Touching Base: Race, Sport, and Community in Newport
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Touching Base: Race, Sport, and Community in Newport Robert Cvornyek During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, baseball occupied an important social and cultural space in Newport’s African-American community . Black athletic clubs, fraternal and civic organizations, and local neighborhood associations sponsored semi-professional and amateur teams that regularly competed against each other and nearby white teams . These teams functioned independently, but some found a home in the city’s organized amateur leagues . Whether independent or affiliated, these ball clubs represented Newport’s black neighborhoods and functioned as agents in the formation of racial identity and community . Equally important, minority players transformed the city’s ball fields into public spaces dedicated to the struggle for equality . In 1930, for example, William H . Jackson, an African-American political activist and Republican Party leader, reported to the Newport Daily News that he had recovered one of his community’s lost treasures . The cherished item, a silver trophy cup, stood approximately ten inches high and bore the following inscription: “ Won by the Newport Baseball Club, July 4, 1884 .” The Newports, an all-black team, won the cup and claimed title to the city championship by defeating the Live Oaks, an all-white team, by a score of 12 to 5 . The contest attracted an “overflow” crowd at Polo Lot, one of the few integrated public recreational spaces in Newport . The recovery of the trophy called to mind the role baseball once played in contesting white superiority, crushing negative stereotypes of black athleticism and promoting community through sport . This memory, set within Handwritten box-score that features Marcus Wheatland Jr. playing for the Orioles in 1921. the context of America’s national holiday and pastime, reminded Jackson and others that PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF GEORGE D. DONNELLY JR. baseball was their game too .1 The history of African-American baseball in Newport occupies a significant, but untapped, source of information on the city’s social and cultural past . Newport’s black community established Rhode Island’s first black team, the Newports, in 1879 and routinely sent late nineteenth-century teams to Providence to compete in Emancipation Day celebrations . Newport witnessed the first non-white player to integrate the city’s amateur Sunset League, Marcus Wheatland Jr ., in 1920 . Wheatland’s father, a prominent doctor and pioneer in X-Ray technology, served as one the League’s earliest umpires . The city produced black state championship teams, like the Unions in 1908, and hosted professional Negro League teams that barnstormed through New England .2 Newport’s historic connection and rivalry with Providence repositions the local black game in a broader statewide context . Both cities established stable African- Touching Base: Race, Sport, and Community in Newport v 1 American communities during the nineteenth century that later embraced the national pastime following the American Civil War . In Providence, the first successful efforts to organize black teams occurred at approximately the same time as Newport . The Providence Colored Grays, for example, initiated play in 1886 just a few years after the Newports 3. The Providence Colored Giants replaced the Grays by 1902 and experienced a nearly uninterrupted run into the 1930s . In a similar vein, the Union Athletic Club initiated play in 1908 and continued, but not continuously, into the mid-1930s . African Americans in Providence integrated the city’s amateur leagues a bit later than Newport, but clearly in advance of integration at the national professional level . In 1926, for instance, the Providence Colored Giants assembled a team that included white players and gained affiliation in the previously all-white Providence Suburban League .4 Emancipation Day celebrations held at Rocky Point, in Warwick, customarily included a championship game that pitted the best black team in Newport against its counterpart in Providence . In fact, many of the earliest games to feature black teams and players took place on Emancipation Day observed on the first Monday in August . African Americans from across the state and throughout the region gathered at Rocky Point to commemorate the abolition of West Indian, not American slavery . The annual festival served as one of the community’s most significant cultural events . By the late nineteenth century, baseball became a featured attraction in Rhode Island that drew crowds, sometimes in the thousands, to watch teams square off against one another . These teams represented various sponsors and covered a spectrum of athletic talent . They included makeshift “picked nines,” supported by the black affiliates of fraternal organizations like the Odd Fellows, Knights Templar, and Elks, as well as organized semi-professional clubs from Providence and Newport . In 1883, the Newports defeated the Providence Whackers by a score of seven to six, to claim the