 75% of the total ballots. All that said, it is my hope that the voters (who have yet to be revealed) do the right thing and select both in December.
For Satchel Paige, 1937 was, shall we say, an unusual baseball season. And given the unpredictable, chaotic, whirlwind life that was Satchel’s, that’s saying something.
After all, it’s not every year that a star baseball pitcher signs up for a dictator’s baseball team and spends a few months in the Caribbean flinging fastballs with the vague threat of physical violence lingering literally just beyond the foul lines.
But that’s what Paige’s summer of ’37 was like when he pitched for the team owned by Dominican Republic strongman Rafael Trujillo and, by the skin of his teeth, helped Ciudad Trujillo win the Dominican league championship. It was a grueling, hair-raising experience for Satch and the Negro League compatriots he convinced to come with him to the DR, especially when Trujillo stationed armed troops around the stadium to make sure the Americans won the championship or else.
But this post will be about how the city of New Orleans fit into Satchel Paige’s nutty 1937.
In one way, the Big Easy did play somewhat of a crucial role in Satchel’s epic voyage to the Dominican Republic – as Averell “Ace” Smith details in his excellent book about the Negro Leaguers who played for Trujillo in 1937, “The Pitcher and the Dictator,” details, it was in New Orleans that Satchel met with representatives of the Trujillo regime and agreed to come pitch in the Dominican Republic.
It might be worth noting that Paige’s spring had already been a little turbulent by the time he arrived at the Dominican Republic in May, namely because he jumped his contract with Gus Greenlee’s Pittsburgh Crawfords of the Negro National League; a fact that ticked off Greenlee and the other power brokers of Black baseball in the States. (In fact, Paige’s clandestine meetings with Dominican agents was facilitated by the fact that Satchel was already in New Orleans with the Crawfords for spring training games.) An article in the May 1, 1937, issue of the Chicago Defender reported that in addition to protests from Greenlee and other NNL officials, “complaint has been made to the president of the Dominican Republic … about player theft from Race baseball clubs.”
This was after a bizarre instance in which rumors started floating around that he was in ill health and near death after what the Chicago Defender termed “an auto mishap,” scuttlebutt that was swiftly shown to be untrue.
But the Crescent City also figured further into Paige’s epic season in ’37 because the legendary hurler actually took the mound for a New Orleans team on his way back from the Caribbean, a fact I’d previously not recognized.
Paige was certainly not unfamiliar with New Orleans; throughout his illustrious career, Satch visited the Big Easy often. He allegedly pitched for the New Orleans Black Pelicans early in his career (circa 1925), something I explored in this ancient blog post; and he pitched a few times in the annual North-South All-Star game, held in New Orleans by promoter Allen Page (more on him in a bit). Later in his life, Satchel came to the Big Easy to take part in one or two of the local Old Timers Baseball Club’s annual reunion and old-timers game at Barrow Stadium.
And, with the arduous experience in the DR safely behind him, Satchel Paige – along with his “personal catcher,” Bill “Cy” Perkins – flew out from Hispaniola, headed Stateside. His destination? Why, New Orleans, of course, where he had signed on to pitch for the New Orleans Senators.
The who?
The New Orleans Senators, one of the numerous teams founded, managed, owned and/or operated by the aforementioned Allen Page. I’ve discussed Allen Page many times on this blog, and it’s still not enough, because Page is, in my mind, indisputably the most important figure in New Orleans Black baseball history. As an entrepreneur, baseball magnate, executive and sports promoter, Page is unrivaled in the Crescent City.
And in 1937, he owned the New Orleans Senators, for whom he’d lured Satchel Paige to pitch after the latter’s epic Dominican journey.
The one, the only, Satchel Paige.
Managed by George Sias and previously known as the New Orleans Black Pelicans (one of many team incarnations under that moniker), the Senators played pro and semipro teams in the city, from around New Orleans and into neighboring states. In July of 1937, they squared off against the Oakdale White Sox from Oakdale, La.; later that same month, The Senators grabbed a pair of wins over the Alexandria Black Sports from Alexandria, La., as examples.
The Senators played their home games at Lincoln Park, a private, paid-admission amusement park for the city’s African-American population created in 1902 by the Standard Brewing Company that included a ball field, rides, a skating rink and even hot air balloon ascensions. In addition, the park featured concert and performance facilities, at which early jazz greats like Buddy Bolden, Bunk Johnson and Freddie Keppard played, and that hosted vaudeville shows and prize-fighting. Benevolent societies, labor unions and civil-rights groups also coalesced there.
Thus, wrote Kevin G. McQqueeney in his master’s thesis at the University of New Orleans, titled, “Playing with Jim Crow: African American Private Parks in Early Twentieth Century New Orleans”:
“Lincoln Park, similar to parks in the nineteenth century previously discussed, thus served as a space for African Americans to congregate and advocate for more equal treatment. Parks would later serve as venues for rallies and marches during the Civil Rights era in New Orleans, but their significance for African American identity formation can be seen in this time period, and date back to enslaved gatherings in Congo Square.”
But, McQueeney added, “The park existed until approximately 1930, but its role had changed; during the latter half of its existence it was used primarily as a location for African American baseball league games.”
The Louisiana Weekly excitedly reported on Paige’s imminent arrival. Satchel was scheduled to land in New Orleans from the Caribbean at 6:30 a.m. Saturday, July 18, and added:
“… Satchell [sic] Paige, regarded as the greatest Colored pitcher in the world, will be accompanied by his catcher, Perkins, and will form the batteries in one game for the New Orleans Senators in their doubleheader against the Austin Black Senators …
“Satchell [sic] Paige needs no introduction to Crescent City fans. He has pitched to tremendous crowds here in the past. …”
The Times-Picayune, New Orleans’ most popular newspaper, likewise praised Paige and did a decent job of hyping up his reputation before the contest, noting that Satchel “is hailed as the greatest negro [sic] pitcher in the history of baseball” and that Paige “will show his dazzling speed and curves” in the first game of a doubleheader against the Austin club at Lincoln Park.
The T-P seemingly spoke with Cy Perkins, Paige’s catcher, who asserted, according to the paper, that “Paige’s fast ball [sic] looked just as fast to him as [Bob] Feller’s. He said that Paige gets better as he goes along and is as strong in the ninth inning as in the first. … Perkins says Paige’s fast ball [sic] floats in when pitched overhand and has a wicked bend when from sidearm.”
Bill “Cy” Perkins
The Austin Black Senators, meanwhile, had existed off and on and under several iterations and in various leagues, for several decades. The 1937 version was managed (at least at first) by L.S. Cobb and played its home games at Samuel Huston College, a small, private HBCU located right in Austin and now named Huston-Tilletson University. (The school is not to be confused with the much larger, public university Sam Houston University near Houston.)
The 1937 Black Senators seem to be a very tough team, beating various Texas semipro and company nines all spring and summer. In June ’37 the Kansas City Call dubbed the Austin club “one of the strongest semipro teams in the southwest,” while the Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times wrote that the Black Senators were “regarded as one of the strongest semi-pro teams in a state.” The paper added that the team “recently was reorganized and now is at full strength.”
When it came time for Satch to toe the rubber and face down the Austin club, he didn’t disappoint, and despite periodic rain and a resultingly disappointing sized crowd, he definitely sent the New Orleans fans home happy.
The best pitcher in Black baseball hurled four near pristine innings and fanned nine Austin batsmen, including striking out the sides in both the second and third innings. His fantastic flinging paced the home team to a 5-1 win over the hapless Texas lads.
“Seldom has pitching of the brand Paige displayed been seen here,” exclaimed The Weekly. “Though he gave up one hit in the first inning, his dazzling speed and puzzling curves had the Austin batters up in the air throughout his stay on the mound. Coupled with a deceptive change of pace [pitch], it was an exhibition worth going miles to view.”
The New Orleans Senators, with Paige on the mound, were then scheduled to host at Lincoln Park a team called the St. Louis Giants in a contest in which Satchel was advertised to be pitching all nine innings. Unfortunately, that big event had to be called off after several Giants were injured in a bus accident.
Allen Page. (Photo from the Amistad Research Center)
(It’s unclear which team the advertised “St. Louis Giants” were, exactly. Some media reports implied that they were members of the Negro American League, but St. Louis’ representatives in the NAL in 1937 were called the Stars, not the Giants. Several articles in 1937 in the St. Louis Argus, a Black newspaper, referred to a “Titanium St. Louis Giants,” which could have been a company team representing the titanium dioxide plant in St. Louis operated by the National Lead Company. Later on in the ’37 season the Argus reported that a team called the “Old St. Louis Giants” team was being formed for exhibition games, including one against the Titanium aggregation; this “old” team was reportedly made up of Black baseball old timers who played for the first St. Louis Giants, a powerful professional Black team from the first two decades of the 20th century. That original Giants team eventually morphed into the original St. Louis Stars, one of the charter teams of the first Negro National League under Rube Foster. But I digress.)
Paige completed his brief post-Trujillo foray with the New Orleans Senators concluded on July 28 of the ’37 campaign by traveling with the Senators to his hometown of Mobile, Ala., to face the Mobile Red Sox. The Louisiana Weekly reported that Satchel pitched four innings with 12 strikeouts – yes, that’s every out he got against the Alabama squad – against only two hits. A crowd of roughly 1,400 showed up to watch the hometown hero perform his feats, and after the game, Paige reportedly stayed in his hometown for a short visit.
Further details about exactly how Satch hooked up with Page and played for the Senators are somewhat murky. Averell includes no information about the New Orleans Senators gig; in his book; neither does Larry Tye in his definitive biography of Paige, “Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend.” Moreover, Satchel himself says nothing about the New Orleans Senators stint in his famous autobiography, “Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever.”
However, there is another wrinkle in the tale that is known – that when Paige returned to the States from the Caribbean, he was facing a ban from the formal Negro Leagues for jumping his contract with the Crawfords. Many of his Negro League compadres also were threatened with a ban.
So Satchel gathered many of them together – largely, like him, blacklisted baseball fugitives and “desperadoes,” as Tye calls them – to form a barnstorming club called the Trujillo All-Stars, designed to provide Paige and his peers a little income while they waited out the drama over their blackballing. The team was soon renamed as the Satchel Paige All-Stars, and they turned out to be somewhat successful, winning the Denver Post tournament, the prestigious national showcase of the best in semi-pro baseball.
While other versions of the “Satchel Paige All Stars” did play once in a while in New Orleans and/or against New Orleans clubs at other locales in the country, I’m not sure if this version – the 1937 one formed from the rebellious crews that bolted the American Black leagues for the Dominican Republic – did actually play in New Orleans.
The St. Bernard Housing Project earlier in its life. (Photo from the Louisiana Digital Library)
With my previous post, about New Orleanian turned Hawaiian Fred Ramie, I’m going to try, at least through the end of the year, focusing this blog on the history of Black baseball in New Orleans and Louisiana.
I’m also going to attempt to keep posts much shorter than I have been over the last few years. While 6,000-word diatribes can be very valuable and needed for certain subjects, I also know that there’s only so much material that readers should be asked to slog through over and over again.
One of the reasons for the shift in focus is how, over the last several months, I’ve been going through microfilm of the Louisiana Weekly archives from various years, and I’ve been finding a treasure trove of cool stuff that I really want to write about and to bring to my readers.
And one of the historical trends I’ve noticed is the formation, and attempted formation, of all kinds of locally based leagues, playoffs and competitions on a city, regional and even interstate level.
I’ll start exploring that theme with the year 1944 (80 years ago) when at least four such organized competitions took place, beginning with the one most fascinating to me – the Inter-Project Athletic League, in which four housing projects throughout the city of New Orleans competed against each other, including softball.
Here’s how journalist Roberta Brandes Gratz described the early New Orleans projects in the June 22-29, 2015, issue of The Nation magazine:
“New Orleans was one of the first cities in the country to get public housing, with six projects in place in the early 1940s. These were solid, well-crafted brick structures of three to five stories, often with tile roofs, front-entrance grillwork, solid wood floors, and separate entrances for small clusters of apartments. Many of them stood around courtyards with shade trees and paths. As a style, they became the model for the many private garden apartments that followed.”
The Calliope Projects were located along what is now Earhart Boulevard in Central City, more or less a stone’s throw from the area that would eventually house the Superdome. The Magnolia Projects were located in the Central City neighborhood, to the west of downtown. The St. Bernard Projects were located in Mid-City, with Bayou St. John and what is now City Park to the west, Dillard University to the east, and the Fairgrounds close by on the south. The Lafitte Projects were located in the famed Treme neighborhood, bordered by the French Quarter to the immediate southeast.
Together, these “big four” New Orleans developments housed thousands and thousands of residents – enough for each projects to form its own softball team. And within just a few years, these teams, representing neighborhood pride, joined to create the Inter-Project Athletic League in June 1944.
According to the July 1, 1944, issue of The Louisiana Weekly, “[T]he purpose of the League is to stimulate wholesome interest in all forms of athletics and to develop a closer inter-project tenant relationship.”
I discovered this nugget of softball competition while combing through the archives of the Louisiana Weekly from 1944. The league launched during the summer of that year with four teams – the Lafitte Tigers, the Magnolia Greenies, the St. Bernard Grays and the Calliope Patriots.
Each team had its own “home grounds” baseball/softball diamonds – on expansive playgrounds – with games shuffling among the four, mostly on Sundays.
The Louisiana Weekly reported that “[a]dmission to all games is free, so show good will [sic] and let’s have a crowded park at all games at all times.” The July 15, 1944, issue of The Weekly, in reporting on the Tigers’ 7-3 win over the Greenies, and the Grays’ 5-0 triumph over the Patriots, stated that “[b]oth games were played before a very large and enthusiastic crowd.”
The July 22 edition of the paper included an article covering the previous weekend’s game.
“The crowd was very large at both games,” the article stated. “For a very good evening of enjoyment and good softball playing [,] visit the playgrounds where there is a game between two of the Inter-Project league teams.”
The league recruited leading activists and educators to guide the organization. Selected as the first president of the league was Sheldon C. Mays, a teacher first at the private Gilbert Academy and then at a public school, Valena C. Jones Elementary.
Mays was also a prominent community leader, giving speeches and school graduations, serving as a field executive for the Boy Scouts, and chairing community committees and organizations that advocated for fair housing and the advancement of Black leadership in New Orleans.
