Everybody has an opinion. Thank you for reading mine.
"I BEG TO DIFFER"
a weekly opinion column by Akilah Asha Jeffery
(as featured in the Sunday Morning News of Oakland, California)
(Special Note: "I Beg to Differ" ran from March of 2005 until May of 2011 when Sunday Morning News ceased production. In appreciation of the support of my readers over the years, I will continue to post popular columns from past publications on this website.)
I Beg to Differ
(Published August 15, 2010)
by Akilah A. Jeffery
The Girls of Summer
Fans of American baseball often speak of the "boys of summer," an old euphemism for American baseball players. The girls of summer are lesser known but nonetheless accomplished.
Female baseball players were portrayed in the docudrama, "A League of Their Own." The film featured a real life all-white women's baseball league during the World War II era. In one scene, a black woman served as a guest pitcher and threw out the first ball of the game. The scene symbolized that black women were also talented ballplayers even if they didn't often get the chance to play for the All American Girls Baseball League. Few people may know that the Negro league also had female players, and they played right alongside the men.
An August 8, 2010 article in the United Kingdom's "Guardian" newspaper touted 18-year old Eri Yoshida as "only the third woman in history ... to play in the US male professional baseball leagues." Of course, that statement is inaccurate. Yoshida, who plays for the minor Golden Baseball League's Outlaws of Chico, CA, is not the third woman by a long-shot.
Women played against men in professional baseball leagues as early as the late 1800s. "Bloomer Girls" clubs were mostly female or all female teams that played against male teams. One of the first Bloomer Girls clubs was the Dolly Vardens, an African American women’s baseball team in Philadelphia established in 1867. The Dolly Vardens were the first paid team, male or female, receiving a salary two years ahead of the all male Cincinnati Red Stockings team of 1869.
While African Americans were segregated to the Negro Leagues for much of the 1900s, talented novelty women players made their mark there, too. Connie Morgan, Mamie "Peanut" Johnson and Toni Stone were three African American female crowd favorites in the otherwise all-male Negro League. Excluded from the All American Girls Baseball League because of their ethnicity, Morgan, Johnson and Stone played for Negro League teams during the 1950s. A book entitled "Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone, the First Woman to Play Professional Baseball in the Negro League," by Martha Ackmann gives a biographical account of life for an African American woman in major league baseball during that time.
When "Hammerin'" Hank Aaron left the Negro League to play for the Major Leagues in 1952, Toni Stone replaced him on the Indianapolis Clowns Negro League team. She had the fourth highest batting average in the league in 1953, batting .364. That batting average was not due to a lack of competition, either. Stone played against top African American players of the day including Willie Mays and Satchel Paige.
In time women players fell out of favor in Major League Baseball and the Negro League folded. Baseball became an all-male sport, but in another era the African American girls of summer took to the fields, blazing paths for Eri Yoshida and other female professional athletes.
I Beg to Differ
(Published March
27, 2011)
by Akilah A.
Jeffery
Black Pioneers of
the Pacific Northwest, Part 1
Did a Black man
explore the western United States alongside Lewis and Clark? For generations
American school children were taught that Lewis and Clark were the brave explorers
who made their expedition out west from 1804 to 1806 with the help of
Sacagewea, a Native American chief's daughter. What the history books fail to mention is that
a Black man named York came along for the journey.
York, William
Clark's Black slave, was an invaluable member of the expedition party who
accompanied Lewis and Clark in their extraordinary journey, but York is rarely
depicted in paintings of the expedition. His name is largely forgotten, perhaps
out of embarrassment that a national hero like William Clark owned a slave.
Organizations like the Northwest African American Museum in Seattle, WA and
blackpast.org provide a wealth of such little known facts.
Although he was an
impressive historical figure, York was not the first person of African descent
to reach the western coast of North America. That distinction belonged to
Marcus Lopez who explored the west coast aboard an American ship called the
Lady Washington in 1788.
As United States
territories expanded west during the 1800s, so did the dreams of African
Americans longing to escape to a land that did not yet know societal
prejudices. Fed up with racism in
Missouri, an African American man named George Washington Bush and his wife
Isabel left for the Oregon territory by wagon in 1844. They arrived in Oregon in 1844, but unlike
other travelers Bush would not feel free to settle there. The Oregon Provincial
Government had enacted a Black Exclusion Law stating that Black travelers who
settled there could be punished by lashing, and that the authority to carry out
the punishment was vested in any White citizen in Oregon. Some citizens were
happy to carry out the punishment, so Bush and his fellow travelers continued
north to Washington's Puget Sound area.
