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

4 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.

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March on Washington, August 1963

By Gay Elizabeth Plair Cobb

Gay Plair Cobb

Editor’s note: The “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” brought an unprecedented throng to the National Mall on Aug. 28, 1963. From every corner of the U.S., marchers came to demand fair wages, economic justice, an end to segregation, voting rights and long overdue civil rights. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his incomparable “I Have a Dream” speech on that day. Below, Gay Plair Cobb shares her remembrance.

“Sleepy eyed, joining the early morning-chartered bus ride from New York City to Washington, DC … exhilarated, but not knowing what to expect in the late August heat

…. the yearning for justice, solidarity with others on the journey, the possibility of new legislation, and also the possibility of violence … We just did not know.

In the end, there were an amazing 250,000 of us, awed and inspired by Mahalia Jackson, John Lewis, Dorothy Height, James Farmer and, of course, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Dream that became our North Star is still our North Star 60 years later and into eternity. Grateful to have been a foot soldier then. Still grateful now.”

Poster for March on Washington.

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Dr. Col. Guion Stewart Bluford Jr. Image courtesy of NASA.

By Jennifer Levasseur, Vickie Lindsey, and Amy Stamm

Forty years ago, on Aug. 30, 1983, Guy Bluford flew into history as the first Black American in space.

Despite launch delays totaling six weeks, the spectacular first night launch of a Space Shuttle brought full circle NASA’s promise of a more inclusive astronaut corps.

Following Sally Ride (America’s first female astronaut) by just two months, Bluford’s spaceflight aboard Space Shuttle Challenger provided another visible moment when more young people could see and be inspired by people like themselves flying into space.

Bluford served as a mission specialist on the STS-8 mission and his jobs were to deploy an Indian communications-weather satellite, perform biomedical experiments and test the orbiter’s 50-foot robotic arm.

Following that first mission, he flew three more times to space on STS-61A, STS-39, and STS-53. By the time of his retirement from NASA in 1993, Bluford had spent more than 28 days in space over the four missions.

At the time of his first mission, Bluford was a 40-year-old Air Force officer with a doctorate in aerospace engineering.

Reluctant to be in the spotlight, his goal was not to make history, but fly into space, do his job, and return safely.

Growing up in a middle-class household in the 1950s and 1960s with educated parents (his mother was a teacher, and his father was a mechanical engineer), Bluford was raised to believe that he could do anything he wanted despite racist social restrictions.

He enjoyed math and science, particularly in school. Ignoring the advice of his high school advisor to learn a trade or skill, Bluford went on to college to earn his undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering at Penn State University in 1964, also finishing as a distinguished Air Force ROTC graduate.

After his decades of service to the aerospace community in a variety of roles, having spoken dozens of times about his astronaut career and work in aviation, Dr. Guion Bluford was recently appointed by President Joseph Biden as a member of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Advisory Board.

Editor’s note: Jennifer Levasseur, Vickie Lindsey and Amy Stamm are writers for a NASA blog