Sheldon C. Mays, second from right, and the other early staff at the Lafitte Projects.(Photo from CreoleGen.)
Mays also served as the assistant manager at the Lafitte Project, then as manager of St. Bernard and Calliope in succession.
Also brought on board to provide stability and exposure for the new Inter-Project League was Clement MacWilliams, a prominent Civil-Rights reporter for The Louisiana Weekly. “Mac,” as he was known by many in the city, was also a Boy Scout leader and a youth mentor at both the Magnolia development and the New Orleans Recreation Department.
MacWilliams’ role in the community, especially his experiences as a reporter and writer, made him a natural choice to help lead the softball loop, primarily by doing media relations and public outreach, including a column in The Weekly during the league’s second season in 1945.
While I haven’t been able to delve into this topic in depth like I’d ideally want to, the Lafitte and St. Bernard clubs were the class of the 1944 Inter-Project Athletic League, with those two battling for first place all season.
Each team seems to have had an ace pitcher who could completely shut down opponents’ lineups during any given game. The Patriots, for example, had Jessie Madison, who hurled a no-hit, no-run gem against the Greenies, while the Tigers went to battle with “Bo” Augustine and “Gummy” Williams able to put the clamps on their foes.
The season wrapped up in late summer with a pair of barnburners between the two top clubs, St. Bernard and Lafitte. First, on Aug. 27, in what The Weekly dubbed “one of the greatest battles of the sport season,” Lafitte edged St. Bernard, 4-3, in 11 innings at the Grays’ home field. The narrow triumph vaulted the Tigers into first place with a 7-3 record, topping the Grays’ 6-2 mark.
However, St. Bernard turned the tables on Lafitte with a 6-5 triumph in the de facto title game, held at Calliope Playground on Sept. 17.
Following the end of the season, an all-star team was chosen by the public from the three other teams in the inter-project league.to play a postseason game against the champion Grays, xxxxxxx won that contest, xxxx.
The League enjoyed its second season in 1945, with a couple of major modifications. First, a fifth member was welcomed into the circuit – the Jackson Barracks, which has been the headquarters of the Louisiana National Guard for nearly two centuries.
Located in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Jackson Barracks, at the time of the Inter-Project League, had shifted to temporary federal control and became an outpost and point of embarkation for soldiers being shipped overseas.
Soldiers at Jackson Barracks, 1933. (Photo from Louisiana DigitalLibrary.)
But in terms of the city’s housing projects, the admission of Jackson Barracks into the Inter-Project League proved disastrous, athletically speaking. The Guardsmen claimed the regular-season pennant at 6-1 and played 4-2 St. Bernard, the 1944 champ, in the title game.
The championship clash proved to be no problem for the military men, who crushed the Grays, 5-1, on July 29, 1945. The Weekly stated that “[T]hose orange clad clouters from Jackson Barracks gave an exhibition last Sunday of some of the best slugging of the year.”
That brings up the second significant adjustment for the Inter-Project League’s second season – the projects teams played squads from other community organizations and local businesses throughout the season, mostly as exhibitions. And while the housing teams played their schedule, a separate city league composed of independent squads was playing.
Among these independent teams were Foster’s Chicken Den, the Harlem Crusaders, the Southern Knights of Labor and Toni’s Tavern, but it was the Club Crystal squad from the 20th Century Athletic Club, as the best independent squad in the city, that trounced the Jackson Barracks aggregation, 7-1, at Lafon Playground. According to The Weekly, nearly 3,000 fans turned out to see the title game on Aug. 5.
Following the city championship showdown, the Club Crystal team on Aug. 25 squared off against an all-star team made from various players from each of the five Inter-Project League clubs; the Crystals won that game, too, this one by a count of 8-1.
Throughout the 1945 softball campaign, MacWilliams contributed a periodic softball highlights column in The Weekly, and after the lid was closed on the 1945 summer softball season, his newspaper piece reflected on the season that was, with a particular focus on his hope that Inter-Project athletic training and competition could provide the city’s young men – the ones fighting the war abroad and the ones who remained home – with the type of structure, discipline and physical activity that might make those men stronger and more equipped to contribute positively to society.
“I have been doing a great deal of thinking,” MacWilliams wrote in a regular softball column the newspaper, “about the future of our boys, the ones that are home and the ones that will return. Much can be done for them if the ones who have the power would only do something. I, personally, love sports, most any kind and will do whatever I can to help the game. If any attempt is made to improve conditions for our boys you can bet your life that I will be in there pitching.”
Louisiana Weekly, July 15, 1944
“Mac” also listed eight developments or changes that he would have liked to see if and when inter-project and intra-city play kept going. Among this eight-point wishlist were local businesses taking more of an interest in local sports through team sponsorship or other bottom-line boosting support; seeing more young women take up sports; and creating and construction a “Negro Recreation Center” in the city.
For the purposes of this blog, the individual desire from MacWilliams’ list that carried the most significance for the city and its Black residents and businesses was increased involvement in young adult recreational sports by the city’s semipro and pro baseball managers in young men’s sports, especially softball and baseball. Wrote MacWilliams:
“I would like to see the Negro baseball managers take an interest in our youngsters. These boys are the future teams but they need plenty of help from those who know baseball.”
I’m not sure if the Inter-Project Athletic League remained active in the years after 1945, and if so, how much and for how long. I didn’t have a chance to look much beyond the ’45 season.
Unfortunately, by the 1980s, the Crescent City’s housing projects had largely deteriorated and become rife with crime, with much of the strife the product of gang violence, the crack cocaine and AIDS epidemics, and the devastating effects of Reaganomics. In addition, by that time the city’s projects had become inhabited almost entirely by people of color, a dynamic that reinforced the racial and class segregation and stratification that captured African Americans in the same cycles of poverty that the projects were supposed to eradicate in the 1940s.
When Hurricane Katrina came through in 2005 and destroyed much of the city, many of the projects’ buildings had been closed or razed; Katrina effectively finished off what were innovative and influential public-housing developments.
Within a few years after Katrina, the vast majority of all the buildings in the “big four” developments were torn down and marked for redevelopment. In their place came brand new, grant-funded, government-backed developments, including mixed-income and mixed-use housing, such as townhouses and other dwellings. Whether such post-Katrina housing efforts have worked in improving life amoung disadvantaged communities remains up for debate.
As my blogging production slows to a trickle — and, perhaps, to a temporary halt at some point — I did want to revisit one of my posts from, geez, August 2020 about the bunch of New Orleans Negro Leaguers who ended up in the Great White North — Broadview, Saskatchewan, to be specific — in the 1930s.
This group of Pelican State ringers helped make the Broadview Buffaloes of the Southern League in Saskatchewan an absolute juggernaut for three seasons, from 1936-1938, racking up pennants and attracting fans in droves during the brief but balmy summers on the Canadian prairies.
Those Pelican Staters in Saskatchewan included Eugene Bremer, a New Orleans lad who pitched for several Big Easy teams in the 1930s before eventually cracking into the Negro League majors with the Memphis Red Sox, Kansas City Monarchs and Cleveland Buckeyes; Lionel Decuir, a catcher and centerfielder from N’awlins who later played briefly with the Cincinnati Tigers, Pittsburgh Crawfords and Kansas City Monarchs; pitchers Red Boguille and George Alexander, whose careers mainly took place in Louisiana; and the gentleman who’s the subject of this post, Freddie Ramie.
But other Black ballplayers engaged in the annual seasonal migration from the States up North across the border, where legalized segregation didn’t exist (or at least on a much smaller scale as in the U.S.) and players (and, at times, managers) of color were treated with a lot more respect than they could ever find in the United States, especially in the South, where the aforementioned group of Louisiana fellows toiled for much of their careers.
“Going over [some] records …, I realized that all these great players from the Negro Leagues played here, as well as a few major-leaguers and some pretty good local players,” Swanton told the Winnipeg Tribune in 1996. “Satchel Paige pitched for Minot Mallards of the ManDak League in their first three games against Brandon, Carman and a team in Minnesota, and he didn’t give up any runs, striking out 11 or 12 players.”
And segueing from that, one perfect example of this desire to play in the Great White North, especially in Western Canada, was the relative flood of former Negro Leagues who enjoyed the twilight years of their careers playing in the ManDak League, an independent minor league encompassing teams in – you guessed it – Manitoba and North Dakota. Many a former Negro Leauguer spent a season or more plying their trade in the ManDak, a phenomenon that’s chronicled quite well in the book, “The ManDak League: Haven for Former Negro League Ballplayers, 1950-1957,” by Swanton.
So, as such, the experiences of the Louisiana lads in Saskatchewan were not completely out of the ordinary.
(To that point, it should be noted that the Pelican Staters weren’t the only Black ringers the Buffs imported from the States; several other standouts were lured north of the border to help Broadview steamroll the competition. In many games, African Americans outnumbered native Canadians in the team’s game lineups, with Black players making up two-thirds of the Broadview scorecard or more. Such a situation further underscores how Canadian baseballers held more progressive views on race than us here in the U.S., and how canucks were willing and even eager to plumb the ranks of the Negro minor leagues in their quests for championships.)
But back specifically to the Pelican State chaps in Saskatchewan in particular. Bremer was one of the first Louisianians to sign up for action in Saskatchewan, and he was subsequently joined or followed by Decuir, Alexander, and Red Boguille.
The aforementioned players suited up in various combinations in various years for Broadview between 1936-38, the years for which the Buffaloes were inducted into the Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame. Some of them did don the spikes for Broadview in the years before that sterling three-year period, and one or two after that stretch as well, and we’ll get into the post-1938 years a little bit later in this post.
I won’t detail each player’s performance in each of those three glory years — that would be a veritable book in the making, and I don’t want to get bogged down in the minutiae of stats and records and game-by-game analysis. (Instead, more information about them is featured at the end of this post.)
However, I will do so for one guy heretofore unmentioned in this post, the guy whose life arc is, to me, the most fascinating and colorful, and he will now become the focus of this blog installment:
That singular man was named Fred Ramie.
Born on Dec. 10, 1918 (some sources say 1916), in New Orleans to Joseph M. Ramie Sr., a mail carrier, and Leona (Levere) Ramie, Frederick Joseph Ramie had two brothers, August (born two years before Fred) and Joseph Jr. (born six years after Fred), known as Milton. At other points in time, Joseph Sr. was a self-employed beer deliverer, called a drayman; some sources list the senior Ramie as a section hand, or track maintenance man, for a railroad company.
Freddie spent much of his childhood growing up at 1957 Law Street, which was actually just catty corner from Crescent Park, where the New Orleans Crescent Stars played for several years in the 1930s. (The ballpark was one of the first in the city constructed specifically for Black teams and fans; it was the brainchild of the great Pete Robertson, about whom I’ve been researching and writing for a couple years. Check out a couple of my posts about him here and here.)
Freddie apparently started playing baseball as a youth, and by his teens he was suiting up for some of the most prominent Negro League teams in New Orleans, particularly with the Crescent Stars.
In spring 1934, for example, the Louisiana Weekly lists him pitching for the Crescent Stars while still a teenager. The April 14, 1934, issue of The Louisiana Weekly states that he took the mound for the Crescent Stars, who were members of the Negro Southern League) in the second game of a doubleheader against the Chicago American Giants (sometimes referred to as Cole’s American Giants at the time) of the second Negro National League. Ramie seems to have earned the victory in an abbreviated, five-inning game that the Stars won, 4-1. The American Giants won the first game of the DH.
Fred Ramie’s World War II draft card.
(The doubleheader was part of a scheduled eight-game exhibition series between the two clubs. At that time, the Negro Southern League was generally considered a minor league, and the American Giants were likely playing the Crescents and other minor Southern teams as part of the Giants’ spring training. While the American Giants were past their glory days in the 1920s under Rube Foster, the Windy City club was still good. During the series against the Crescent Stars, four men who would eventually earn induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame – Turkey Stearnes, Mule Suttles, Willie Wells and Bill Foster – saw action for the Giants, and the team was managed by the illustrious Louisianan, “Gentleman” Dave Malarcher, a disciple of Rube Foster who was 39 in 1934. The Crescent Stars, meanwhile, were stocked with a bunch of local and regional talent. In addition to Ramie, the team boasted manager/outfielder Red Parnell, infielder Tom Muse, pitcher Milfred Laurent and Pepper Bassett, who would eventually earn renown as the “Rocking Chair Catcher.” The Stars were coming off a successful 1933 season, during which they won the NSL second-half pennant and lost to the American Giants in a so-called “world series.”)
Ramie was still with the Crescents Stars a month later, when they hosted the Monroe Monarchs, another NSL team that was based in Monroe, La., a small city in the northeast section of the state. According to the Weekly, Ramie pitched the front end of a doubleheader with the Monarchs; the Stars claimed the first game, the Monarchs won the second. The first contest included a relief stint on the mound by Monroe’s Hilton Smith, who would go on to star in the Negro majors for many years and be inducted into the NBHOF in Cooperstown.
The 1934 Crescent Stars season also included extensive road trips, and Ramie was there for the ride. The Stars’ tour of ’34 brought them, with Ramie, to places like Chambersburg, Pa.;Belmar, N.J.; and even Brooklyn, N.Y.
(Interestingly enough, the Crescents’ barnstorming edition for 1934 also now included Lloyd “Ducky” Davenport, an outfielder from the Big Easy who went on to star in the Black baseball bigtime with several teams, including the Philadelphia Stars, Memphis Red Sox, Birmingham Black Barons, Chicago American Giants and Cleveland Buckeyes. Also on the roster by this time was aforementioned NOLA pitcher Gene Bremer, about local lad who eventually made good in the Negro League big time with clubs like the Memphis Red Sox, Kansas City Monarchs and Cleveland Buckeyes.)
Fred played for a variety of local New Orleans teams in the mid-1930s, including the Jr. Black Pelicans in 1935. I’m not completely sure if the Jr. Pels had any connection to the regular Black Pelicans, but regardless of that, Ramie proved to be a solid pitcher for the Juniors; in July 1935, for example, he pitched the Jr. Pels to an 11-2 win over the Southern Sluggers at Crescent Park, and a few weeks later he took the mound in the Jr. Pels’ 8-6, come-from-behind victory over a team called the Krazy Kats.