Upon arriving in
the south sound area they cleared trees and built homes in what later became
the greater metropolitan area of Washington's state capital, Olympia. In doing this
Bush became the first known settler of African descent in the state of
Washington. His exploits became the subject of a series of paintings by African
American artist Jacob Lawrence. Bush's son, William Owen, an accomplished
farmer, was later elected to the state legislature where he drafted the bill
for the creation of the Washington State University system.
Black pioneers in
the mid 1800s faced another obstacle to settling in the northwest at that time.
They were not allowed to acquire homesteads, but they learned to be
resourceful. In 1850, another Black settler named simply George Washington
bought his property from a White family who were able to acquire the land. He
founded the city of Centralia, Washington.
Other African Americans followed and found work
on railroads, ships, in coal mines and as farmers and servants. They won public
offices in majority White towns. Their children attended integrated schools, and
for the lucky few who found themselves in Washington, opportunity was within
reach.
I Beg to Differ
(Published April 3,
2011)
by Akilah A.
Jeffery
Black Pioneers of
the Pacific Northwest, Part 2
North America's
Pacific coast was still considered a frontier for much of the 1800s. Only the
bravest and most determined settlers ventured to the far west. African Americans
were among these persevering men and women.
Oregon's Black
Exclusion Law did not stop one Black woman, Mary Jane Holmes Shipley Drake,
from remaining after settling there in 1844. Outside of Oregon, Jasper and
Belle Evans, an African American couple, found success as farmers in Yakima,
Washington.
Some African
Americans were elected to high ranking positions in majority White communities.
Mifflin Gibbs left the racism of California behind and became the first Black
elected official of Victoria, British Columbia in 1858. In 1897 a Black man
named Nathaniel Sargeant was elected Officer of the Peace in Seabeck, WA.
Some African
Americans might have crossed west along the Beckwourth Pass through the Sierra
Nevada Mountains. This pass was named after James Pierson Beckwourth, a
legendary African American fur trapper and miner who discovered the pass and
lived at various times with the Crow Indian Nation.
California's early
landscapes, gold rush towns and settlements were immortalized in the paintings
of Grafton Tyler Brown, California's first professional African American
artist. Brown, also a lithographer, owned the San Francisco-based G.T. Brown
& Co. in 1867. Brown sold the business in 1872 and opened an artist studio
in Victoria, British Columbia. He later became a member of the Portland Art
Society in Oregon. A champion of preserving the northwest's open land, Brown
produced a map of Yellowstone National Park in 1894 before dying in St. Paul,
Minnesota.
Northwest demographics
changed dramatically when 300 Black replacement workers were brought to Roslyn,
WA in 1888 during a strike at a mine.
Many more Black mine workers followed, perhaps making a stop at "Our
House." Founded by an African American named William Grose in 1861, "Our House"
was Seattle's second hotel.
Annie Kate
Garrison, the grand niece of Chief (Sealth) Seattle attended one of the first
public schools in the Kitsap area. Her father was John Garrison, the first
African American settler in Kitsap County, WA who cultivated a large land area
and operated a successful oyster farm.
African American
crews paved Spokane, Washington's famous Riverside Avenue in 1898. In 1904, the "Buffalo soldiers" of the all Black 9th Cavalry Regiment
participated in maneuvers at American Lake, Washington which later became Camp
Lewis.
Portland's Black
newspaper, "The Advocate," was established in 1903. Its slogan was, "Don't ask
for your rights, TAKE THEM." The newspaper's owner and operator after 1912 was Beatrice
Morrow Cannady, an African American female graduate of Northwestern School of
Law and a Portland attorney who helped repeal Oregon's laws prohibiting African
Americans from settling or voting in the state. By the mid 1940s African
Americans worked in Portland shipyards, Seattle aircraft factories and the
Hanford nuclear reservation.
Langston Hughes
summed up the thinking of African Americans heading west in "One Way Ticket"
(1948), "I pick up my life and take the train to Los Angeles, Bakersfield,
Seattle, Oakland, Salt Lake, any place that is north and west - and not south."
ABOUT ME I am pleased to announce my first weekly column, "I Beg to Differ," featured in the Sunday Morning News in Oakland, California, U.S.A. I grew up in Oakland, California and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and Vanderbilt University Law School. I am an immigration attorney, working to uphold the rights of immigrants and every human being. I enjoy art, music, cooking and volunteering in my spare time.
