Black History

New St. Paul baseball museum chronicles local Black history

MINNESOTA SPOKESMAN-RECORDER — St. Paul, more than many other U.S. cities, is uniquely responsible for the growth of baseball in this country, including helping to end its nearly century-long racially exclusionary ways. The city’s new baseball museum’s main goal is to help tell that story.

Published

6 years ago

May 15, 2019

Oakland Post

By Charles Hallman

St. Paul, more than many other U.S. cities, is uniquely responsible for the growth of baseball in this country, including helping to end its nearly century-long racially exclusionary ways. The city’s new baseball museum’s main goal is to help tell that story.

The City of Baseball Museum, located on the third-base side of the St. Paul Saints’ downtown stadium, opens May 16, the same day as the team’s 2019 season opener. It is free to the general public during stadium hours as well as to fans at Saints games.

Laid out in historical timeline fashion, extending from the late 19^th Century to the present, City of Baseball features an estimated 160 baseball images, 100 related artifacts, and nine interactive exhibits. Black baseball and St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood, where Black players lived during their time here, are prominently featured.

Rondo has a “cultural significance,” Saints Senior VP and General Counsel Michael Goldklang told the MSR during the May 9 media sneak preview. “We have a photo frame of the Rondo highlights. It talks about how players would come in and stay in hotels and played baseball.”

For many years, St. Paul has served as a feeder team for the major leagues, and after World War II, several future Hall of Famers, such as Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, and other Black baseball players played here either on the home team or with the visitors.

“Black baseball is central to the history of St. Paul,” Goldklang said. “A lot of people don’t know the pre-Jackie Robinson [days]. We honor the St. Paul Colored Gophers… They weren’t affiliated with the Negro Leagues but played in an era preceding the Negro Leagues.”

The museum’s “On The Map” feature, located on the museum’s floor, highlights the locations of all of St. Paul’s ballparks and the childhood homes of several local baseball legends. “It’s amazing to see how close Toni Stone grew up around Dave Winfield’s [home] and how close that was to where Roy Campanella lived when he was on the St. Paul Saints,” Goldklang pointed out.

Stone, who grew up in St. Paul, was the first Black female to play in the Negro Leagues. Campanella’s 1951 World Series bat he used while playing for the then-Brooklyn Dodgers is among the museum artifacts.

“I believe Roy Campanella was the first African American baseball player in the American Association,” Goldklang continued. “The Saints had the first African American pitcher, and [he] pitched for the Dodgers, too. Dan Bankhead didn’t have a career like Jackie [Robinson] did, but he broke barriers just like Jackie did.”

The new museum is the longtime vision of Michael’s father, Saints Principal Owner Marv Goldklang. “He wanted to recognize the connection the state and this city have had with the larger story of baseball,” Michael stressed. “Part of this museum is to help tell that story, and tell that in terms of how it interconnected with the City of St. Paul itself.”

Asked if the City of Baseball Museum will help attract more Blacks to the downtown stadium, especially with its Black baseball emphasis, Michael Goldklang said, “If there is a way to reach out and share our joy of baseball with that community, I’d love to have that.

“The Black community doesn’t have to [be the only ones to] learn about Black baseball. I think the White community and everybody should [learn] about Black baseball.”

This article originally appeared in the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Up Next

OP-ED: Jamestown to Jamestown: Commemorating 400 Years of the African Diaspora Experience

Don't Miss

Dwyane Wade thanks Gabrielle Union for not dumping him

Oakland Post

Click to comment

Activism

Four Bills Focus on Financial Compensation for Descendants of Enslaved People

This week, CBM examines four more bills in the package — each offering ways for Black Californians to receive restitution for past injustices — from housing assistance and reclamation of loss property to fairer pay and the establishment of a state agency charged with determining eligibility for reparations.

Published

2 days ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

iStock.

Edward Henderson
California Black Media

Last week, California Black Media (CBM) provided an update on four bills in the California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC) 2025 Road to Repair package.

The 16 bills in the Black Caucus’s 2025 “Road to Repair” package focus on “repairing the generational harms caused by the cruel treatment of African American slaves in the United States and decades of systemic deprivation and injustice inflicted upon Black Californians,” said the CLBC in a release.

This week, CBM examines four more bills in the package — each offering ways for Black Californians to receive restitution for past injustices — from housing assistance and reclamation of lost property to fairer pay and the establishment of a state agency charged with determining eligibility for reparations.

Here are summaries of these bills, information about their authors, and updates on how far each one has advanced in the legislative process.

Assembly Bill (AB) 57

AB 57, introduced by Assemblymember Tina McKinnor (D-Inglewood), would require that at least 10% of the monies in the state’s home purchase assistance fund be made available to applicants who meet the requirements for a loan under the home purchase assistance program and are descendants of formerly enslaved people.

The Assembly Judiciary Committee is currently reviewing the legislation.

