BY CHARLIE MARSHALL

 

No one is born with prejudice. Nor does it grow from within over time. It is not a naturally occurring phenomenon. Prejudice is taught, nurtured and developed from outside influence. It is not surprising then that on a sunny day in 1955 a group of young boys, both black and white, played baseball in the streets of Charleston. What is surprising is what happened next: A police car arrived to separate the boys and end the game, using prejudice to combat a joy born from unity. Why would the police not just let them play?

      Just a few feet from where they first learned to play baseball, John Robinson, Leroy Major and Vermont Brown sat in the gym of Burke High School, next to Harmon Field, as they reminisced about that game and others in the street with a comfort and chemistry unique to childhood friends. More than 60 years ago, these three men were original members of the Cannon Street YMCA Little League, the first and only African-American league in South Carolina sanctioned by Little League Baseball. This February they reunited back in Charleston, where they were honored with a plaque for their part in a struggle that has linked them together their whole lives.

      In 1955, they were among 15 boys chosen for the Cannon Street All-Star team—a team that despite never playing a single game has been called “the most significant amateur team in baseball history” by former Little League President Creighton Hale for its battle against its one opponent: prejudice.

      Since the first shot at Fort Sumter, Charleston has played an important role in the racial story of America. The 1955 Cannon Street All-Stars drew national attention to prejudice at the height of the Civil Rights era, and now, as the nation and the city are once again in the midst of racial tension, it begs the question: what impact has the team’s experience had on the world we live in today?

 

 

 

In 1955, just a year after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, the team of talented young black players set out to do what no all-black team had ever done before—compete with hopes of reaching the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Penn.

      Leroy Major, now dependent on a cane to support his massive frame and sporting a snow-white beard, remembers his days as the pitcher of that fabled team like it was yesterday. “Our coach sat us down in a circle and he told us we’d be playing the white teams and asked, ‘Leroy, you think you can handle that?’ ” Major recalls. “I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ We all did.”

      “We didn’t think anything of it; we’d played with those boys in the neighborhood all the time,” Major adds. “But within the next week, he sat us down again and said that we weren’t playing anymore, and we didn’t know why.”

      The team never got the chance to compete. Shortly after they announced their plans to enter the city tournament, Charleston officials, under pressure from white parents, canceled rather than integrate. Then, after local white community members failed to gain permission to hold a segregated regional tournament, league officials and parents of the other teams in the state organized a mass boycott, refusing to play an all-black team. When no team would play the All-Stars, they were named the South Carolina State Champions by forfeit.

      However, due to a Little League Baseball rule stating that no team could advance to Williamsport via forfeit, the team’s season was cut short before it ever truly began. The Cannon Street All-Stars petitioned Little League President Peter McGovern to make an exception, but fearing for the team’s safety if they continued any further, he declined.

      Although their season would end there, their story would not. Thanks to McGovern and the Cannon Street YMCA director and team coach Robert F. Morrison, two men who proved that prejudice need only grow if you allow it, the All-stars were invited to attend the World Series as guests, and they were granted a practice session on the field before the championship game, a practice that spurred chants of “Let them Play” from the crowd. Despite the wishes of those 15 young boys and the Williamsport crowd, the team was not allowed to compete.

      “We didn't get it. Nobody cared, at least none of the kids. Pennsylvania, the winner of that year’s tournament, came up to us and said, ‘Hey, you guys want to play now?’ So we sat and talked with the other teams. We even signed autographs for the girls,” John Robinson boasts.

      But still, nobody would let them play.

      “I’m not sure we understood back then; the adults shielded us from it at the time. But when I sat and finally thought about that summer, tears came to my eyes,” Major remembers, “because I thought, adults stole kids’ dreams.”

 

 

 

The day the team returned to Charleston with their dreams unfulfilled, Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi. Soon after, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to submit to Jim Crow laws in Alabama. And more than a half-century later, just a few months after the Cannon Street All-Stars were honored on Harmon Field for their fight against discrimination, Charleston found itself in the national spotlight after the shooting of Walter Scott.

      Yet the Cannon Street YMCA, the building that gave birth to the story of the ’55 All-Stars, still stands in the center of the city. It is one of the oldest continuously operating Ys in the country, having opened to serve the African-American community just after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. For more than a century it has been both a symbol and a setting of the fight for racial progress in our country.

      Today, the Cannon Street Y is still serving the inner-city black youth. “Those doors are open everyday to kids, to teens, for volunteers,” says Program Director Sedric Webber. “Whoever walks through, we want to do what we can to help the community.”

      The Y offers several programs year round, such as flag football and its Young Achievers program, a college prep course for teens who want to continue their education and work toward a degree.

      About 10 kids attend the afterschool program at the Cannon Street YMCA. “They come and do homework, play and get dinner every night,” explains Myra Chamble, director of childcare for the Y. “Most of them participate in the sports programs we have.”

      However, when asked about the impact that the legacy of the ’55 All-Stars has had on the Y, Chamble fails to see any tangible effects. “Other than the plaque out front, none,” she says.  

      Though the Cannon Street Y continues to be a vital part of the community, it is in danger of having to cut its afterschool programs due to the lack of participants and funding.

      A story can only be measured by the impact it has on those who hear it, so some might question the value of the All Stars’ story. There was never a 1956 Cannon Street All-Stars, nor any year after that. Sixty years after the Little League boycotts, the news is filled with the loss of black lives, including Charleston’s own Walter Scott, and “let them play” has become “let them live.”

      But the Cannon Street All Stars’ story is important. The injustice they faced has gone down in civil rights history, and that plaque at Harmon Field is a permanent reminder of the importance of standing up to the fiercest of opponents—the importance of the team’s struggle to let them play.