Wilberforce University:—I. Lane, all-round star athlete: T. Reid, football star; S.H. Hull, basketball star; L. Townsend, baseball star.
BASEBALL
“Play Ball.”
From early spring until late fall,
This Nation’s hobby is baseball;
And while such season is in reign
Few men or boys do stay real sane.
—Harrison.
Cris Terriente, Colored champion home-run hitter and out-fielder, and known as the Cuban “Babe Ruth”, was a marvel even several years ago when he played in the United States with the famous Colored teams, American Giants of Chicago and the All-Nationals of Kansas City. This Colored ball player has been frequently estimated by white baseball critics as being an equal home-run hitter to the celebrated “Babe Ruth”, whose services were sold by a Boston team to a New York team for over one hundred thousand dollars. And one of those well-meaning white critics, when commenting on the wonderful baseball playing of Terriente, so far forgot his “square-deal” and one hundred per cent Americanism as to allow some of his grayless brain matter and stagnant watery thoughts to soak through his system and overflow into his pen point that splashed little puddles of poisoned ink. In his article he lamented the fact that it was impossible to “indelibly white-wash” Terrente so as to make him white enough to be accepted as a playing member on one of the Big League White baseball teams.
Now, if that same baseball critic had entered the United States Army as either a volunteer or a draftee in the World War and had been dying of thirst on the bloodsoaked and bone-strewn plains of “No Man’s Land”, it is wondered if he would have thought it necessary to “indelibly white-wash” Colored soldiers before accepting from their black lips, and greedily pressing to his own parched white lips, the begged-for water canteens of the Colored soldiers? For such exchanges of canteens between generous Colored and dying white soldiers occurred thousands of times and in not one instance did those famished white men allow color prejudice to stand between them and a few mouthsfuls of left-over Colored water that meant the saving of their lives. Nevertheless, a majority of those soldiers whose lives had been saved by the timely swallows of water from the canteens of black soldiers, immediately resumed their persecution of and discriminations against the Negro race even before they got back home to America.
Thus while history shows that the majority of white people, when in the jaws of threatened or actual death, become too “color-blind” and “near-sighted” to see the hue of the hand or the shape of the face that comes to its help and vital rescue; history also shows that a great many white people, while in the pink of life, health and prosperity, allow their visions to become so magnified and their minds to become so overrun and soaked with vile race prejudice that they constantly see imaginary color-lines that really do not exist. They also are constantly building up before law-abiding, clean-living and progressive classes of Colored people certain racial barriers that are not only proving a stain but also a shame (in the eyes of the rest of the onlooking world) upon this land of freedom, civilization and Christianity. But at this time and place the writer will not go further into this particular phase of this color-line subject, as it is being more fully dealt with in the writing of one of his other books.
Fair-minded white people are justly ashamed of the words and actions of such members of their race as the above mentioned reporter, and already bright rays of hope are beginning to shine in the Big League for Colored baseball players. In this direction The Continental League with headquarters at Boston, Mass. and formed by the white baseball magnate, Andrew Lawson, has really wedged the first opening. At the formation of this league, Lawson admitted two Colored teams, one from Providence, R. I. and the other from Boston, the latter team having both Colored and white players. This is the greatest bit of encouragement Colored professional baseball players in America have ever received. The chairman of the Board of Directors of The Continental League is R. T. Murray, a Colored man. This league’s influence for the spreading of broad-mindedness and fair-play is already being noticed among the officials of other white Big Leagues. At the end of the baseball season of 1920, Colored teams were allowed to play against many of the big white league teams on their barn-storming tours.
During that season Bolden’s Hilldale team played against Connie Mack’s team of All-Stars at the National League Park, Phila., Pa., in which game Bolden’s team lost by a score of 2 to 1.