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"The true story of the first Black team to win an Ontario Baseball Amateur Association championship. The pride of Chatham's East End, the Coloured All-Stars featured a roster of players who drew fans to the field with their high energy, no holds-barred style of play while they confronted challenges both on and off the field. Drawing heavily on scrapbooks, newspaper accounts, and oral histories from members of the team and their families, 1934: The Chatham Coloured All-Stars' Barrier-Breaking Year tells the story of the first Black team to win an Ontario Baseball Amateur Association championship. More than a baseball story, this is a book about a neighbourhood, its citizens, and their pride in an astonishing team. Until recently, this vital story of Canada's racial history and the team's indefatigable spirit was preserved only in family stories, scrapbooks, and ephemera. 1934 introduces readers to these players and to the people who have worked to preserve and celebrate their legacy."--
About the author
Heidi LM Jacobs’ previous books include the novel
Molly of the Mall: Literary Lass and Purveyor of Fine Footwear (NeWest Press, 2019), which won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour in 2020, and
100 Miles of Baseball: Fifty Games, One Summer (with Dale Jacobs, Biblioasis, 2021). She is a librarian at the University of Windsor and one of the researchers behind the award-winning Breaking the Colour Barrier: Wilfred “Boomer” Harding & the Chatham Coloured All-Stars project.
Summary
The true story of the first Black team to win an Ontario Baseball Amateur Association championship.
The pride of Chatham’s East End, the Coloured All-Stars broke the colour barrier in baseball more than a decade before Jackie Robinson did the same in the Major Leagues. Fielding a team of the best Black baseball players from across southwestern Ontario and Michigan, theirs is a story that could only have happened in this particular time and place: during the depths of the Great Depression, in a small industrial town a short distance from the American border, home to one of the most vibrant Black communities in Canada.
Drawing heavily on scrapbooks, newspaper accounts, and oral histories from members of the team and their families, 1934: The Chatham Coloured All-Stars’ Barrier-Breaking Year shines a light on a largely overlooked chapter of Black baseball. But more than this, 1934 is the story of one group of men who fought for the respect that was too often denied them.
Rich in detail, full of the sounds and textures of a time long past, 1934 introduces the All-Stars’ unforgettable players and captures their winning season, so that it almost feels like you’re sitting there in Stirling Park’s grandstands, cheering on the team from Chatham.
Foreword
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