A history of the Chatham Coloured All-Stars, the first Black team to win an Ontario amateur baseball title in 1934. Sporting Justice situates the team in a broader history of Black baseball in Chatham and southwestern Ontario, exploring themes including racism in sport, gender, class, and social justice.
Although many know about Jackie Robinson's experiences breaking major league baseball's colour barrier in 1947, few are familiar with the Chatham Coloured All-Stars, a Black Canadian team from 1930s Ontario who broke racial barriers in baseball even earlier. In 1933, the All-Stars began playing in the primarily white world of organized amateur baseball. The following year, the All-Stars became the first Black team to win a provincial championship.
Sporting Justice begins with a look at a vibrant Black baseball network in southwestern Ontario and Michigan in the 1920s, which fostered the emergence of the Chatham Coloured All-Stars in the 1930s. It follows the All-Stars' eight years as a team (1933-1940) as they navigated the primarily white world of amateur baseball, including their increasing resistance to racism and unfair treatment. After the team disbanded, Chatham Coloured All-Stars players in the community helped to racially integrate local baseball and supported new Black teams in the 1940s and 1950s.
While exploring the history of Black baseball in one southwestern Ontario community, this book also provides insights into larger themes in Canadian Black history and sport history including gender, class, social justice, and memory and remembrance.
1: Introduction
2: Living in a Racialized World: Chatham's East End and the Black Community in the 1920s and 1930s
3: Origins: Early Black Baseball in Chatham, Buxton, and London, 1915-1927
4: A New Black Baseball Team in Chatham, 1933
5: Playing in Racialized Spaces: The 1934 Chatham City League Season
6: Becoming the All-Stars: The 1934 OBAA Championship
7: New Opportunities and Continued Racial Conflict in the 1935 Season
8: "All we ask is a fair break": Baseball and Sporting Justice in the Chatham Coloured All-Stars' Later Years
9: After the All-Stars: Racial Integration, and the Next Generation of Black Baseball, 1940-1958
10: Conclusion: Baseball and Memory: Reflecting on Race, Heroes, and the All-Stars Years
• Relates to topical stories of sports and race (eg., Colin Kaepernick)
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Expands on Black history, history of race in Canada (troubles the idea that Canada is more benevolent and that there was no racism or segregation here, which many people believe)
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For sports historians and sport sociologists
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Accessible for the general reader interested in baseball history
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Chatham Coloured All-Stars to be recognized by Canadian Sports Hall of Fame in 2022
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Another book on this team will be published in May 2023 but is for general reader and only follows their championship year. (Tentative title 1934: The Chatham Coloured All-Stars' Barrier-Breaking Year) – not our book
"Miriam Wright's hard-hitting analysis of Black baseball in Southern Ontario follows teams and players who contested the explicitly racialized social order of the early twentieth century. Drawing on testimony from Wilfred 'Boomer' Harding, Ferguson Jenkins Sr., King Terrell, and other Chatham Coloured All-Stars, this marvellous study follows their struggle for social justice on and off the field. With their 1934 Provincial Intermediate B Championship, the All-Stars rose above vicious racism to fashion a legacy of community and racial pride that continues to resonate. Brilliantly connecting baseball to memory, identity, and social meaning, Wright delivers a grand slam. This exemplary study is sport history as it should be crafted." - Colin Howell, Department of History, Saint Mary's University
"Sporting Justice is a unique study of a Canadian community rarely explored through the lens of sport, especiall
