Mixed Outcomes: Canada’s Black Baseball Legacy

The London, Ontario, baseball tournament held toward the end of August 1869 featured a special category reserved for “colored” teams from Canada and the United States. Two years after the country’s Confederation in 1867, Canadians were still held in high regard for having opened their borders to freed slaves in the pre-Civil War era while still a British colony. Canadian baseball organizers of the tournament might now be seen as attempting in their own clumsy way to find an avenue of entrance for the Black community into mainstream everyday life. It is also possible they were respecting, and possibly even communicating with, London’s Black citizens about an opportunity for their own distinct baseball competition, at which they could demonstrate an emerging participation in the game. Most likely, however, the organizers were conforming to the evolving American policy of baseball apartheid. The latter unfortunately appears to be the historic verdict despite limited examples revealing a more open-minded intention.

Potential teams from south of the border could have been made up of either recently emancipated slaves, or free Northern Blacks who had taken up the game. Their Canadian opponents could have been those who had fled into Canada before or during the early stages of the American Civil War. Within Canada, however, there are no known documented examples of escaping Black Americans playing games such as baseball in Canada either before or during the Civil War. The examples from London in 1869, however, argue forcefully that such was likely the case shortly afterward. Other evidence suggests as well that such play was far more extensive within other Black communities throughout Ontario than has previously been known.

Too often the only news concerning London’s small Black population in the local Free Press was in the legal matters column,1 such as the case of an elderly Black man who sought redress against juveniles who regularly tormented him. Another sporting item was reported in which “A young colored lad, named William Williams, aged 16, who was employed by a Mr. Benson, as a jockey, at the late London races, skedadaled [sic] from here with a racing jacket and cap… .” He was tracked down in Toronto and returned to London for a court hearing,2 but Mr. Bilton (not Benson as reported the day before), stated that, “from circumstances which since transpired, he did not think the boy meant to be dishonest, and desired his acquittal. His Worship, after giving him some advice, dismissed him.” Nor was this the only place where indignities or unresolved issues were witnessed.

The London Free Press3 described the scene in a local tavern when the member of a party of laborers in Westminster was challenged because of his bronzed complexion, “and this the floor managers looked upon as a fatal objection to his admission, as they made it a rule not to admit to social relationship persons of undecided color.” Nor could the small Black population in London have been unaware of the popular London Amateur Minstrel shows as advertised in the Free Press.4 These shows mocked North America’s African-originated population.

There were small successes, however, most often in the privacy of the community’s social calendar. One such event was the annual celebration of Emancipation Day on August 1, dating back to 1834 with the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act the year before, ending slavery in the British Empire and accordingly also in Canada. The Free Press5 noted that with the first of August falling on a Sunday, “the event was celebrated yesterday [Monday, August 2] by a grand social gathering at Salter’s Grove, Governor’s Road. Speeches appropriate to the day were made, and a varied programme of amusements provided. A ‘base ball’ match formed part.” The year before, the Free Press6 had spoiled its generally positive reporting on London’s Black community by mocking an evening soirée attracting the bon ton of colored life, for which “not one dark spot appeared on the harmonious surface of the proceedings.” The paper’s decorum improved in 1869.

The breadth of baseball’s reach within Black communities in Ontario was described in a list of possible entries for the upcoming tournament in the Special Class (Colored) category.7 The “Goodwills” of London were to be potentially joined by teams from Hamilton, St. Catharines, and Suspension Bridge. The latter likely referred to the area around the Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge, which stood from 1855 to 1897. It was described as the world’s first working railway suspension bridge, and connected the Canadian and American sides of the Niagara River. The tournament’s American entrant, the Rialtos of Detroit, was described by a Detroit paper as one of the ‘negro base ball clubs of Detroit” who, the paper lamely said, “can show the Londoners some big feets.”8 A day later the paper reported, “The colored base ball club have succeeded in whitewashing the interior of the Detroit & Milwaukee Depot,” whatever that might have meant!

Surprisingly, London’s best known Black team, the Lincoln Nine, did not register for the tournament. In the preceding weeks the London paper had reported, “The Eagle Base Ball Club of this city played the Lincoln (colored) Club on Wednesday, on the Cricket Square, and beat them by a score of 59 to 26.”9 A few days later the London paper said again, “A return match between the ‘Wide Awakes’ and Colored Club, yesterday, was won by the former, by 26 to 10 runs.”10 While the latter account did not name the Lincoln Nine, they were the likely team in these games against rival White London squads.