But, like many players in New Orleans at the time, Ramie also hopped around from team to team, something evident in the summer of ’35, because in addition to the Jr. Black Pelicans, Fred also suited up for the Algiers Giants. For example, Freddie was unable to hurl the Giants — the premier team on the Westbank of New Orleans — to a win against the Southern Stars, who topped the Giants, 9-7, at Westside Park. That Algiers was fairly stacked, too, with local stars Lionel Decuir, Diamond Pipkins, Dickey Matthews, Tom Muse and Herman Roth as manager.
Another club for which Ramie played was the St. Raymond Giants, a semipro team likely sponsored by St. Raymond Catholic Church.
It looks like 1938 was a pivotal year for Ramie in terms of his development as a world traveler. In April 1938 he was on the roster of the Crescent Stars as a left fielder, joining famous local players like Percy Wilson, George Sias, Raoul “Red” Boguille and Black Diamond Pipkins.
By June, however, Fred had migrated up north to join the Broadview Buffaloes in Saskatchewan, along with buddies Lionel Decuir and Red Boguille.
Lionel Decuir
“Making good in a big way are young baseball players from New Orleans now playing on a Canadian team,” reported The Louisiana Weekly.
“… Ramie and Bougille [sic] alternate in pitching and fielding,” the paper added. “Both have been running up great records as pitchers and due to their efforts, their team, the Broadview Buffaloes, are now leading the Southern League in Canada and seem headed for a pennant.”
The paper noted that Ramie had pitched a 12-inning, 8-7 win for the Buffaloes, and The Weekly noted that all the Louisiana lads “are pounding the apple hard for extra base hits and are well liked.”
The Louisiana Weekly then reported, in its Aug. 6, 1938, issue that Fred was still shining for the Buffaloes. Under the headline, “Freddie Ramie makes good on Canada team,” the paper stated that Ramie was “enjoying a brilliant season as a pitcher for the Broadview Buffs in Canada. He has compiled the good record of 9 wins, 3 losses and two ties.”
Saskatchewan newspapers have Ramie, along with Boguille and Decuir, playing for the Buffaloes as early as late May; fellow Louisianian George Alexander also eventually joined that trio in Broadview that season.
The June 18 issue of the Regina Leader-Post reported that Ramie pitched well in a tough, 3-1 loss to the Regina Army and Navy Senators, stating that “Lefty Ramie did a neat job of chucking for the Buffs and gave up only seven hits altogether to play a big part in the best game of the season …”
On June 22, the Broadview battery of Ramie and Decuir helped the Buffaloes win the annual exhibition tournament in Watson, Saskatchewan; the Buffs came out on top of the 16-team fray.
When he wasn’t on the mound, Ramie held down left field for the Buffs admirably.
The Buffaloes ran away with the championship of the Southern League (located mainly in the province of Saskatchewan, it looks like), thoroughly overwhelming the other teams in the circuit and prompting some observers to grumble that Broadview was so good it shouldn’t have been in the league. The Louisiana-laden Buffs also played a bunch of exhibition games that season, including several holiday tournaments and some showdowns against barnstorming Negro League teams. (For a more detailed rundown of the Buffaloes’ years with the Louisiana players, check out my earlier post.)
In August 1938, following the end of the season on the Canadian Plains, Ramie and fellow New Orleanian George Alexander returned to the Big Easy to play for Fred Caulfield’s Jax Red Sox semipro team, a stint that included what The Louisiana Weekly dubbed a city/state Negro championship series with the New Orleans Sports.
Fred continued his career in baseball during the ensuing few years, mainly in New Orleans. In 1939, he began the season with the semipro New Orleans Sports, who were managed by Clarence Tankerson (who was an important figure on the city’s Black baseball scene for many years) and also featured Lionel Decuir catching.
Interestingly, as a side note, in April 1939, Louisiana Weekly sports editor/columnist Eddie Burbridge reported that “Freddie Remy [sic], local hurler, may go to California soon to slam ’em over the plate for a West Coast ball club. May pitch in Texas first.” However, I haven’t had a chance to really look into whether Fred actually took advantage of such far-flung options.
Regardless, by mid-spring, Fred had jumped to the Jax Red Sox, and by the end of the season, he’d hooked on with the Shreveport Black Giants, who were piloted by the great Winfield Welch.
During the middle of the 1939 campaign, however, Fred had a chance to return to the Canadian plains, courtesy of the just-mentioned Winfield Welch. Because on this new journey north, Ramie didn’t suit up for the Broadview Buffs or any other Canadian teams – he came as a member of the Crescent Stars, who undertook an extensive barnstorming trek that brought them to the Great White North.
This version of the Crescent Stars was piloted by Welch, who probably recruited Ramie and the rest of the roster to undertake the epic road jaunt around the continent. Such barnstorming tours were nothing new to Welch, who a few years earlier had led an aggregation called the Shreveport Acme Giants, who were another mostly-on-the-road team that also wound its way north, traversing the U.S. Midwest and entering into Canada. Some of the players from that Acmes team – including Gene Bremer, Red Boguille and Lionel Decuir – were among the group of New Orleanians who ended up jumping to the Broadview Buffalos and other Canadian teams.
In 1939, though, it was as a New Orleans Crescent Star that Fred Ramie crossed the northern border into Canada. The rambling team played several games in Saskatchewan and Alberta. One of Ramie’s best mound performances on the jaunt was a July 9, 1939, clash with the similarly barnstorming aggregation, the famous House of David team, who were based in Michigan at a religious commune. Ramie pitched three-hit ball in the Stars’ 4-0 victory. The game was held in Edmonton, Alberta.
Unfortunately, Fred wasn’t as fortunate in a return game with the Davidites in Edmonton two days later – he had to exit the game in the sixth inning after suffering an injury two days earlier.
After criss-crossing the Canadian Plains, Ramie and the Crescent Stars made a bunch of stops for more games in the States as they apparently made their way back to the Big Easy, including places like Albion, Wisc.; Belleville, Ill.; Charles City and Clinton, Iowa; and Escanaba, Mich.
(For this stretch of play, Ramie often played in the outfield on days he didn’t pitch, a trend he began and continued through much of his career.)
It appears that when the Welch-led Crescent Stars returned to Louisiana from their extended travels, Welch turned them into another version of the Shreveport Giants for the remainder of the season, and Ramie was along for the ride.
In 1940, Ramie played for the Algiers Giants, a powerful, long-standing Negro Leagues team based across the Mississippi River on the Westbank. Also on the team was Big Easy baseball legend Wesley Barrow, who anchored the Westsiders behind the plate. That season, Ramie also pitched a little bit for another Westbank club, the Tregle Pets.
Freddie continued with the Algiers Giants for the following two seasons, when the club was sponsored by the Dr. Nut company, which produced a popular soft drink. The Algiers club also featured Eugene Bremer, as well as two young prospects who would go on to greatness by breaking into the Black baseball majors – Herb Simpson and J.B. Spencer. Lionel Decuir also played for Algiers at this time.
Ramie seems to have left New Orleans for Hawaii in the mid-1940s; he first appeared in the Honolulu media as a ballplayer in 1943 and married his first wife, Lily Kealoha Kamana, a native Hawaiian, around the same time the same year. They had their first child, son Ronald Joseph Ramie, a little more than a year later.
But before we delve into Fred’s life and career in the 50th state, it’s important to give a rundown on the history of baseball on the islands, beginning with the military teams composed of U.S. soldiers and sailors stationed in Hawaii.
Another significant part of Hawaiian hardball history is the Hawaiian Winter Baseball League, a short-lived – it existed from 1993-97, and from 2006-08 – minor circuit somewhat similar to other winter leagues like the integrated California Winter League (1910s-1940s); the famed Cuban League (1878-1961), where white, Black and Latino talent flocked in the winters to form some of the greatest baseball teams of all time; the Puerto Rican Winter League, founded in 1938 and still going today; Jorge Pasquel’s renegade Mexican League (1940s); and other circuits in Latin America.
While the Hawaiian Winter League didn’t have the historical significance of those early leagues, it still proved a popular entity in Hawaii and attracted talented then-prospects like Todd Helton, Jason Giambi, Buster Posey, Aaron Boone and Ichiro Suzuki.
MLB.com writer Matt Monagan gave readers a reflective look back at the Hawaii Winter League, including quoting former Hawaiian Winter Baseball League owner Duane Kurisu.
“We carried a vision that went beyond baseball. …,” Kurisu said. “We felt that our role could be to develop the tools of Aloha, which included characteristics like trust, confidence, character and community.”
There was also the Hawaii Islanders of the Triple-A Pacific Coast League. The squad existed from 1961-87 and maintained affiliations with several major league clubs, and it won the PCL titles in 1975 and ’76 as the top farm team of the Padres.
The PCL franchise began as the Sacramento Solons, who moved to Hawaii in 1960 to become the Islanders. They ended their 27-year existence in the 50th state prior to the 1988 season, when they moved to the mainland to become the PCL’s Colorado Springs Sky Sox. (The franchise currently exists as the Double-A San Antonio Missions in Texas.)
“But in between their coming and going,” wrote Hawaii Advertiser reporter Stacy Kaneshiro in 2009, “the Islanders brought a lot of memories.”
The Shop 99 baseball team, Pearl Harbor Civilian League champion for 1945. Fred Ramie is second from left in the bottow row. (Honolulu Star-Bulletin, June 6, 1945)
Noting the roller-coaster existence of the team, both at the turnstiles and on the field, Kaneshiro added that “[i]n their heyday, the Hawaii Islanders were like the opening [of] Dickens’ ‘Tale of Two Cities’: The best and worst of times.”
The AJA perhaps represents the multiculturalism and ethnic diversity of Hawaii, with the organization uniting players and teams from just about every background – Native Hawaiians, Polynesians, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Portuguese, and Black and white ones from the mainland.
While the AJA – formally known as the Hawaii State Americans of Japanese Ancestry Baseball Tournament – began more than a hundred years ago as a baseball outlet for Hawaiians of Japanese descent, it has since blossomed into a prestigious yearly event that brings together baseball-loving Hawaiians of all ethnic backgrounds. Reporter Bart Wright wrote in a 2019 article for the Hawaii Tribune-Herald:
“Baseball has forever been popular on the Big Island, but the community structures they knew back before World War II, the leagues, ballparks, the games themselves, are mostly all gone, if not forgotten.
“‘We had so many different ethnic groups and they all wanted to play baseball,’ said Royden Okunami, president of the Hawaii entrant in the four-island AJA baseball league. ‘Every (sugar) plantation had their own team, with everyone eligible, no matter where you came from, but then they also had a Chinese team, Filipino and Portuguese teams, and, of course the Japanese team.’”
Wright also quoted an AJA administrator, Curtis Chong: “All these things that occurred in the past, the plantation lifestyle, the laborers in the fields being the ballplayers, the way they formed the leagues so they could play, all these things we represent in a living memorial. We could have put up a monument, but instead, we have a living memorial, something that keeps building on itself, honoring the past in the present.”
So where does Fred Ramie fit into all of this?
One of the first baseball teams for whom Fred Ramie played after moving to Hawaii. This is a team from the Pearl Harbor Civilian Baseball League, with Ramie in the second row of this photo, third from right. (Honolulu Star-Bulletin, May 8, 1943.)
It appears as though Fred moved to Hawaii in the 1940s, well before the territory was admitted to the union in 1959, and he wasted no time in immersing himself in the islands’ baseball scene.
In the spring and summer of 1943 – roughly two years into the U.S.’ involvement in World War II – Ramie took part in the newly organized Pearl Harbor Civilian Baseball League, made up of employees and other civilian members of the Naval base community. Ramie played for the Shop 99 team, which was composed of workers with the Ship’s Service and Maintenance division, and he helped guide the squad to the league championship that inaugural year. Fred swatted two home runs and was picked for the left field spot on the league’s first-team all-star lineup.
For several ensuing years, Freddie Ramie suited up for the Pearl Harbor Civilians’ Navy Yard team in various leagues in and around Honolulu; in 1946, while playing for the PHCs in the Federal Employees baseball league, Ramie earned all-star team honors as an outfielder.
In 1947, it appears that the Honolulu Baseball League was sort of shoved out of the spotlight on the islands by the relatively new Hawaii Baseball League, and Ramie and many of his teammates and peers made the jump between leagues. Ramie, who’d already gained a fair amount of attention from local baseball connoisseurs, competed for the reigning HBL champion Braves team as an outfielder. Unfortunately, in July ’47, Fred broke his collarbone, hampering his participation in the rest of the season.
Two years after that, Fred played for the unfortunately-named Injuns team in the annual Hawaii Baseball Congress tournament in spring 1949, and he ended up winning the tourney’s batting championship, going 10 for 20 for an average of .500.
Over the next several seasons, Ramie transitioned from outfielder to pitcher, climbing the hill regularly, just like he did in the 1930s and early ’40s for various African-American teams in Louisiana and beyond. When taking the mound for the Tigers team in the HBL at that time, Fred was used mainly in relief.
By 1957, a new circuit had come together, the Puerto Rican Baseball League, operated by the Puerto Rican Athletic Association, and Fred Ramie was part of it, playing for the Kondo team. In ’57, the PRBL ran from January to April, and Fred made the most of it by winning the batting triple crown, hitting at an eye-popping clip of .571 and driving in a league-leading 12 RBIs, while tying for the league home run tallies with two.
Ramie repeated as PRBL batting champion in 1958 with a mark of .526 while playing for the Kondo Auto Paint Shop team. He also smacked three homers, drove in 18 runs, slashed 30 hits and clubbed seven doubles, the latter two figures also leading the league. Two years later, Ramie signed on as the field manager for the Rican Giants team, and in 1962 he served as the league’s vice president and returned to the top of the PRBL batting heap in by swatting a league-leading .538 on 14 hits in 26 at bats for the Rican Giants.
By the early 1970s, Freddie, then well into his 50s, was coaching his children in local baseball leagues. In 1972, he coached the Maka-Pointers team to the State Senior Little League championship; the aggregation included Fred’s son, Vernon Ramie, a 13-year-old lefty, who won the title game, 7-0, over the Kainalu team, striking out 11 and allowing only two walks.