state’s first black championship banner . In 1886, Providence retaliated and won its first title after the Colored Grays defeated the Newport-based Puritans by a tally of 11 to 6 5. There were times, however, when opposing African-American teams met in friendly competition for fun and camaraderie . This was certainly the case when players representing the Canochet Lodge of Newport and the Hope Lodge of Providence, both associated with the Grand Union Order of Odd Fellows, met in an amusing contest in 1893 . According to the Providence Journal, “the majority of the Newporters were arrayed in pink negligee shirts with black ties and at once became the especial pets of the ladies, who looked upon Daniel Whitehead, known as the Father of Black Baseball in Rhode the game as one of appearance rather than playing ”. 6 Competition between the cities Island, established and managed the Providence Colored Giants. lasted until the turn of the twentieth century . Thereafter, Emancipation Day games were (This photograph has been reproduced before. It originally appeared in the Providence Journal in 1908.) played between black teams from Providence that sought a city-wide championship . The change, most likely, occurred after Providence’s Golgathy Commandery of the Knights Templar assumed sponsorship of the celebration .7 2 v Newport History Touching Base: Race, Sport, and Community in Newport v 3 In the midst of this rich history, two examples help substantiate the relationship between race and sport and offer a glimpse into the community’s construction of racial identity . One story relates to the remarkable playing career of Herbert Wosencroft and the other recounts a memorable game at renowned Cardines Field in 1947 . Wosencroft’s case exemplifies the growing body of scholarship that finds racial attitudes and boundaries more fluid and complex at the local sports level, especially during the era of the Great Migration when millions of African-Americans moved from the South to urban areas of the North beginning in the early twentieth century . In Newport, for example, individual African Americans desegregated previously all-white teams while Wosencroft excelled in basketball and cross-country. His athletic talent earned him a place in the others simultaneously competed on all black teams . All of this occurred before 1921, Rogers High School Athletic Hall of Fame. ROGERS YEARBOOK, 1929. COURTESY OF THE ROGERS HIGH SCHOOL ALUMNI ASSOCIATION. the year when the first truly integrated team, the Orioles, fielded a team “composed partly of colored players and whites” to compete in the city’s amateur Sunset League 8. The standard Jackie Robinson narrative of “exclusion to inclusion” in American sport history simply fails to explain racial dynamics at the local level . The second example “New England Cross-Country features the presence of a professional Negro League team, the Baltimore Elite Giants, at Champions”: The Red & Black: Cardines Field in 1947 . This case illustrates that Newport’s black fans refused to abandon Graduation Number, 1928. Natalie Dunn, ed., Gladding their support for all black teams even in the face of Robinson’s successful integration of Print, May 23, 1928, white professional baseball . Newport’s black fans understood perfectly that racial identity p. 24. FROM THE COLLECTION was shaped and determined by teams that represented their sensibilities, struggles, and OF GEORGE D. DONNELLY, JR. cultural aesthetics . COURTESY OF THE ROGERS HIGH SCHOOL ALUMNI ASSOCIATION. Herbert L . “Tweet” Wosencroft left an unforgettable legacy as a multi-sport athlete in baseball, basketball, and track and field . Born and raised in Newport, Wosencroft attended Rogers High School where, as a junior, he was selected to the first All-Rhode Island All-Star Basketball Team in 1928, an honor he also received during his senior year . In addition to his achievements on the court, Wosencroft’s fellow classmates celebrated Tweet as a mainstay on the school’s New England Championship Cross County team, record setter on the track team, and exemplary teammate on the baseball club . His yearbook inscription read that, “everything he has is always put into the game and Herbert Rosencroft is all the praise, which may be given, is justly due him .”9 second from the right, first row. “Basketball,” Wosencroft was born in 1909, the son of Herbert and Lucy Lee Wosencroft . The Red & Black: He married Ethel Louise Allston in 1937 and, together, the couple raised four sons Basketball Number. and seven daughters . In 1935, he accepted the position of Newport City Sergeant, a Natalie Dunn, ed., civil service job he held until his resignation in 1942 . He exchanged this livelihood Gladding Print, April 4, 1928, p. 13. for the Post Office where he worked for the next thirty-seven years until his retirement Photograph by in 1979 . He remained active in civic and fraternal organizations and served as the Samuel Kerschner. Assistant Secretary of the Douglass Republican Club, a member of the Credentials FROM THE COLLECTION OF GEORGE D. DONNELLY, JR. Committee for the state Republican Party; and Knights Chancellor in the Galahad Club .