Learn About Black Baseball in RI

Continue the April celebration of Fenway Park’s 100th birthday with a baseball scholar on Tuesday night, April 24, at the Barrington library.

Rhode Island College history professor and author Robert Cvornyek will talk about “black baseball in Rhode Island from 1883 to 1949.” The free talk starts at 7 pm.

During the late 19th and early 20th century, baseball occupied an important social and cultural space in Rhode Island's African-American community, according to Cvornyek.

Black athletic clubs, fraternal and civic organizations, and local neighborhoods sponsored semi-pro and amateur teams that regularly competed against each other and nearby white teams. These athletic contests strengthened racial identity, fortified community, and showcased a distinctive form of cultural and artistic expression, according to Cvornyek.

By 1883, black teams in Newport and Providence initiated the long and storied history of black baseball in the Ocean State. Later, under the talented leadership of men like Daniel Whitehead, the father of Rhode Island black baseball, the game grew in popularity and produced several of the finest, although unrecognized, athletes in the state's sport history, Cvornyek said.

Cvornyek specializes in sports history. He is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research, North American Society for Sport History, and the Pop Lloyd Committee.

His talk is sponsored by the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities and the Friends of the Barrington Public Library.