But just because Fred was now immersed in coaching newer generations of baseball fans, doesn’t mean he himself quit playing on the diamond. Later in the ’70s, Ramie excelled in the senior softball community. His club, named simply the Hawaiians, won the Hawaii state senior softball championship. At the conclusion of the 1979 season, Freddie was named circuit MVP, an accomplishment he repeated in 1983 while leading his team to its fourth straight Hawaii Senior Citizen Softball crown.
Honolulu skyline
Two years later, Freddie co-coached the island of Hawaii’s team to the Seaweed Kealoha Fall-Winter Slow-Pitch League championship.
While living in Honolulu, Fred worked as a civilian electrician at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard; a 1944 news articles reported that Ramie, at the time an electrician third class, was one of 15 people who received a commendation for their role in salvaging ships that were sunken or damaged in the devastating attack by the Japanese on Dec. 7, 1941, that pulled the U.S. into World War II. He also worked for the City and County of Honolulu.
Ramie had four children in Hawaii ii in addition to his first child, Ronald; the other kids included son Vernon (Vern) Ramie, and daughters Leimomi Ramie (later Ronstadt post-marriage) and Michele. (More on Vern and Ronald in a bit.)
Fred lived in several areas in Honolulu – which is on the island of O’ahu – during his life. The 1950 federal Census, for example, lists him on N. King Street (keep in mind that Hawaii was still a U.S. territory in 1950, nine years before it became a state).
(Interestingly, the document also lists Ramie as Puerto Rican, although I haven’t been able to find any information or detail on the Ramies’ exact cultural heritage, besides that both of Fred’s parents were born in New Orleans. In the 1930 Census taken in the Crescent City, Fred and his parents are listed as “Negro,” but the 1950 Census states that Fred was Puerto Rican.)
When Fred first got married, he lived on Waialae Avenue, the main street in the Kaimuki neighborhood. (Kaimuki eventually became where Chaminade University of Honolulu is located, having been founded in 1955. College basketball fans might recognize Chaminade as the host of the annual, midseason Maui Invitational tournament. Kaimuki is also the location of Kapi’olani Community College.)
The Ramies also lived on Leilani Street, located in Honolulu to the northwest of Kaimuki and closer to Pearl Harbor in the Kalihi neighborhood. (Kalihi is the home district to Tulsi Gabbard, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2013-2021 and was the first Samoan-American and first Hindu to serve as a voting member of Congress and is currently a leading candidate to join Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign ticket as the vice presidential nominee.)
Finally, Fred and family lived on Awawa Street in the Wakakilo neighborhood in the planned community of Kapolei, which is informally dubbed “the second city of O’ahu,” even though it is technically located in and governed by the city and county of Honolulu. It’s also near the historically vital and culturally rich Ewa Beach, on the southern shore of O’ahu to the west of Pearl Harbor.
By an unfortunate turn of bad luck, the Ramies’ home at this address was destroyed by a fire in 1973; according to news reports, the fire was caused by children playing with matches, with the blaze doing $42,000 worth of damage. Luckily, no one was hurt.
Frederick Joseph Ramie passed away on Jan. 15, 1999, at the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Honolulu. His obituary in the Honolulu Advertiser newspaper called him an “all-star baseball player with Hawaii Major League, Puerto Rican League and Makule League.”
Another way Fred Ramie built his lasting legacy is through his family, teaching his kids to love the sport of baseball as much as he did. That imparting of diamond knowledge took hold most in his son, Vern Ramie, who was born in Hawaii in 1958 to Fred and Lily.
For his cumulative minor-league career, Vern hit a very respectable .275/.401/.456, with 50 round trippers, 77 doubles, 13 triples and 233 RBIs. He scored 214 runs, swiped 16 bases and posted excellent fielding percentages of .993 as first base and .964 in the outer garden.
After retiring as a player, Vern remained in the game and, like his father, has spent many years passing on his knowledge and love of the game, especially at Kamehameha-Kapalama High School, his prep alma mater, where he piloted the team to five state title games and seven state semifinals, winning it all in 2003 for the state championship. In a coaching career that ran from 1991-2013, he also skippered the school to five Interscholastic League of Honolulu titles.
In 2013, Vern Ramie also received the Chuck Leahey Award in 2013, given to a person who has made significant lifetime contributions to the sport of baseball in the state of Hawaii.
Aside from his high school coaching career, in 2014 Vern co-founded the 808 Baseball Academy, where he and the other staff tutor and coach young men and women from Hawaii, Japan and the Mainland in baseball and softball. The academy — which also features Honolulu native, former New York Met and Nippon Professional Baseball standout Benny Agbayani — hosts hopeful baseball stars at its field and facility in Waipahu.
As further evidence that the Ramie family had baseball running through its veins, Vern’s older brother, Ronald, who was born in 1944, enjoyed a few years in the San Francisco Giants farm system in the 1960s, including stops in Lexington, N.C.; Salem, Va.; and Decatur, Ill.
Way back a couple years — this post has been on the burner for too long — I tracked down Vern Ramie and interviewed him over the phone about his father and the ways Fred Ramie influenced Vern’s own career in the national pastime.
“Baseball is a way of life in the Ramie family, all generated from him,” said Vern, who added that Fred coached his kids in the Hawaii Little Leagues. “Baseball is in our DNA.”
In fact, both Ronald and Vern filled out questionnaires for a study by William J. Weiss, a publisher and statistician based in San Mateo, Calif. The forms assessed the complete baseball careers of each study participant, from youth, high school, college to professional.
On his questionnaire, circa 1980, Vern Ramie lists his positions as first base and outfield, and that he started with the Makakilo Little League and the Waipahu American Legion. He attended and played for Kamehameha High School, where lettered in football and basketball in addition to baseball, before heading to the U. of H., then the semipros and pros.
When answering the question of his greatest thrill in his baseball life, he wrote:
“My biggest thrill was playing for the USA All-Star team in Japan in the summer of ’79. We lost [their] first 3 games then came back to win the next 4 to win the series.”
On Ronald Ramie’s questionnaire, dated 1963, Ron states his position as outfield and that he attended and played baseball, plus football and track, at Farrington High School. He also participated in the police activity league and American Legion baseball.
Ronald wrote that his most interesting experience in high-school or college baseball was seeing a high-school teammate club four home runs during the state high-school playoffs. His personal goal for himself was “[t]o play Big League baseball someday.”
To the question of his “most interesting or unusual experience” from throughout his entire tenure in baseball, he listed a game from the previous summer in which he smacked two homers and drove in seven runs in the American Legion regional playoffs.
Ron Ramie
By the time Vernon was born in 1958, Fred had already been in Hawaii for well more than a decade, and the elder Ramie rarely reflected on his baseball roots in New Orleans or in Black baseball, his son said.
“He didn’t talk a lot about his playing time in New Orleans,” Vern told me. “He never really went into a lot of detail about it.”
However, Fred was extremely proud of his hometown and stayed close with his relatives in the Big Easy.
“He loved it there,” Vern said. “All of his family was still there, and he still went back to see them. He tried to get back as frequently as he could, maybe one or two times every year. I always remember how happy he was to come home and see everyone.”
(Vern noted that there’s less members of the Ramie family still in New Orleans; many of them left during Hurricane Katrina and decided not to return.)
Well, that’s the story of Fred Ramie, the man who traversed the North American continent over the roughly six decades he spent in the sport of baseball. From segregation in New Orleans to the lonely prairie in Saskatchewan to the sun-kissed sand of Hawaii, Fred spent his life lacing up his spikes for dozens of teams on various levels of play. In the end, I’d say, he represented his hometown very well, showing folks across the continent what a N’Awlins kid could do on the diamond, and he, perhaps best of all, passed that passion for America’s pastime down to his own kids.
Postlude
While this post focused on Fred Ramie, I feel bad giving short shrift to some of the other local lads who played for the Buffaloes, because each one of them is fascinating in their own right. The life and career of Gene Bremer has been fairly well documented, largely because he’s the one who had the longest, most illustrious career in the Negro big leagues, so I’ll suggest the comprehensive compendiums of him and his career here and here for more information.
Thus, here’s a short rundown of the additional Louisianians in Saskatchewan:
Lionel Decuir, while not as illustrious as Bremer, enjoyed a decent career in the top-level Negro Leagues, including two as a backstop with the Kansas City Monarchs in 1939 and 1940; he received tens of thousands of votes in fan balloting for the East-West All-Star game each of those seasons. He also suited up for the South team in Allen Page’s annual North-South All-Star game in New Orleans.
A native New Orleanian, Decuir played locally in the Crescent City with the Caulfield Red Sox, New Orleans Black Pelicans, the Algiers Giants, the New Orleans Sports and the Dr. Nut Tigers (yes, that’s the real name, from the team’s corporate sponsor, the Dr. Nut soda company), among other clubs. Decuir also played quarterback for the Brutes team in New Orleans’ semi-pro sandlot football league.
Boguille, from what I can tell, never broke through to play with teams in either the Negro American or Negro National League, but he likely played against those top-level aggregations when they journeyed to New Orleans, either as part of spring training in March and April, or post-season barnstorming tours in September and October. He seems to have been a few years older than the other New Orleans lads who went to Saskatchewan, having started his semi-pro/pro career in the Crescent City in the early 1930s. In the years in the Big Easy before his time in Saskatchewan, Boguille hurled for the Rhythm Giants, the Crescent Stars, the Algiers Giants and the Caulfield Ads, as well as the Shreveport Acme Giants. (More possibly to come about the barnstorming Shreveport Acme Giants and the way they served as a conduit for Louisiana players to pass through from New Orleans to Broadview.)
I wasn’t able to really dig much into the story of George Alexander; I just never had the time to root around for his, umm, roots. But I know he did frequently lace up the spikes locally for the Jax/Caulfield Red Sox, a team managed by businessman and N’Awlins baseball mogul Fred Caulfield and sponsored by the Jax Brewing Co., proud makers of Jax Beer, a Big Easy favorite. His peak with the Red Sox came between 1939-40, and, according to a 1944 Chicago Defender dispatch, Alexander turned down an offer to join the Cleveland Buckeyes in favor of signing up for the Army, advancing to corporal and serving in New Guinea in 1944.
National Baseball Hall of Fame President Josh Rawitch (bottom right, at podium) addresses the attendees of the 2024 Malloy Conference at its opening meet and great in the hallowed Plaque Room. Photo by Jacob Pomrenke.
When you’re visiting the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., there’s something quite stirring about entering the Plaque Gallery and seeing all the bas relief, rectangular, wooden plates hanging on the walls, each one displaying the image and short biography of one of the figures who have been enshrined in the Hall.
There’s a solemnity and an aura of greatness that permeate the Plaque Gallery and place visiting the massive room near the top of many a baseball fan’s bucket list of things to do before they die.
It was against this backdrop that dozens of Negro Leagues researchers, scholars and fans gathered on the evening of June 6 for a meet-and-greet reception for another edition of SABR’s annual Jerry Malloy Negro Leagues Conference.
The Malloy conference had never been held in the hallowed halls of Cooperstown, but apparently the Hall of Fame had been the ones to reach out to us about holding the Negro Leagues conference in Cooperstown.
And I, for one, felt incredibly honored to be welcomed by such an illustrious institution as the NBHOF, and I’m sure many of my friends and peers felt the same way. However, the feeling might have been mutual, or at least that’s what NBHOF President Josh Rawitch told us in his opening remarks.
“It’s an incredible honor to have this group here,” Rawitch told us. “You could have gone anyplace, and you came here. To pick us is an extraordinary, true honor for us. …
“This place is unbelievable,” he added about the Hall of Fame. “It’s truly one of the most spectacular places on the planet.”
Long-time Malloy attendee (and my perennial conference roommate) Ted Knorr also gave a few thoughts, which included, quite significantly, a call to elect more segregation-era Black baseball figures to the Hall. He noted this while the Hall of Fame continues to tinker with the election in a way technically allows more Negro Leagues to get in while at the same time essentially being no change at all, for all practical purposes.
In light of this, perhaps one question to ask is why the Hall had been so eager to host the Malloy gathering. More specifically, I found myself pondering whether the HOF’s overture to the SABR Negro Leagues Committee might have been essentially a public relations move by an institution that continues to receive criticism from Black ball advocates for consistently failing to adequately honor Negro Leagues greats with induction.
The fact is that the Hall persists in snubbing many Negro Leaguers who more than deserve induction, despite middling changes to the voting rules and token gestures of respect for those African-American legends, showing a still stunning level of disrespect for and ignorance of Negro Leagues history. So maybe hosting the Jerry Malloy conference was an effort by the Hall to blunt or mute such criticism and make itself look just a little better, or at least less awful.
(I want to note that the opinions and interpretations of the preceding two paragraphs are my own personal beliefs and thoughts and do not necessarily represent anyone else within the Negro Leagues community or the Malloy committee itself.)
A collage of some of the presenters and panels at the conference. Clockwise from upper left: Tom Shieber and Mary Quinn; Lisa Doris Alexander; a display about the Newark Eagles; Missy Booker; Paul Julion; and Steven Greenes. Graphic courtesy of Jacob Pomrenke.
Having said all that, I wanted to highlight a few themes that ran through the three-day conference.
The first, quite naturally, was the emphasis on the life, career and legacy of Bud Fowler, the 19th-century African-American star player, manager, owner and executive whose ambition, courage, resilience and persistence laid the spiritual groundwork for all of the Black baseball teams, leagues and business ventures that came after him. For details about Fowler’s life and impact, check out this, this and this. Also, here’s info on the fantastic biography of Fowler by the late Jeffrey Laing.
Bud was not only recently inducted into the HOF (along with Buck O’Neil) in 2022, but he was also a native of Cooperstown and had deep roots and connections to the central New York State region.
To start, Bud is on the cover of the 2024 Malloy Conference’s souvenir program, and on the Sunday after the conclusion of the official conference proceedings, a carpool was planned to visit Fowler’s grave in nearby Frankfort, N.Y.
But the best homage to Fowler at the conference was on Friday afternoon with the hour-long panel on Bud, moderated by the stupendous Alex Painter, who dubbed the panel “the Fowler Hour.” Unfortunately, one of the panelists, 19th-century Black baseball author and expert James Brunson, was unable to participate, leaving Alex and educator/historian Brian Sheehy as the dynamic Bud Fowler duo.
