The Cannon Street Little League Baseball Team (1955)

I played Little League Baseball in 1958/59, Long Island, NY.

I did not know Black boys could not play against white boys, I did.

To learn about the Cannon Street team in Charleston, S.C., having to travel by school bus some 700 miles to Williamsport, Pennsylvania in 1955 for a Little League World Series game they knew they would not be able to play is mind-boggling.

Note:

“Before white supremacists stood outside newly integrated schools to prevent Black children from attending, they stood at the edge of Little League baseball fields to prevent Black boys from playing baseball with White boys.”

These boys were just boys. Some had never left the south or had been away from their parents overnight. Having been winners in South Carolina they were now seen as pariah’s in the north.

Years later, 2002, the boys, now men, were honored at the Little League World Series, receiving a banner for winning their state title back in 1955.

Sad.