That the Lincoln Nine would appear in an unrelated but notable reference speaks to the team’s well-known character. The Free Press had reported a case of larceny against a Richard Crystler (described as colored) for taking two horse blankets from his employer.11 Three days later the accused, now called Dick Chrystler, received a one-month jail sentence. The paper described him as “the champion fly-catcher, though not one of the Lincoln Nine. …”12 In the same edition of the paper it was noted that “[a] soiree of the colored persuasion was held last night at the Mechanics’ Institute, in aid of the Lincoln base ball club.”

It is surprising, therefore, that the Nine chose not to participate in the Special Class at the London Base Ball Tournament. Quite possibly they objected to the need to be in a separate category. After all, they had played all-White teams before. Why not continue to do so in the London event? It appears to be a sad example of Londoners demonstrating a willingness to follow American practice in treating all-Black teams as ones they might compete against in one-off barnstorming games but not as members of their leagues, or equal participants in their tournaments, or as players integrated within their mainstream squads.

In reporting the game between the Rialto (colored) club of Detroit and the Goodwills (colored) of London, the paper described it as having a “novel character,” and drawing a large attendance. In fairness this might have been a positive way of describing something not seen before: Black players on the baseball diamond. The report said, “From the opening of the match until the close, it was quite evident that the ‘Rialtos’ were the superior players, and the manner in which they defeated their rivals elicited the hearty applause of the spectators. The nine of the Londoners did not seem to understand the game sufficiently, and made but a poor show against their brethren. Their ‘muffing’ was of a first-class order.”13

Such a description had been applied to other teams of relatively new players, regardless of racial background, so it was not uniquely condescending. Rain cut short the game in the sixth inning with Detroit apparently ahead 85-20. A few days later, however, a correction was forwarded to the paper: “The first figures [i.e. those for the Rialtos of Detroit] should have read ’33,’ a very wide difference. The Goodwills are newly organized, and have not had much practice; yet they made a very good stand against their opponents, who have played in company for several years.”14

Regrettably, no box score was included, and so the names of the Goodwills remain a mystery, at least for now. It is possible, however, that the combination of the concept of “goodwill” with the work of railway porters was the link between the tournament-playing Canadian ballplayers, their profession and their residence in London. Nor do we know the players on the Lincoln Nine. (Though we know Richard “Dick” Chrystler was not one of them!) In the small interest of correcting this omission, and not even certain any of them were ballplayers, below are London citizens listed five years later in a city directory as col’d for “colored”:15

• Meredith Adams – teamster
• Joseph Barrynight – laborer
• Wm. L. Berry-barber
• Spence Bryan – laborer
• Reuben Carney – gardener
• James Charles – barber
• Henry Chrysler – laborer
• Ed Collins – barber
• Wm. H. Dick – boot and shoemaker
• Willis Diggins – laborer
• George Duncan – laborer
• Horace Duncan – barber
• James Fountain – laborer
• James Harris – laborer
• Morris Harris – laborer
• Benjamin Johnston – laborer
• George King – plasterer
• Moses Lane – no occupation listed
• Christian Lewis – laborer
• Samuel Lewis – teamster
• Henry Logan – laborer
• Daniel McIntyre – wood sawyer
• William Moorhead – chimney sweeper
• Philip Norris – cooper
• David Phenix – laborer
• Henry Reid – barber
• Stephen Scott – laborer
• Thomas Scott – barber/laborer
• John Wilson – wood sawyer
• Richard Smith – barber
• Zachariah Williams – laborer
• John Wilson – wood sawyer
• William Wilson – barber
• Thomas Wingate – plasterer

As well as:

• The Second Baptist Church (col’d) – Rev. Thomas F. Scott, pastor
• M.E. [likely Methodist Episcopal] Church (col’d) – no pastor listed

And finally, apologies to Mrs. Julia Fountain, a laundress, Mrs. Eliza Bartlett (no occupation listed), and other women almost certainly not ballplayers in that era, but quite possibly spectators. This discovery of a fully-fledged Black community baseball initiative in London, Ontario, was unfortunately not repeated in the London Free Press the next season. Hopefully additional research may uncover more details about this significant aspect of baseball history in North America.