Sheehy, who had extensively researched Bud’s time in Massachusetts, where he played as a ringer of sorts for multiple integrated teams at the beginning of his long career in pro baseball, gave a presentation about this time in Fowler’s career. Sheehy addressed the several lingering question marks and mysteries about Bud’s escapades in the Bay State.
“He was actually a nomad,” Sheehy said of Fowler. “It’s important for us to remember that, and it’s important for us to fill in that story.”
Following Sheehy’s talk, Painter unspooled the tale of the Indianapolis Colored Baseball League of 1902, one of Bud’s final efforts to jumpstart an organized African-American baseball circuit – and, Painter said, one of Fowler’s most little-known ventures.
Photo courtesy Mitch Lutzke.
“He understood what the benefits of an organized Black baseball league could mean,” Painter said.
While the ill-fated ICBL didn’t last very long at all – it didn’t come close to completing a season – it did spawn the soon-to-be-legendary Indianapolis ABCs, one of the greatest Black teams in history. The league also, unfortunately, might have triggered Bud’s physical decline when one of Bud’s baserunning slides led to a broken rib that apparently pierced his kidney. The injury seems to have triggered deteriorating health that led to his death in 1913, just short of his 55th birthday.
Alex noted that during Bud’s last years, “[H]e was keenly aware of his place in baseball history.”
The second topic that particularly piqued my interest was less of an actual theme but more of a dandy doubleheader that hit close to home for me – baseball trading cards.
Like many of the men and women who always attend the Malloy Conference, I collected baseball cards as a kid. A lot of them. And one of the biggest regrets of my life is eventually selling most of them off several years ago. It’s a pain that never goes away.
But a pair of presenters on Saturday afternoon during the conference buoyed my spirits a bit by discussing a few landmark card sets that helped bring the Negro Leagues into the lives of baseball fans who otherwise hadn’t known much about pre-integration Black baseball.
The first speaker was Rich Puerzer, a perennial Malloy attendee and presenter, who this year regaled the audience with the story of the Laughlin Negro League Baseball Card Sets. The Laughlin line of Negro Leagues trading cards were the creation of Robert “Bob” Laughlin, a cartoonist and card-making entrepreneur who came out with his first line of Negro Leagues cards in 1974, a set dubbed “The Old-Time Black Stars” and totaling 36 cards. That was followed by a 12-card set honoring the famous Indianapolis Clowns team in 1976, then a third line in 1978 called “The Long Ago Black Stars,” boasting 36 cards.
Puerzer discussed Laughlin’s motivations and goals for creating the three lines; how he went about compiling, designing and printing them; and the cards’ importance to the documentation and teaching of Black baseball history.
Some of Laughlin cards as shown during Rich Puerzer’s presentation.
Puerzer said that while the Laughlin sets weren’t as popular as the Topps company’s annual MLB sets, Laughlin – who was a bit of an outsider in the sports card world, Rich said – was nonetheless “truly ahead of this time.”
Puerzer said that for many collectors, the ’74 Laughlin line – which he noted possessed “a simple elegance“ – was “something of a passport to the Negro Leagues.” He added that the 1976 and ’78 sets were just as beautiful and impactful as the landmark 1974 set.
“Several of them are really beautiful cards,” he said. They bring the humanity of the players to the fore with a simple and beautiful style.
With the Laughlin sets, Puerzer said, the Black baseball figures “finally received their due. Many of them were on a baseball card for the first time.”
Puerzer was followed by Steven Greenes, who gave a presentation titled, “Negro League Baseball Cards and Memorabilia as a Roadmap to History,” which filled in all the trading cards and other ephemera of Negro Leaguers leading up to the groundbreaking Laughlin sets.
Greenes noted how cards of Black players existed back to the mid-19th century, with a lot of them made in Cuba, Mexico and the Dominican Republic that depicted African-American players who competed in the integrated leagues or teams in those countries.
Post-integration, the first mainstream United States company to issue a card of a Black player was Leaf’s 1949 Satchel Paige card, which Greenes called “the rarest and most significant post-war baseball card.” He added that authentic cards of Gibson from various lines are the most sought-after Negro Leagues cards.
However, he added, “just about every Negro Leaguer had one or two cards of them made.” He said that “the value of such cards mirrors the public’s love and knowledge of the Negro Leagues,” and noted that amidst the boom in sports card collecting during and after the Covid-19 shutdowns, “no other cards have increased in value more,” with some increasing by 10 times the value.
“People are really recognizing these players as the greats they were,” Greenes said.
(As a side note, I was one who used the pandemic shutdowns to start collecting sports cards again, including baseball ones. I fully admit that my renewed passion stems in large part from a desire to relive my childhood and regain some of the magic that collecting brought me in my youth. And it goes without saying that Cooperstown’s downtown is jammed with card memorabilia shops. Seriously, it’s like every third storefront. It’s glorious.)
The now iconic statue of Buck O’Neil at the Hall of Fame.
The third theme that permeated the 2024 Malloy Conference was the presence of several relatives or descendants of important figures in Black baseball history, starting with Max Martinez Almenas, a descendant in the great Martinez baseball family.
Almenas related how the four Martinez brothers – Antonio “Tonito” Martinez, Horacio “Rabbit” Martinez, Aquiles Martinez and Julio “Julito” Martinez – helped pioneer baseball in the Dominican Republic and left their indelible mark on the significant but overlooked importance of Dominicans in the Negro Leagues and baseball throughout the Americas as a whole.
Max, the grandson of Tonito and the grand nephew of the other three brothers, is directing a documentary by the Martinez Beisbol Films production company titled, “The Martinez Brothers: The Untold Story of Talent, Tragedy, and Legacy.” Here’s a description of the documentary in the Malloy Conference program:
“Our narrative delves into the personal and professional hurdles they overcame, showcasing their journey through a visual feast that captures the essence of triumph and sorrow. The documentary promises a compelling voyage into the heart of the Martinez legacy, highlighting their contributions, struggles, and the profound impact they left on the sport. It is a story of resilience, family bonds, and an enduring legacy that inspires generations.”
Said Max during his presentation: “There are many people that know the history, but many more need to be taught the history.”
He added that the Martinez brothers were among “the first wave of Dominicans in baseball [in the U.S],” and that “they established the original pipeline of professionals from the Dominican Republic to Major League Baseball.”
Max Martinez Almenes gives his presentation about the Martinez brothers. Photo courtesy Adam Darowski.
Right after Max’s presentation came one by J.B. Martin IV, the great grandson of Dr. J.B. Martin Sr., a Memphis dentist who, along with his brother (and fellow dentist) B.B. Martin, founded and operated the Memphis Red Sox from 1920 to 1959.
Into the 1930s and ’40s, Martin spent a lot of time in Chicago, where he eventually became co-owner of the famed Chicago American Giants, who were past their prime but still played in the Negro League “majors.” J.B. Sr. and served as president, at various times, of the Negro Southern League, the Negro American League and the Negro Dixie League.
At the Malloy conference last month, J.B. Martin IV regaled attendees with tales of his great grandfather and the Red Sox. Martin IV said he works to educate the public about his great grandfather, as well as campaign for the senior Martin’s possible election to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
“His accomplishments were important to the Negro Leagues, and his achievements deserve recognition,” the younger Martin said.
Because the Memphis Red Sox were a family-operated affair, and because they owned their own ballpark, Martin IV said the team enjoyed “a unique situation in Memphis, and they drew a lot of the best players.”
Martin Sr. was also a prominent figure in the local Republican Party, and his progressive activism earned the ire of the Memphis Democratic machine that governed the city with an iron grip and threatened the Martins’ safety and extensive, successful business interests.
J.B. Martin IV discussing the life and career of his great grandfather. Photo by Jacob Pomrenke.
I’ll cap off the bulk of this post with thoughts by another descendant of a legendary figure in segregation-era Black baseball in the South, Rodney Page, who also attended the conference and whose father, Allen Page, was arguably the greatest and most influential person in the Black ball scene here in New Orleans for three decades.
Allen Page founded, bought and owned several pro and semipro clubs in the Big Easy, and he frequently played a role in the national Black baseball competition and management. Rodney said at the conference that his father knew J.B. Martin well; the seniors Page and Martin were both among the most prominent Negro Leagues operatives, promoters and executives in the South. Rodney noted that his father was friends with Martin, who often visited the Pages in New Orleans.
“I know a little bit about J.B.,” Rodney said drolly.
Rodney commented at the conference that there are not enough businessmen in the Baseball Hall, even though it was the money men and women who often took the type of chances that could make or break a team or a league. He said that African-American entrepreneurs in the Jim Crow South, including those in the baseball business, took great financial and personal risk to create a lasting, thriving economic entity.
“I know that first-hand,” Rodney said.
He added that Martin absolutely belongs in Cooperstown.
“To me, and I’m biased, this should be a slam dunk,” Rodney said of Martin’s HOF prospects. “From my perspective,” he added, addressing J.B. Martin IV, “it was the owner and executive and promoter who moved the Negro Leagues from the sandlots to significance. Your great grandfather was one of those.”
The Four Stooges of Lake View Motel, Room 2. Clockwise from top left: Ted Knorr, me, Bruce Emswiler and Lou Hunsinger. Photo by Phil Dixon.
I capped off my visit to Cooperstown on the morning of June 9, when I sat down for a short interview with Rodney Page. Several conference-goers – including me and my roommates Ted Knorr, Lou Hunsinger and Bruce Emswiler, as well as Rodney and friend and fellow perennial Malloy attendee Al Davis – stayed at the Lake View Motel, located along Otsego Lake a few miles north of Cooperstown proper.
On Sunday, I quizzed Rodney about his thoughts of this year’s conference, what he got out of all the events during the Malloy, and how it relates to his father, Allen Page, and Rodney’s own passion for the Negro Leagues.
He said the conference was his first-ever trip to Cooperstown and the Hall of Fame, and he said he definitely wasn’t disappointed and that the setting hit him on a personal level and that he felt a poignant connection to the Hall and to the sport of baseball via his father.
“It’s important to honor the soul of the game,” he said of the Hall. “We need to respect the participation of the individuals of the Negro Leagues and the respect the soul of the Negro Leagues.”
Regarding one of the conference presentations in particular, Rodney said he was thrilled that J.B. Martin IV attended the conference and gave a presentation about Martin’s great grandfather. He said his father, Allen Page, and the senior Martin were close business associates, adding that he was grateful to have known Martin Sr. through Allen Page.
“It was amazing to have been in his presence, and to hear his name so much,” Rodney said.
He added that the entrepreneurial spirit, determination and courage on the part of Allen Page and the Martins to survive and thrive in a segregated society was astounding and inspiring.
“All of the Martins and what they represented, for them to be so successful during Jim Crow, and facing the challenges for a Black man and a Black owned business …,” he pondered. “Think about what that represents, what it means.”
Regarding Allen Page, Rodney noted that his father owned multiple successful hotels, and he also gave a great deal of his time and money to help his community and the people in it. Allen paid folks’ hospital bills, for example, one of many ways Allen used his resources to assist others, efforts that earned him a famous (at least in New Orleans) nickname: “The Mayor of Dryades Street.”
Rodney and I. Photo by Alfred Davis.
“He helped a lot of people,” Rodney said. “That’s just the type of man he was. He was for the community, and for the people.”
Now that he’s retired, Rodney said he can focus more of his time on honoring his father’s legacy, spreading the word of what Allen – and his managers and players and business associates – was able to accomplish, and on delving even deeper into his father’s life. That includes hiring a professional genealogist to dig up more of the Page family tree and learn about where his father and the rest of his family came from and overcame.
Rodney added that he wishes more of the public would know about the Negro Leagues history of New Orleans, especially the contributions and impact of his father. He said he is amazed that knowledge of Black baseball in New Orleans still lags behind that of other cities, in the South and beyond.
That goes for the legacy of his father.
“It’s amazing that he’s forgotten, [despite] all he did for the city, and for the people of this city,” Rodney said.
To remedy that situation, Rodney simply wants to show people the greatness of his father and of Black baseball in the city.
“I just want to tell the truth about [his father’s legacy],” he said, “to tell the story.”
Rodney said that his father – like so many Negro Leagues legends – refused to buckle in the face of the immense challenges thrown at him by a bigoted, segregated and unjust society. Allen Page was a fighter, Rodney said, one who never, ever gave up.
“You can choose to be a victim, or you can choose to be a victor,” Rodney said, adding that seeing how African Americans like Allen fought back infused him with his father’s same unbending spirit.
“That’s what inspires me,” he said.
He added, with words that could apply not just to his father but to all of Black baseball:
“It’s a story of transcendence. To come from nothing and to persevere and transcend [Jim Crow], that’s the story. That’s his story.”
Epilogue: This article highlights only a fraction of all the good goings-on from the 2024 Malloy Conference, and encourage readers to read other articles, posts and other accounts from the week (such as here, here and here) as well as check out SABR’s official Negro Leagues Committee page!
That’s the thought that has kept floating through my head since the recent news that Major League Baseball had finally merged statistics from several top-level Negro Leagues with the existing numbers for Organized Baseball that, at the time those Black leagues operated, was strictly racially segregated.
The integration, pardon the expression, of Negro Leagues statistics into the official MLB record books has finally and rightfully formally placed the segregation-era accomplishments of men like Oscar Charleston, Satchel Paige, Buck Leonard and many other excellent athletes alongside all-time white greats like Lou Gehrig, Nap Lajoie, Ted Williams and, of course, the most famous baseball player of all time, Babe Ruth.
But the biggest headlines were reserved for the most breathtaking change of all – legendary Black slugger Josh Gibson is now the career batting leader, eclipsing the immortal Ty Cobb. (More info and varied commentary on the big news can be found here, here and here.)
The merging of statistics was a long time coming – decades and decades – and took many years of dedicated hard work on the part of several Negro Leagues researchers, who combed old newspaper archives and other historical sources to compile numbers and data that meet the rigorous standards of excellence that were required of them, and that they demanded of themselves. (For articles on that process, check out this, this and this.)
The combining of data represents another step toward righting the racist wrongs that were inflicted on our national pastime – and the players, managers, executives and owners of color who were shut out of Organized Baseball for six decades – by segregation.
