In the nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries baseball was played in nearly every town and village across the country. "Baseball was THE sport in the 1950s,” writes baseball historian Bruce Adelson in his book, Brushing Back Jim Crow: The Integration of Minor League Baseball in the American South.  “What happened in a baseball stadium had a huge impact on the society. Seeing Black and white players together on the field, and Black and white fans sitting together, had a significant and decisive role in the larger integration of society.”

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As baseball great Hank Aaron observed in his autobiography, I Had a Hammer, “A Black man, crossing home plate and shaking hands with a white teammate in the segregated South in the 1950s had enormous power.” But when Jackie Robinson debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, the world of white baseball did not rush to embrace integration. It was not until 1959 that the last major league team, the Boston Red Sox, finally added a Black player to their roster.

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And if the signing of African American players was slow at the major league level, it was downright glacial at the minor league level, especially as white Southern racism and Jim Crow laws enshrining the separation of races dictated the integration of minor league teams in the South. Segregation did not mean African Americans did not play baseball prior to the arrival of Jackie Robinson, however. Rock Hill and York County have a rich and vibrant history of Black athletes every bit as talented as their white counterparts engaging in the National Pastime at both the amateur and professional levels.

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An 1889 issue of the Yorkville Enquirer, for example, reported “The colored baseball clubs of Clover and Yorkville played a match game on the grounds of the latter last Friday afternoon, which resulted in the favor of the Yorkville club by a score of 20 to 23.” The next year that same paper reported on a game played “between the White Hill and the Black Jack (colored) clubs. They had an exciting but nice and quiet game, which was witnessed by many people.”

Rock Hill, too, had a team that played in these multi-county African American town leagues. It was noted that “a great many whites” attended these contests and that betting on the outcomes was quite common.

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Most of the textile mills in the region fielded baseball clubs that drew large crowds to their games. For the mill workers and their families, baseball “provided recreation, competition, and community pride for players and spectators alike” wrote Thomas K. Perry in his book, Textile League Baseball: South Carolina’s Mill Teams, 1880-1955. But as with all aspects of life in the South at the time, teams were separated along racial lines. Many Southern mills fielded Black textile league teams. The ABCs of Rock Hill were well known in the region as an excellent squad. A 1921 issue of The Evening Herald attested to that fact when it commented that “the colored boys have SOME team, several of them, if they were white, would be in the big leagues.”

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From the late-1930s through the mid-1940s, the semiprofessional Rock Hill Giants (also known as Elite Giants) took on all comers, including one of the oldest professional Black teams in the country, the Brooklyn Royal Giants, and the House of David, a traveling white team associated with the Benton Harbor, Michigan, religious community, the Israelite House of David. The House of David players were known for their distinctive long hair and beards as well as their baseball skills. These games were played at either the Highland Park Stadium or the Municipal Stadium.

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Traveling African American teams also appeared in York County. On May 7, 1940, a contest between the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Ethiopian Clowns, both teams in the Negro Leagues, made their appearance at Highland Park Stadium. Pregame festivities included an appearance by Olympic gold-medalist Jesse Owens, who made a second appearance the following year racing a motorcycle. Two years later the Detroit Black Sox took on the barnstorming Southern Black Travelers.

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In 1948, Rock Hill partnered with Raleigh, NC, to create the Raleigh-Rock Hill Tigers, one of twelve teams in the newly organized minor league Negro American Association. This professional league lasted two seasons and included such teams as the Atlanta Black Crackers and the Homestead Grays. The Tigers were managed by baseball promoter Catfish Mayfield, who also managed the Rock Hill ABCs, a semiprofessional team (not the mill league team of the same name) formed in the 1940s.

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A York County Negro Baseball League existed at various times from the late-1940s through the mid-1950s. Amateur teams were organized from towns and businesses in the area, including Sharon, Fort Mill, Rock Hill, Van Wyck, Catawba, Lesslie, and Newport, to play against each other for the league championship.

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By the early 1950s it was clear that segregated baseball was coming to an end. As major league teams added more African American players to their rosters and used their farm clubs to develop young Black talent, it was inevitable that the color barrier among Southern-based minor league teams would fall as well. In 1951 minor league franchises in Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina were the first to begin the process of integrating organized ball in the South. Although in none of these cases did the Black player last more than a few weeks, the door had been opened. By the mid-1950s there were Black players on many Southern minor league rosters who not only lasted the entire season but were often the best players on the team.

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Rock Hill became the first minor league team in South Carolina to attempt integration when the Rock Hill Chiefs signed Lancaster native David Mobley to a contract in late August 1952. Mobley was well known in the area as a talented semiprofessional ballplayer who had played mixed-race ball while in the service during World War II and later for the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League. When word of his acquisition became public, it sparked a maelstrom that nearly tore the league apart. Teams from Greenville and Spartanburg threatened to withdraw from the league if the Chiefs allowed him to take the field on the night of August 16, 1952, while Chiefs management wavered on to how to respond.

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Although Mobley took the field and was quite successful that evening, this was the only game he would ever play for the Chiefs. The club kept the young outfielder on its roster but never allowed him to take the field again because of fears the league would be disbanded if he played in another game. The Chiefs made no other attempts at integration but remained in the Tri-State League until the league folded after the 1955 season.

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The Chiefs’ failure in 1952 did not stop the march toward full integration of minor league ball in South Carolina. In 1954, the Columbia Reds of the Class A South Atlantic League permanently broke the color barrier in the state by acquiring three Black players, including 18-year-old future Hall-of-Famer Frank Robinson. The future two-time major league MVP played the following season for Columbia before moving up to the Cincinnati Reds in 1956.

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That is not to say that Southern white fans and team owners instantly accepted African Americans on their teams. Black players for these clubs often suffered indescribable verbal abuse and sometimes threats of physical violence just to play a game they loved. Sadly, the fight for civil rights in baseball, especially in the South, lasted well into the 1960s, as it did in society at large.

 

Rock Hill was without a minor league franchise until 1963, when the Rock Hill Wrens joined the newly formed Class A Western Carolinas League. The Wrens’ season opened with one African American player on its roster, pitcher Marvin Barber, who was in the Cincinnati Reds farm system. Barber pitched four games for Rock Hill before being optioned to the Tampa Tarpons in the Florida State League. Known as the Cardinals by 1965, the team included three Black players and an African American assistant to the team’s manager Sparky Anderson. By the time the team was renamed the Indians in 1967, all the minor league teams in South Carolina had Black players, ending segregated baseball in the state.