THE REST OF THE STORY

Organized Baseball’s apartheid process would define the game’s reach into Canada. It was a policy generally supported, rather than challenged, by Canadians, though there were some notable exceptions.

The first significant Black professional, the American John “Bud” Fowler, pitched for the Lynn (Massachusetts) Live Oaks of the International Association against the London Tecumsehs in May 1878.16 Shamefully, the London players objected to Fowler’s involvement, but the game went ahead until the Tecumsehs walked off the field in the eighth inning, ostensibly because of a call at the plate. Unfortunately, some online sources, including some sourced by SABR, downgrade Fowler’s accomplishment by not critiquing the somewhat popular characterization of the International Association as a minor league.

The Association, however, had its own independent decision-making process. It rejected attempts by the National League to arbitrate its affairs. Its lineups consisted of players who had played in the National Association, or were among the elite of those on the nearly 50 professional nines of the era, and many who would ultimately be part of the rosters of “recognized” major-league teams. The International Association provided urban spaces regardless of size, geographic location, national identity, and (however briefly) racial background with an opportunity to compete at the game’s highest level. It was if anything too far ahead of its time. It failed, as did many other National League rivals in the nineteenth century. Its breadth of city types and even its name would later be associated with the minor-league system, similarities that caused many modern appraisers to deem it as such. The concept of such a major/minor structure did not even exist at the time, however.17

The International Association’s downgrading diminishes Fowler’s accomplishment. Historians are in danger of being enablers of the National League’s one-time apartheid policy by their continuing willingness to accept the rejection by the League, and ultimately by major-league authorities, of the Association’s major-league status, and with it the seminal role of Bud Fowler. Possibly that was the whole point of the League’s objection to the International Association equal status in the first place.

The National League’s overt racism continued into the 1880s when its next significant rival, the American Association, briefly integrated. The Association’s subsequent backtracking would be the final nail in the coffin of Blacks participating in the highest levels of Organized Baseball until 1947. In 2020 Major League Baseball finally admitted its moral culpability, and recognized the statistical accomplishment of twentieth-century Black players in distinct “Negro” leagues.

Bud Fowler was invited to play in Guelph in 1881, but once again members of a Canadian team objected, resulting in his release before he caught on briefly with a team in Petrolia. So this shame knows no borders. Toronto and Hamilton were part of what was an elite minor league, the International Association (not the same league, despite its name, as that in which Bud Fowler had played in 1878), which in 1887 banned any future signing of Black players after Buffalo had played Frank Grant. Continuing this pattern of Canadian subservience to Organized Baseball’s apartheid, William Hippie Galloway, a Canadian from Dunnville, Ontario, signed on with a Canadian team, the Woodstock Bains, in the Canadian League of 1899, but was eventually released when a teammate objected. He went on to play for the all-Black Cuban X Giants.

An exception to these ongoing tragedies was Quebec’s Provincial League outside the jurisdiction of Organized Baseball in the 1930s. Several Black Americans were employed, though they were left off an all-star team scheduled to play the International League’s Montréal Royals when members of that team objected to their presence.18 In the same decade Chatham’s Colored All-Stars, an entire team of Black players, won the Ontario Intermediate B title in 1934 in a competition that was integrated, though outside the purview of Organized Baseball, and not without its moments of racial discord.19

Likewise, Black barnstorming teams traveling through Canada often enjoyed a largely Jim Crow-free experience on the railways, though they were served by Black Canadian porters for whom this was one of the few “professions” available. Finally, Canadian-born Jimmy Claxton was briefly employed in the Pacific Coast League in 1916 before his racial background resulted in his banishment; he later played for two teams in the East-West League in 1932. As such he is, to date, the only Canadian Negro League player raised to major-league identity as recently recognized by Major League Baseball.20

Only with the signing of Jackie Robinson by the Brooklyn Dodgers and his ironic placement with the Montréal Royals of the International League in 1946 did the process of integrating Organized Baseball begin. Literature in French Canada has often depicted the francophone experience in Canada as similar to that of the Black population in the United States.21

On many levels, this is a false premise. Francophones were neither victims of slavery, as in the United States, nor did they experience its American aftermath in the form of Jim Crow-type legislation; a second-class status felt by many French Canadians may, however, account for Robinson’s warm welcome in Montréal throughout the 1946 season. Manny McIntyre,22 from New Brunswick, would become the first acknowledged Black Canadian signed to an Organized Baseball contract in the modern era, but complete integration would be slow and often frustrating, the last team to integrate being the Boston Red Sox in 1959.