Progress toward achieving true racial and social justice in baseball history have been periodic and ongoing for well more than a half-century; the highest-profile of these advancements has been the gradual and (hopefully) ongoing process of inducting deserving Negro Leagues figures into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. (For background on that HOF induction effort, go to this, this and this.)
Naturally, accompanying those steady, periodic advancements has been criticism and reluctance to fully and justly honor Negro Leaguers, beginning with stubborn resistance to inducting pre-integration African-American greats into the NBHOF.
Such recalcitrance and skepticism has ranged from outright, ugly, naked bigotry to more subtle, fairly well argued points, most prominently the criticism that the Negro Leagues simply couldn’t measure up to the quality of play and voluminous of statistics that already existed for Organized, i.e. white, baseball.
Those concerns about whether the Negro Leagues were worthy equals to the Major Leagues generally boil down to two lines of thought, in my opinion:
One, that the shortage of official records and the limited amount of formal “league” games just hasn’t produced enough Negro Leagues data to merit equal comparison to the record or Organized Baseball.
The first line of questioning, in my mind, is certainly valid. I disagree with the criticism, but in a sport that depends on statistical analysis and numerical precision, I definitely understand the argument about an inadequate sample size.
My primary response to that argument is that, while there certainly are a fair amount less of Negro Leagues statistics compared to Organized Baseball, we need to remember why that is – because of a tragic, sad situation that occurred through absolute no fault of the Black players’ own. There are fewer numbers because of bigoted segregation that was forced on Black society. Despite the significant challenges institutional racism presented for African Americans, Black baseball did the absolute best it could given the situation. Moreover, why should we continue to punish these men and minimize their greatness for something that wasn’t their fault? To continue to do so is patently unfair and unjust.
The second track of criticism against bringing the Negro Leagues its rightful due and equality – that the Black leagues simply weren’t as good as the white organizations – is at best ignorant and illogical, and at worst virulently racist and hateful.
If someone possesses such bitter, angry emotions, there’s not much any of us can say to change their minds. Someone who’s that hateful just doesn’t want to change.
But if one’s belief that the Negro Leagues just weren’t as good is more based in ignorance instead of outright racism, that’s something with which we can work, because even after decades of progress made in unearthing, evaluating and promoting the history and legacy of the Negro Leagues, it would be understandable if simply more people had heard of Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth than Josh Gibson or Buck Leonard. In that case, I encourage those who are willing to expand their horizons and knowledge to start by reading the work of Robert Peterson and John Holway, and proceed from there, because there’s a lot of awesome stuff writing about or covering the Negro Leagues.
Then, finally, we can argue for the Negro Leagues’ worthiness by just using logic – it might be true Black players didn’t play the best possible competition pre-1947, but if so, that also means that neither did the white players. To cite an oft-quoted comment from writer, journalist and author Ken Rosenthal:
“If you want to argue that Josh Gibson didn’t face the best competition, well, neither did Babe Ruth.”
But even if we as advocates for the Negro Leagues can continue to crusade for and research segregation-era Black baseball, that quote by Rosenthal raises a whole different concern, one that unfortunately continues to weight heavily on the pursuit of true fairness and equality and one that, sadly, might never be completely or even adequately resolved.
Because if neither the Black leagues nor white leagues of pre-1947 baseball featured the best possible competition because each structure omitted one whole demographic, wouldn’t that naturally de-legitimize both types of leagues and garner each set of statistics and other quality-centric evaluation huge, eternal asterisks?
This could lead us to one painful conclusion – that, in a way, it’s pointless to truly examine and evaluate any pre-1947 baseball, and that those segregated decades are forever simply lost and wasted for everyone. We may be able to evaluate and study history in different, ever-evolving ways, but we can’t change it.
Such a realization is truly saddening, and truly frustrating. It seems to imply that no matter what anyone does, no matter how much work we do, no matter how committed we are to achieving fairness and justice, we’ll never completely achieve such goals.
The notion that the greatness of Cy Young and Joe Williams and Pop Lloyd and Tris Speaker and hundreds of others just, in a way, doesn’t matter, at least when it comes to accurate evaluation of their accomplishments and greatness feels like a knife in the heart for all baseball fans. To even consider the idea that the work of all those players, well, that it doesn’t fundamentally matter, has me fighting back tears writing this.
Because of the stupidity and bigotry and limitations of our ancestors, the wrongs of history will never be truly resolved, and that the chasm we face toward achieving justice and equity will never, ever, be completely bridged. The damage, as they say, is done.
And guess what? That’s not just the case in baseball, either. Baseball springs forth from and embodies our larger American society as a whole, and, as a result, those 60-odd lost years of our national pastime that forever taint the sport that we embrace as our American game symbolizes the 500 years our land has been scarred by bigotry and hate and oppression.
Just as the sport of baseball can never truly be reconciled with our ideals, then that half-millennium has likewise caused lingering and irreparable damage to American society as a whole.
How can we, as a people and as a nation, ever hope to fully compensate and address the centuries of slavery, genocide, segregation and violence that mar our history? Have we simply dug ourselves too big a hole to ever climb out of? Is true societal equity and justice ever even possible, or, well, is the damage already done?
I’ll admit that I am an eternal pessimist and cynic. I fully acknowledge that I usually view life with shit-covered glasses, and that I always expect the worst out of humanity. That’s a weakness of mine, and I continue to battle against it.
And maybe I’m wrong, or at least that I worry way, way too much, about the status and future of our society. Maybe I’m underestimating us and our ability to make lasting, equitable change. I sure hope I am.
And where hope exists, the chance of something better persists. We cannot stop striving, and that includes achieving fairness and justice in our national pastime and its long, imperfect, stained and steller history. We owe that to all the great Negro Leaguers, and we owe it to all those white players who were likewise robbed of an opportunity to compete against the best.
We owe it to all those who came before us to do our best by digging deep down and finding our better selves. We owe it to ourselves as researchers, writers and fans.
I recently chatted with Jeremy Krock, the founder of the Negro League Baseball Grave Marker Project to see what projects the NLBGMP has in the pipeline. I also wanted to ask him about the possibility of the NLBGMP working toward getting markers placed at the graves of a couple players here in New Orleans — particularly John Bissant and Lloyd “Ducky” Davenport, both of whom I’ve discussed fairly frequently on this blog, such as posts here, here and here.
Cannonball Jackson (photo courtesy of Peter Gorton)
And, as it turns out, both subjects had connections to one of the top touring teams in the 1920s, and they both died tragic, early deaths, demises that underscore the sadness surrounding their anonymity when they were buried.
One of the efforts on which the Marker Project has focused is that for George Jess “Cannonball” Jackson, one of the great African-American pitchers in the Midwest in the 1920s. Jackson, who was born around 1891, pitched for Gilkerson’s Union Giants, a largely barnstorming team based in Spring Valley, Ill., in the 1910s and ’20s. He also suited up for other teams in the Midwest — including the All-Nations, a professional barnstorming team whose lineup included Black, white, Native-American, Japanese, Hawaiian and Latino players; Brown’s Tennessee Rats, a barnstorming team based in, ironically, Missouri; and the Minneapolis-St. Paul Gophers — and ended up in Dubuque, Iowa, where he pitched against the Dubuque White Sox, among other clubs.
Unfortunately and sadly, Dubuque is where the Cannonball Jackson story ends. On Dec. 14, 1924, Jackson was struck on his head with a blunt instrument by an acquaintance, a blow that fractured his skull. He staggered to the boarding house in which he was staying. According to news reports, Jackson arrived at the home in “a dazed condition,” and when he didn’t regain consciousness the next morning, Jackson was taken to a local hospital where he died early on Dec. 16. He was subsequently buried in an unmarked grave in Dubuque’s Linwood Cemetery. He was 32 or 33 years old.
After less than a week of police investigation into the crime, a man named Frank Johnson confessed to the crime with a charge of manslaughter and was quickly sentenced to eight years at the state penitentiary at Fort Madison.
All of this took place in less than two weeks, which, compared to today’s criminal justice system, represents lightning speed and really takes the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial seriously.
“Legendary pitcher in [B]lack [s]emi-pro/barnstorming baseball. Played for Tennessee Rats, All-Nations, Gilkerson’s Union Giants, Minneapolis Gophers. Killed by skull fracture inflicted by an acquaintance in Dubuque.”
However, not much is known beyond his tragic demise. His Iowa death certificate, for example, features several lines filled out with “don’t know” or left blank; such designations are shown for his marital status, date of birth, names of father and mother, and birthplace.
Jackson’s death certificate
Even when lines are filled out, the mysteriousness of Jackson’s life are reflected. The line for residence says “Floater,” which probably indicates that he was a drifter with no fixed home and a clouded backstory. His occupation is stated as “baseball player and laborer,” while space for the informant’s name shows “stranger.” Cause of death is stated as “skull fracture (hit over head with a club,” with “hemorrhage” as a secondary cause.
(I want to note that George “Cannonball” Jackson shouldn’t be confused with Bill “Cannonball” Jackman, an African-American pitcher who freelanced for several teams and gained fame, especially in the Northeast, particularly New England, in the 1920s and into the ’40s.)
Another project on the burner for the NLBGMP is a stone for the grave of the owner and manager Gilkerson’s Union Giants, Robert Gilkerson. Gilkerson played the keystone sack for several teams in the first two decades of the 20th century before taking the helm of his eponymous barnstorming, semipro club, which was originally based in Chicago.
A December 1936 article in the Kansas City Call, a prominent African-American newspaper, “Gilkerson has been identified with the national pastime since 1903. … he showed a lover for the game and developed into one of the best second basemen in that section [western Pennsylvania].”
The paper reported that he joined the Smoky City Giants, a Pittsburgh-based team founded by none other than newly minted National Baseball Hall of FamerBud Fowler, in 1904, then eventually joined the Leland Giants, owned and managed in Chicago by another Black baseball legend, Rube Foster, and Gilkerson then hooked up with the traveling Union Giants, operated by W.S. Peters. Gilkerson played for the Union Giants for several years before buying the team in 1917 and eventually moving it to Spring Valley, Ill., where it thrived as a traveling team into the 1930s.
Robert Gilkerson
The Call article also included some comments from Gilkerson himself about the current state of the American pastime at the time, and his words help illuminate Gilkerson’s personality and beliefs. He commented:
“The dry spell this summer throughout the nation [presumably the Great Depression] put a big dent in the popularity of baseball. However, I believe the game is come back into its own. Baseball leagues will go a long way in reviving the sport. Although we are a traveling club, having played in 38 states at various times during the last 20 years, still I believe in organized baseball.”
In the article, Gilkerson also plays the curmudgeon when discussing what he viewed as the state of the national pastime:
“[T]here isn’t the same fight in these fellows today as there used to be. There is too much handshaking, too much socializing. When the old guys used to take the field against each other, there was blood in their eyes and murder in their hearts. They went in there to battle to the last ditch. Then again money was not emphasized so much in those days as it is now among the younger players. Still this generation of players has a world of possibilities and I hope to live to see the day when Negro ball players once more reach they had when the immortal Rube Foster was in his heyday.”
Gilkerson, who was born in Newtown, Va., in 1886, was apparently held in high esteem where he and his team ventured. Wrote Joe Ryan, for example, the sports columnist for the Sioux City (Iowa)Journal newspaper in July 1929:
“One of the most interesting men in semi-professional baseball is Robert Gilkerson, owner of Gilkerson’s Union Giants, who will play a two-game series against the Stock Yards club [a local team], starting today. For more than 20 years ‘Gil,’ as he is called, has been touring this section with [N]egro baseball clubs and all of them have been good. He always manages to get together a great bunch of baseball players. They take their opponents as they come, asking no favors from anybody, and when the season ends you usually find that they have won about 90 per cent [sic] of their games.”
Curiously enough, “Gilky” also operated a barnstorming basketball team under the Gilkerson’s Union Giants moniker. According to the Chicago Defender in April 1931, Gilkerson’s hoopsters had compiled a record of 66-14 so far that season, including a winning streak of 38 games. The following year, in March 1932, the Quad-City Times of Davenport, Iowa, asserted that the Union Giants were “claiming the colored basketball title of the country” and added that “[f]or the two games played in this city by Gilkerson’s quint the Turner gym was packed and they have been one of the most popular teams to appear here this year.”
Sadly, much like Cannonball Jackson, Bob Gilkerson suffered a tragic fate — although Jackson was murdered, Gilkerson committed suicide.
Bureau County Democrat, March 24, 1944
Gilkerson was found dead on the floor of the kitchen in his house in mid-morning on March 21, 1944, by a neighbor. Gilkerson had apparently shot himself in the head with a .38-caliber revolver. He was 58. The Bureau County Democrat newspaper of Spring Valley wrote, “‘Gil,’ as he was popularly known by a wide circle of friends here and throughout the base ball [sic] world, was one of the pioneers in the barnstorming business.”
(While Gilkerson’s suicide might have come as a shock to some, there might have been early indications that he suffered from some sort of mental illness, possibly undiagnosed — a Chicago Defender report from January 1922 stated that Gilkerson was a patient at a hospital under the care of the family physician, “being treated for a nervous breakdown.” The Bureau County Democrat article from March 1944 claimed that at the time of Gilkerson’s death, he “had been in poor health” and had a neighbor helping to care for and assist him at home.” Other media reports asserted that Gilkerson might have been worried about finances, according to Gil’s attorney, but added that Gilkerson had recently been relieved by positive developments related to money.)
Shifting topics a little bit, I also asked Jeremy about the possibility of the Project working on markers for one or more New Orleanian baseball greats like Bissant and Davenport. Jeremy said such efforts on the part of the NLBGMP would certainly be a possibility.
However, he noted that as with most of the Project’s beneficiaries, the owners/administrators of the cemeteries involved in the targeted graves — in both the cases of Bissant (Carrollton Cemetery No. 1) and Davenport (Holt Cemetery, a potter’s field), that would be the city of New Orleans itself — would need to give permission and/or lay down rules and guidelines for the NLBGMP to follow with the installation of markers.
Jeremy also noted that, obviously, the surviving family members/loved ones would need to be on board as well. In John Bissant’s case, his family are definitely on board, but Davenport’s family situation is a bit murkier at this point. But we shall see. …
Editor’s note: Here’s another slice of prime Creole Pete Robertson, following the first entry here. For this one, we jump ahead some to Pete’s arrival in New York City following his move in the 1930s from the Big Easy to the Big Apple, where he eventually established himself as a vital and vibrant part of the African-American community by bringing his passion for N’Awlins food to the denizens of NYC.
