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Robert Cvornyek
Black Baseball in Rhode Island, 1883-1949
During the late 19th and early 20th century, baseball occupied an important social and cultural space in Rhode Island's African-American community. Black athletic clubs, fraternal and civic organizations, and local neighborhoods sponsored semi-pro and amateur teams that regularly competed against each other and nearby white teams. These athletic contests strengthened racial identity, fortified community, and showcased a distinctive form of cultural and artistic expression. By 1883, black teams in Newport and Providence initiated the long and storied history of black ball in the Ocean State. Later, under the talented leadership of men like Daniel Whitehead, the father of Rhode Island black baseball, the game grew in popularity and produced several of the finest, although unrecognized, athletes in the state's sport history.
Race and Sport: The Integration of Baseball in Rhode Island
Unlike many places where the color line in semi-professional and amateur baseball had been drawn indelibly by the turn of the 20th century, Rhode Island experienced a long history of integrated play. Whereas most teams and leagues throughout the nation remained racially segregated, especially between 1887 and 1946, the Ocean State experienced greater flexibility, especially within its amateur ranks. Local teams frequently included combinations of the state's African-American, Cape Verdean, Native American, and white populations. Although the integration of Rhode Island's semi-professional and amateur teams intensified after Jackie Robinson shattered the color line in professional baseball in 1946, many local teams already included ballplayers excluded from organized play elsewhere during the Jim Crow era.
Robert Cvornyek is a Professor of History at Rhode Island College, where he specializes in Sport History. He is the curator of a traveling exhibit titled "Black Grays and Colored Giants: Black Baseball in Rhode Island" and is co-director of the program "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got that Swing: Black Baseball and Jazz." His most recent publications include an edited edition of Effa Manley's Negro Baseball...Before Integration (St. Johann Press, 2006) and Baseball in Newark (Arcadia, 2003). He contributed a chapter entitled "Redefining the Narrative: Effa Manley, Jackie Robinson, and the Integration of Baseball" in Baseball in the Classroom (McFarland, 2006) and authored several articles on this topic. He is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research, North American Society for Sport History, and the Pop Lloyd Committee.