Assembly Bill (AB) 62

AB 62, also introduced by McKinnor, would require the Office of Legal Affairs to review, investigate, and make specific determinations regarding applications from people who claim they are the dispossessed owners of property seized from them because of racially motivated eminent domain. The bill would define “racially motivated eminent domain” to mean when the state acquires private property for public use and does not provide just compensation to the owner, due in whole or in part, to the owner’s race.

AB 62 is currently under review in the Judiciary Committee.

Senate Bill (SB) 464

SB 464, introduced by Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (D-Los Angeles), aims to strengthen the existing civil rights laws in California concerning employer pay data reporting. The bill mandates that private employers with 100 or more employees submit annual pay data reports to the Civil Rights Department. These reports must include detailed demographic information — including race, ethnicity, sex, and sexual orientation — pertaining to their workforce distribution and compensation across different job categories. Furthermore, beginning in 2027, public employers will also be required to comply with these reporting requirements.

The Senate Committee on Labor, Public Employment, and Rules is currently reviewing SB 464. A hearing is expected to be held on April 23.

Senate Bill (SB) 518

SB 518, introduced by Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson (D-San Diego), establishes the Bureau for Descendants of American Slavery to address and remedy the lasting harms of slavery and the Jim Crow laws suffered by Black Californians.

SB 518 is under review in the Senate Judiciary Committee. A hearing is expected to be held on April 22.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Arts and Culture

BOOK REVIEW: Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss, and Legacy

When Bridgett M. Davis was in college, her sister Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

Published

2 days ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

Love Rita Book Cover. Courtesy of Harper.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author: Bridgett M. Davis, c.2025, Harper, $29.99, 367 Pages

Take care.

Do it because you want to stay well, upright, and away from illness. Eat right, swallow your vitamins and hydrate, keep good habits and hygiene, and cross your fingers. Take care as much as you can because, as in the new book, “Love, Rita” by Bridgett M. Davis, your well-being is sometimes out of your hands.

It was a family story told often: when Davis was born, her sister, Rita, then four years old, stormed up to her crying newborn sibling and said, ‘Shut your … mouth!’

Rita, says Davis, didn’t want a little sister then. She already had two big sisters and a neighbor who was somewhat of a “sister,” and this baby was an irritation. As Davis grew, the feeling was mutual, although she always knew that Rita loved her.

Over the years, the sisters tried many times not to fight — on their own and at the urging of their mother — and though division was ever present, it eased when Rita went to college. Davis was still in high school then, and she admired her big sister.

She eagerly devoured frequent letters sent to her in the mail, signed, “Love, Rita.”

When Davis was in college herself, Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

First, they lost their father. Drugs then invaded the family and addiction stole two siblings. A sister and a young nephew were murdered in a domestic violence incident. Their mother was devastated; Rita’s lupus was an “added weight of her sorrow.”

After their mother died of colon cancer, Rita’s lupus took a turn for the worse.

“Did she even stand a chance?” Davis wrote in her journal.

“It just didn’t seem possible that she, someone so full of life, could die.”

Let’s start here: once you get past the prologue in “Love, Rita,” you may lose interest. Maybe.

Most of the stories that author Bridgett M. Davis shares are mildly interesting, nothing rare, mostly commonplace tales of growing up in the 1960s and ’70s with a sibling. There are a lot of these kinds of stories, and they tend to generally melt together. After about fifty pages of them, you might start to think about putting the book aside.

But don’t. Not quite yet.

In between those everyday tales, Davis occasionally writes about being an ailing Black woman in America, the incorrect assumptions made by doctors, the history of medical treatment for Black people (women in particular), attitudes, and mythologies. Those passages are now and then, interspersed, but worth scanning for.

This book is perhaps best for anyone with the patience for a slow-paced memoir, or anyone who loves a Black woman who’s ill or might be ill someday. If that’s you and you can read between the lines, then “Love, Rita” is a book to take in carefully.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Activism

Faces Around the Bay: Author Karen Lewis Took the ‘Detour to Straight Street’

“My life has been a roller-coaster with an unlimited ride wristband! I was raised in Berkeley during the time of Ron Dellums, the Black Panthers, and People’s Park. I was a Hippie kid, my Auntie cut off all our hair so we could wear the natural styles like her and Angela Davis.

Published

2 days ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

Karen Lewis. Courtesy photo.

By Barbara Fluhrer

I met Karen Lewis on a park bench in Berkeley. She wrote her story on the spot.

I got married young, then ended up getting divorced, raising two boys into men. After my divorce, I had a stroke that left me blind and paralyzed. I was homeless, lost in a fog with blurred vision.

Jesus healed me! I now have two beautiful grandkids. At 61, this age and this stage, I am finally free indeed. Our Lord Jesus Christ saved my soul. I now know how to be still. I lay at his feet. I surrender and just rest. My life and every step on my path have already been ordered. So, I have learned in this life…it’s nice to be nice. No stressing, just blessings. Pray for the best and deal with the rest.

Nobody is perfect, so forgive quickly and love easily!”

Lewis’ book “Detour to Straight Street” is available on Amazon.