This is taken from my lengthy essay about Pete that I started more than a couple years ago. I apologize for kind of jumping around within the narrative and shifting between time periods from one post to the next. Because this project has dragged out a good deal, I want to publish what I can now.
But first, a few paragraphs about Robertson’s extremely tight friendship with another New Orleans native son who eventually also settled in New York City and made a global name for himself: None other than Satchmo himself.
Pete Robertson (left) and Louis Armstrong with a fan backstage after a concert. (Photo courtesy Ricky Riccardi and the Louis Armstrong House and Museum.)
One final, New Orleans-themed note about Creole Pete: Robertson was extremely close with the Big Easy’s favorite son, none other than Louis Armstrong. By many accounts, Satchmo and Robertson were as tight as siblings; in fact, Pete frequently called Louis his “brother.” The Louis Armstrong House in Queens includes about a dozen archived materials involving Robertson, including pictures, a telegram, articles and a Christmas card.
When Armstrong died in July 1971, the Amsterdam News asked Robertson for his reaction.
“He was just like my brother,” Pete said. “I lost a part of me when Louis Armstrong died.”
The Amsterdam News’ Les Matthews described the scene at Satchmo’s funeral in Flushing Cemetery after the service.
“‘Creole Pete’ Robertson, a lifelong friend whom many thought was Armstrong’s brother did not want to leave the Flushing [C]emetery,” Matthews wrote. “There was a strong bond between the two men.”
A quirky anecdote illustrating the NOLA-born connection between Pete and Satchmo, courtesy of a 1955 Jet column about one of Louis’ concerts:
“At his opening at Broadway’s Basin Street, Louis Armstrong spied two long tables of his native New Orleans cronies, hosted by Al Cobette and Pete Robertson, [and] quipped, ‘There’s a lot of gumbo eaters here tonight.'”
Robertson with his wife at Armstrong’s grave. (Photo courtesy Ricky Riccardi and the Louis Armstrong House and Museum.)
Ricky graciously wrote up a short essay about the relationship between Robertson and Armstrong for this blog; here’s a few excerpts from the article by Ricky, to whom I extend my heartfelt thanks for all his assistance and input about Creole Pete:
Born in Mississippi in 1905, Robertson spent part of his youth in New Orleans, where it’s possible he first met Armstrong; they certainly looked alike to enough to sometimes be mistaken for brothers!
Robertson spent time in the Negro Leagues, where he was catcher to the legendary pitcher Satchel Paige, but he made his most lasting impact on the citizens of Harlem with the opening of Creole Pete’s at 2700 7th Avenue in 1938. Armstrong almost immediately became a regular; Creole Pete’s remained his venue of choice in New York City when he craved a taste of home.
More importantly, Creole Pete himself became a friend. Digging through the Louis Armstrong Archives, one finds photos of Creole Pete backstage with Louis throughout the 1950s and 1960s, at venues such as Freedomland in the Bronx; one photo of Robertson even turned up in one of Armstrong’s collages; There are telegrams and Christmas cards from Creole Pete and his family. Even after Louis’s passing, Creole Pete remained in his orbit, invited to Louis’s widow Lucille to the dedication of Louis’s headstone in 1973 and to participate in a New Orleans Jazz and Food Festival at the Rainbow Room that same year.
Though he remained — and remains — far from a household name, these archival treasures illustrate a close bond between Armstrong and Robertson that lasted several decades, a testament to their friendship and the power of good home cooking that often brought them together.
— Ricky Riccardi
For more of Riccardi’s article to me, see the quotes section below, because he relates quite a tale about Louis and Pete. Again, many thanks to Ricky and the Armstrong House for the contributions, including the incredible photos!
The bond remained strong throughout Pete’s and Satchmo’s lives, both in their hometown town down South and when they each relocated to the Big Apple. For a little info on Louis’ life in NOLA, check out this piece, but when it came to the second chapter of Robertson’s life — that of his time in New York — we start in the late 1930s, when he moved to New York.
(According to George Palmer of the Amsterdam News, Robertson moved to New York City on the oddly specific date of Aug. 2, 1938 and opened the restaurant in 1943.)
While living in the Empire State, Robertson’s life continued to be a hurlyburly of money, influence and even a little intrigue. Before he opened his famous restaurant, Robertson operated an illicit “after hours” club in Harlem, but he decided to get out of that fast lane because New York cops began squeezing him for bribes.
But once he got his cafe up and running, he and his Creole joint quickly became staples of Harlem society and nightlife. For almost two decades, Pete boasted a lavish down-home Louisiana menu and a massive, star-studded clientele. (According to an Aug. 6, 1975, article by George Palmer in the Amsterdam News, Robertson’s famous nickname, “Creole,” was coined by actor and entertainer Nipsey Russell, who frequented Pete’s gumbo joint.)
“I looked all over Harlem trying to find a good spot and a safe spot,” Robertson said in a 1974 interview with Black Sports Magazine. “Finally I found a location on Seventh Avenue and that’s when I opened up Pete’s Creole Restaurant. Boy! That was home for all the celebrities — Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe Louis, Phil Rizzuto of the New York Yankees, Bob Feller, Satchel Paige, they all used to be there.
“I was open 24 hours and business was terrific every night,” he added. “I did my best business between 2 a.m. and 9 a.m. Everybody in show business used to come to Creole Pete’s Restaurant when they got off work. A lot of people used to come just to see the celebrities.”
He then added: “Well, when I first came to New York, they didn’t have a real first-class restaurant in Harlem. Being from the South, I believed in eating, and eating good. Most New Yorkers were from the South and they loved that soul food. But my number one special was Creole food, because I was from New Orleans.”
The menu included (in Pete’s own words), “Louisiana Creole gumbo, Creole shrimps [sic], Creole Chicken, Creole pork chops, hot sausage Creole style … and Louisiana Creole gumbo.” He called Creole dishes “the greatest of foods,” and, he added not so modestly, “I consider myself the No. 1 person in making it.”
Pete even bragged that his gumbo would fix up a hangover better than Pepto Bismol.
Pete Robertson. (Photo courtesy Ricky Riccardi and the Louis Armstrong House and Museum.)
“If you’re a person that drinks and you have a tendency to get a little sick from drinking, you can always eat that Louisiana Creole gumbo and it’ll always straighten you out,” he said. “It has so many different vitamins in it and so many different sauces, herbs and spices that it’ll sober you right up.”
Pete’s cuisine digs gained some mention in Jet magazine in 1952, when the publication, under its “New York Beat” section, noted that Robertson “spent more than $20,000 in redecorating his House of Gumbo Cafe, then sent to his native New Orleans and imported a chef and ten creole [sic] beauties as waitresses. Five of them made over $150 in tips alone the first week.”
One of the earliest, and most effusively comprehensive, articles about Pete’s still-new restaurant was the December 1994 “Harlem Night Life” column by Wally Warner in the New York Age.
In the column, Warner cites Curley Carter, a chef imported from New Orleans who was responsible for creating and cooking up the joint’s already-famous gumbo.
“If you took his kitchen away from [him],” Warner wrote of Carter, “he’d probably want to die. Curley has been cooking for over thirty years. His English isn’t very articulate to describe his artistry of food. He welcomes you into the kitchen to sample his sauces and other dishes. They taste very good, so you ask him the secret to his culinary genius, but with so many continental terms to unmask – he just smiles and say [sic], ‘That’s the way I always do it. His own favorite dish is craw fish [sic] bisque, creole [sic] style, with candied yams, string beans and sauce.”
From the 1940 U.S. Census, tallying residents from Queens, New York, where Pete lived on 106th Street.
According to Warner, another Pete’s staple was seafood, and lots of it, including “[o]ysters, clams on half shell, deviled crabs, shrimps [sic], Spanish mackerel, weakfish, sea bass [and] filet of sole.”
The bottom line, Warner wrote, was that Creole Pete’s digs were all about no-frills, unpretentious, downhome charm.
“The price is fitted to your purse,” the columnist enthused. “Don’t go to Pete’s looking for glittering trimmings; the restaurant is undecorated except for a few still lifes of celebrities on the wall. The atmosphere is restful and the service is deft; this reflects the reason why Pete’s is one of the busiest restaurants in Harlem, satisfying the discriminating appetites of celebrities, professional people and the average John Q. Public …”
In 1954, Daily News lifestyle columnist Robert Sylvester reported on Robertson’s business, with special emphasis on Pete’s Creole stew concoction.
“You get a big dish of gumbo for exactly $1 and you can also get wonderful barbecue ribs,” Sylvester wrote. “… I promise you it’s a big bit for a single buck.”
The coverage in the Daily News was significant — it showed just how popular Pete’s joint had become that word of the restaurant had crossed over into the mainstream press. In fact, Sylvester and the Daily News again hyped up Robertson and his Creole chow in 1958, when the scribe reported on a party given by famed jazz trombonistTyree Glenn at Glenn’s home in New Jersey for radio personality Jack Sterling. The wang dang doodle was catered by none other than Robertson, and Sylvester lauded Pete for the latter’s two career aptitudes.
“The other night [Glenn] gave a party for Jack, and since he wanted to do something special for Jack and his CBS crew, Ty dug up Creole Pete Robertson,” Sylvester penned. “Pete has two distinctions. He was Satchel Paige’s first catcher and he can make a New Orleans gumbo which is enough to make you wake up in the night screaming for more.
“If you’ve never eaten gumbo,” Sylvester added, “you haven’t really lived. It’s got rice and ham and chicken and a hundred strange spices and a broth, and right in the middle of every portion is a small cooked crab. Man, it is pure heaven.”
Pete with Lucille Armstrong, Louis’ wife. (Photo courtesy of Ricky Riccardi and the Louis Armstrong House and Museum.)
In February 1947, the restaurant even garnered a few words on the Daily News sports page, where legendary sports editor scribe Jimmy Powers — who was a steady, vocal proponent of integration in baseball for much of his storied career — sang the joint’s praises.
“Peter Robertson, retired ball player, now has one of Harlem’s best eating establishments, specializing in Louisiana gumbo,” Powers wrote.
(Pete also brought the same savvy he employed as a baseball magnate to his restaurant business, and he wasn’t above trying to butter up the local media for some free advertising, so to speak. In May 1952, he hosted local journalists for a lavish Creole feast, prompting the New York Age’s Edward Murrain to claim that the members of the press were “still panting from the effects of the wonderful food ‘Creole’ Pete Robertson put on for the fourth estate at the opening of his renovated restaurant …”)
Robertson wasn’t just a Creole culinary master and businessman supreme while he was in NYC. During his time as a bigwig in Harlem life, Robertson took on a slew of challenges, including briefly running for the informal title of “Mayor of Harlem” in 1948. (More on this below.)
Another sign of the esteem in which Robertson was help among the folks of Harlem and New York City came in May 1964, while the New York City Council was discussing creating an all-civilian review board to conduct investigations into citizen’s complaints of police abuse, brutality and other instances of NYPD misconduct. The Amsterdam News’ James Booker and Les Matthews conducted “man-and-woman-on-the-street” interviews with local politicians and civic leaders, including Robertson.
“The creation of a civilian complaint board is a good thing,” Pete told the journalists. “An outsider can usually see better than someone that’s inside. The body must have the right people, however.”
In addition to his reputation as a restaurateur civic leader, Pete cut a dashing figure in Harlem thanks to his knack for fashion. Wally Warner of the New York Age noted that Robertson stood at five-foot-11 and tipped the scales at 185 pounds, with brown eyes and “large, muscular hands. … His taste in dress is both fussy and flamboyant, running from light gray suits and carefully matched sport ensembles; he favors double-breasted suits.”
Robertson also welcomed to his restaurant a galaxy of national stars and new and old friends from the worlds of music, sports and politics; chaired the Harlem Citizens’ Committee; founded the Harlem chapter of the Louisiana State Club; and provided catering services for charity events, such as the Amsterdam News Welfare Fund Midnight Show at the Apollo Theater.
(The 200-member Louisiana State Club, mentioned above, apparently was quite active in Harlem, working to bring a further taste of the Big Easy to those in the Big Apple. In 1953, for example, the club celebrated that most New Orleans of events, Mardi Gras, with a three-day ball that cost more than $6,700. Robertson, naturally, served as “King of the affair,” noted Jet magazine.)
In 1960, he founded and served as president of Creole Pete’s L&M Social Pleasure Club, reported the Amsterdam News, which stated that the “purposes [of the club] are precisely what the name implies. … It plans to promote good fellowship of New Yorkers who are natives of Louisiana and Mississippi, their families and friends. … The club does plan to aid civic and educational activities.”
Creole Pete also liked boxing. Or rather, he liked watching and promoting it, a passion that led him to try to bring prime-time fights to Harlem’s Rockland Palace in the late 1940s. In November 1948, the New York Age reported that Robertson, “well known sportsman,” expected to open the venue to fights in January.
The Palace, it said, was the “scene of many historic ring battles,” including fisticuffs involving, among other pugilists, Jersey Joe Walcott, Elmer Ray, George Brothers, Panama Al Brown, Cocoa Kid (Herbert Lewis Hardwick), Kid Chocolate and Lorenzo Pack. According to the Age, Robertson had already booked Sugar Ray Robinson to open the boxing series. It’s unclear, however, if Robertson was successful in actually bringing matches to the Rockland Palace.
The Rockland Palace.
(The Rockland Palace is its own unique story. Founded by the Odd Fellows, over its decades and decades of existence, the venue welcomed an array of events, including concerts, political rallies, church sermons, sporting events and banquets. It housed the home court of the Harlem Yankees pro basketball team, and it was often a locus of LGBTQ social activities, including lavish drag balls.)
Even in the last phase of his life, Robertson helped lay the groundwork for something special in a third community. After selling his Harlem restaurant in 1955, Creole Pete eventually moved to the Nassau County community of Roosevelt on Long Island, and by the early 1970s he became a significant figure in his new home.
(An interesting note: according to issues of Jet in in the late 1950s/early 1960s, Pete had by then become a head chef-cook at a restaurant/cafe owned by ex-heavyweight boxing champ Jack Dempsey.)