With Major League Baseball’s decision in 2020 to recognize the various Negro Leagues between 1920 and 1948 as major leagues, opportunities have arisen for researching the statistical record of any Black Canadians (in addition to Claxton) who played in those leagues. Still to be accomplished, however, is the belated recognition of the International Association’s major-league status, and its challenge to the National League on so many levels, including its signing of Bud Fowler. His major-league identity would help correct a record of National League apartheid too long tolerated within the baseball research community.

WILLIAM HUMBER’s five books on baseball include Diamonds of the North: A Concise History of Baseball in Canada (1995). He has been a facilitator since 1979 of an in-class and now online subject Baseball Spring Training for Fans, is an inductee into Canada’s Baseball Hall of Fame (2018), and was appointed to the Order of Canada (2022) for his baseball research. He finds it all a tad overwhelming.

 

Notes

1 London Free Press, April 20, 1869: 3.

2 London Free Press, June 19, 1869: 3.

3 London Free Press, July 23, 1869: 3.

4 London Free Press, August 21, 1869: 2.

5 London Free Press, August 3, 1869: 3.

6 London Free Press, August 5, 1868: 3.

7 London Free Press, August 20, 1869: 3.

8 Detroit Free Press, August 26, 1869: 1.

9 London Free Press, August 13, 1869: 3.

10 London Free Press, August 17, 1869: 3.

11 London Free Press, August 16, 1869: 3.

12 London Free Press, August 19, 1869: 3.

13 London Free Press, August 28, 1869: 3.

14 London Free Press, September 1, 1869: 3.

15 London City Directory 1874-5, (Detroit: Polk, Murphy and Co. publishers, 1874). Notably the listing of London citizens as colored was in this American-produced directory. Make of that what you will. Of the two Canadian publications reviewed for this period, neither listed a racial (i.e. colored) identity for anyone. They were the City of London and County of Middlesex Gazetteer and Directory 1874-75, published by Irwin and Co. 1874, retrievable at https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.8_00296J/5?r=0&s=1, and McAlpine’s London City and County of Middlesex Directory 1875, published by McAlpine, Everett and Co. retrievable through the Public Archives of Canada at https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item?op=pdf&id=e010780536_p1.

16 May 17, 1878, as reported in the New York Clipper, June 1, 1878. Lynn’s lineup had Harry Spence, William Lapham, and Patrick Gillespie, three former Guelph Maple Leafs, a team for whom the London Free Press (May 17, 1878) used the adjective “old,” suggesting that their days of glory were already consigned to the history books.

17 For further analysis of the status of the International Association, see Andrew North’s essay “The 1877 International Association Championship Game” in this volume.

18 Dan Ziniuk, “A Shameful Day in the Annals of Canadian Baseball,” Ottawa Citizen, June 21, 1998. Jackie Robinson’s contract signing with the Montréal Royals in 1945 led the Montréal Standard newspaper of October 27, 1945, to recall a 1936 incident. Several Montréal Royals players had refused to play an exhibition game against an all-star squad of Quebec Provincial League players as long as the latter had three Black ballplayers in their lineup. They were dropped and the game was played without the three receiving any of the promised gate receipts.

19 The Chatham Coloured All-Stars story is being told through “Breaking the Colour Barrier,” a partnership between the Harding family, the University of Windsor’s Department of History, the Leddy Library’s Centre for Digital Scholarship, and the Chatham Sports Hall of Fame. It was funded by an Ontario Trillium Foundation grant in 2016-2017. For details consult: http://cdigs.uwindsor.ca/BreakingColourBarrier/.

20 Email from Gary Ashwill, who maintains the Seamheads Negro Leagues Database, to David Matchett, April 22, 2021.

21 The most notable of these being Nègres blancs d’Amérique (1968) by Pierre Vallières (Montréal: Éditions Parti pris, 1967), which pluralized the racially charged “N word” in its English translated title.

22 http://www.attheplate.com/wcbl/profile_mcintyre_manny.xhtml.