Informal and unspoken patterns of segregation — such as housing red-lining, white flight and disproportionate government spending — led to Roosevelt developing into a majority African-American community where many middle-class Black New York City residents, such as the Robertsons, moved to after leaving the big city for the quieter confines of the suburbs. Despite a long history riddled with challenges to its educational system and a lack of representation in county government, Roosevelt blossomed into one of the Northeast’s most economically better off and culturally rich Black communities.
But Robertson’s family was also not immune to tragedy. Pete’s eldest son, Pete Jr., was murdered in 1979. Another son, Pablo, starred in basketball, eventually playing with the Harlem Globetrotters and blossoming into one of the flashy early stars of the famed Rucker Park community basketball courts. However, just 10 years after his father passed away and 11 years after his brother, Pablo died at the age of 46.
Pablo Robertson.
But even with the parade of stars as friends, the accolades for his tasty gumbo at his bustling restaurant, and his social and political influence, Robertson never lost the love of the national pastime that he nurtured in New Orleans.
In 1948, the Amsterdam News reported that Robertson was “rated the best baseball authority in Harlem,” and in 1950 the New York Age stated that Robertson was ecstatic “over his two kids who are big enough to dig baseball.”
Robertson’s vast knowledge of and passion for baseball led to him being one of several Harlemites interviewed by the Amsterdam News in 1949 about how Negro League Baseball could survive after all the Black game’s best players had been plucked by the Majors.
In his comments, Robertson said schools and other community institutions should start growing their amateur baseball programs, and he proffered that existing Negro League teams should enter “Organized Ball” as whole entities, which he theorized would help white America learn about Black baseball.
Ultimately, he said, the Negro Leagues still retained the potential to thrive.
“With proper handling, the [Negro] league could definitely be improved,” he said. “There is more interest in the game today than there was formerly and this is one of the main factors which would help the sport, which should have a place in the national sport picture. The Negro leagues [sic] cradled the boys who are in there now and gave them the chance to be seen.”
While he kept one eye on the Negro Leagues, Robertson also paid keen attention to what was happening in the Majors, which, by the 1950s, had drawn many African-Americans’ attention away from Black ball.
In June 1951, Jack Dalton of the New York Age talked to Robertson — who had always maintained his renown as a baseball fanatic — about the fever pitch of baseball competition in New York.
“Peter Robertson, who knows more about baseball than ninety-nine percent of the New Yorkers, claims that the Giants will have all the Yanks [sic] business within the next year,” Dalton wrote.
(Robertson and other Black baseball fans were keen supporters of Irvin, who crossed over from the Negro Leagues to the majors during a Hall of Fame career; in August 1951, Pete was part of a group working toward having a Monte Irvin Day at the Polo Grounds.)
Louisiana Weekly, March 17, 1973
But for now, the tale of Pete Robertson, both in life and now in death, is a huge success story. Although he left the Crescent City in the 1930s and became a big wheel in Harlem and on Long Island, Robertson remained a New Orleanian and a Louisiana man through and through — as a baseball player, owner and lifelong fan, and as a man with culinary expertise and an eccentric, extroverted personality.
In the aforementioned 1974 article in Black Sports Magazine, Creole Pete extolled the virtues and excitement of the city where he forged his career and began his incredible life.
“… Creole food is a certain type of food that [Creoles] create. I’m not a Creole, but I know how famous the food is. Everybody who’s been to New Orleans and had Creole food always wants to get it again. And I could really fix it.”
But when it comes to creating something New Orleanians love, Robertson was, for 20 years, a master of the Crescent City baseball scene. He loved food, and he loved baseball, and he always approached the latter, just like Creole cooking, with zeal.
His beloved Big Easy never forgot him, either. In June 1958, while Robertson was enjoying three weeks of vacation in New Orleans, plans were laid out for a “Night in Honor of Creole Pete,” reported Elgin Hychew of the Louisiana Weekly newspaper. The publication added that Pete [had] been away from New Orleans 25 years and is famous for his New York eating place which is known the world over.” The gala was held at the famed Dew Drop Inn and hosted by club owner Frank Painia, and according to an ensuing article headline in the Weekly, it was a “howling success.” (More on the celebration below.)
Robertson, with his wife Eloise, made another return to New Orleans for in March 1973 for Mardi Gras as well, when he was similarly feted and received very warmly by his lifelong friends and loved ones in the Crescent City.
In particular, he gathered with a bunch of his old Big Easy baseball chums at Mule’s Restaurant and Bar, which stills stands today on Laharpe Street in New Orleans. It apparently was an evening of boisterous reminiscing about the golden days of N’Awlins Black baseball 40 or so years earlier. Joining Pete were Percy Wilson, Robert “Black Diamond” Pipkins, Herman Roth, Milfred Laurent and Edward “Squatter” Benjamin.
Finally, for now, a bunch of quotes from and about Pete Robertson that I wanted to show readers without further elongating the main text of this already too long screed; I figured that if I included the quotes as a little addendum, it wouldn’t bog down the main body of the post. So, here we go!
First, we have thoughts on Pete’s Creole Restaurant, from Pete and from fans …
From an article by Major Robinson in the Amsterdam News from April 11, 1987:
“Or what about Creole ‘Pete’ Robertson, a former Negro League baseball player from New Orleans, whose specialty was hot and spicy dishes such as dirty rice and gumbo. Often after a game at the Polo Grounds or Yankee Stadium one could find celebrated pitcher Satchell [sic] Paige polishing off a plate of Jambalaya (Cajun rice, shrimps [sic], chicken, beef sausage with a plate of red beans and rice on the side).”
From New York Age night life columnist Wally Warner in March 1946:
“Peter Robertson, owner of Pete’s Restaurant … has developed a smart continental-style restaurant by using the personal touch. He thinks in terms of friends instead of customers. This has resulted in busy days for all concerned — starting with breakfast and continuing on through dinner and late supper.
“No one calls Pete Mr. Robertson more than once; he makes everyone too much at home for formalities. A connoisseur of years standing, Pete likes to supervise each order with a waiters [sic] concern for service. For dinner for instance, he’ll take a menu and sidle over to [a] table and ramble off suggestions, telling at the same time how he prepares his dishes. And when he’s through you may find yourself deviating far from the routine of your regular diet …”
From Pete himself, in Black Sports Magazine, December 1974:
“Louisiana Creole gumbo carries practically every vitamin in the book. Most dishes carry one vegetable; Louisiana Creole carries five vegetables: onions, peppers, celery, okra and tomatoes. Now the meats. The meats that go into it are smoked sausage, smoked ham hocks, chicken, turkey, veal. The brain food in a gumbo is shrimps and crabs. It is served with rice. It’s not a stew and it’s not a soup; it’s between the two. That’s the original Louisiana Creole Gumbo.”
Jambalaya
In an article by Robert Sylvester of the New York Daily News in September 1954:
“Pete Robertson operates his gumbo palace 24 hours a day at Seventh Ave. and 132d St. You get a big dish of gumbo for exactly $1 and you can also get wonderful barbecued ribs. Gumbo is served in a bowl. It has rice and okra and chicken and ham and other stuff. It also has special herbs which Pete brings in from New Orleans. In the middle, floating in the stew, is a small crab boiled in its shell. I promise you it’s a big bit for a single buck.”
We now go to Pete Robertson, baseball philosopher and kingpin, with a few quirky and colorful comments from the man himself. Throughout his life, no matter what other challenges he tackled and ventures he launched (entrepreneurial, charitable or otherwise), Creole Pete remained intimately connected to the sport he played, managed and loved. He never ventured too far away from his first love. To wit …
In July 1953, the Associated Negro Press’ Al Moses somewhat randomly quoted Robertson musing on players’ natural mitts:
“Most of the important ball stars had what I call pocket hands,” Moses quoted Pete as asserting. “The horsehide seemed to fit perfectly in their giant paws, seldom falling out.”
Robertson also pontificated about what the future held for Negro baseball for an article in the Amsterdam News in August 1949:
“With proper handling, the [Negro] league could definitely be improved,” he said. “There is more interest in the game today than there was formerly and this is one of the main factors which would help the sport, which should have a place in the national sport picture. The Negro leagues [sic] cradled the boys who are in there now and gave them the chance to be seen. Now schools and other institutions have added this game to their programs and more and more are playing it as a direct result. I think the best way to revive the game would be for the Negro teams to enter organized ball as classified ball teams. The public is not too well informed about the Negro teams of today and by entering organized ball they would have a better chance to be seen and heard from.”
Pete was also frequently asked about his opinions on hot news topics of the day.
By Amsterdam News reporter Milton Mallory, who in November 1953 collected sidewalk interviews that included Robertson, about the possibility of a lottery in New York:
“Yes. I think [the] lottery should be legalized, it would take some of the heavy taxes off the business man. The City and State would receive enough money to build better schools and highways and maybe come out with a little reserve for miscellaneous.”
An article by the Amsterdam News’ James Booker and Les Matthews, about the idea of a civilian review board for the NYPD, in May 1964:
“The creation of a civilian complaints board is a good thing. An outsider can usually see better than someone that’s inside. The body must have the right people, however.”
Then, the Amsterdam News in May 1967 quoted Pete regarding Muhammad Ali’s stand against theVietnam War draft:
“Well, he said he is a minister and he should be exempt. I believe that Muhammad Ali’s outspoken attitude played a big part in the decision of the judges. I don’t think they should take his title away either.”
As mentioned previously in this post, Pete was so popular in his NYC surroundings that he briefly ran for the title of “Mayor of Harlem” in early 1948. Although the position was largely ceremonial, and although he withdrew from the campaign after a few months, the fact that Robertson was drafted into the race reflects his massive popularity among his fellow Harlemites.
While he was still in the race, in February ’48 Creole Pete outlined his “platform” for the “mayoral election,” as detailed in the Feb. 7, 1948, edition of the Amsterdam News. Here’s a few thoughts from him about what he’d be able to bring to his “constituents” if he was elected …
“My general and overall plan for the improvement of Harlem is very simple and easy to understand. It is my belief that the surest means of eliminating practically every civic evil in Harlem is through the constructive guidance of our young people in the elevation of recreational and sanitational standards through our own efforts.
“It has long been agreed by everyone that something should be done along these lines but as yet no one has ever outlined exactly WHAT [caps in original] should be done. I have what I believe to be a workable plan that will demand something of all yet not be unduly expensive to any one person or group of persons. …
“I do not choose to make any empty campaign promises. I will simply state that if the people of Harlem select me as their ‘Unofficial Mayor’ I shall sincerely lend my every talent and resource to the performance of that office.”
Here are thoughts by the unnamed writer of the article:
“As a candidate in the “Harlem Mayorality” race, Peter Robertson is perhaps the best known and most colorful figure of all. The popular restaurateur, more popularly known as ‘Creole Pete,” has long been prominent and active in Harlem’s civic programs. By possessing all of the attributes which go to make a good citizen with keen public consciousness, Pete’s qualifications for the position of Harlem’s “Unofficial Mayor” are many and worth the listing.
“’Pete’ has done many things to promote the general welfare and to develop a better way of life in Harlem, and not the least of these have been his many substantial donations to many of the community charitable enterprises. He was one of the very first to come through most liberally with donations for the Harlem Serviceman’s Center, the Sam Langford Fund, the Amsterdam News Welfare Fund, the New York Baptist Fund and the Sydenham Hospital Fund to mention a few.
Sydenham Hospital.
“It has always been with great pride that ‘Pete’ has noted the achievement of any Harlemite or member of the Negro race. During the recent Jackie Robinson ‘Day’ campaign, ‘Pete’ served as a committeeman, working diligently and devoting much time and effort. Because of his labors he was responsible in raising one of the largest amounts of money accounted for in the entire drive.
“Being a family man, and the father of two fine, robust boys, ‘Pete’ has a heartfelt concern for the less fortunate children of Harlem. Because of this concern he has always been a heavy contributor to the Mother Goose Kindergarten Nursery and the Riverdale Orphanage.
“A tall, always smiling man of boundless energy, ‘Pete’ has innumerable social interests. He is very active in the Young Men’s Christian Association program and is a member of the Metropolitan Stevedore Club, the Independent Political Association and the Louisiana State Club. He was founder and organizer of the latter.
“Known and admired by all of Harlem’s hundreds of stage, screen and radio folk, ‘Pete’ has been assured by them of their support to his campaign and, if he is elected, he has their promise of cooperation with the administration.”
Finally, we’ll finish out with a bang, with another excerpt from Ricky Riccardi’s article to me. Enjoy, and thanks as usual to all who are reading:
“In September 1952, Louis Armstrong sat down for a radio interview backstage at the Paramount Theater with broadcaster Sidney Gross. As Gross began taping the conversation, Armstrong taped it, too, adding to his private collection of hundreds of reel-to-reel tapes. Early in the interview, Gross noticed Armstrong eating a bowl of gumbo and asked him how it made him feel. “Well, I feel like I’m right in the heart of New Orleans right now.’
“Wasn’t that wonderful? Gross asked, before addressing his audience. “Incidentally, everybody down at WSMB, tonight I was introduced by Creole Pete, who’s one of the great cooks in New York, brought along a steaming bowl of Louisiana Creole gumbo.’
“How’d you like it?’ Louis asked.
“Oh, it was really wonderful,’ Gross replied.
“You made yourself proud, you know that? You stepped up there!’ Armstrong said, before noting that joining them for the feast was vocalist Velma Middleton, Louis’ valet Hazes “Doc’ Pugh, and Creole Pete Robertson himself. Louis decided to give his friend one more plug of the air.
“You want to take the family to Pete’s restaurant sometime,’ Armstrong implored. “It’s up there on 131st and 7th Avenue in Harlem so you can really rest and relax and spread out on that table and really have a ball at Pete’s.’
“I must do that,’ Gross promised, caused Armstrong to insist, “You must visit him, anyway.’ That particular feast was paid for by the famed arranger Gordon Jenkins, who was sharing the bill with Armstrong at the Paramount. “Music maestro Gordon Jenkins’ gumbo food bill, when he played the Paramount Theater with Louis Armstrong, was $300. He had Creole Pete Robinson [sic] bring him the New Orleans dish every night backstage,’ Jet magazine reported on September 27, 1952.”
The Negro Leagues Up Close 