1955 Little League Team from Charleston, S.C., to be Honored at Little League Baseball World Series

WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. (Aug. 6, 2002) – In the summer of 1955, the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, prohibiting segregation of public schools, was only a year old. A few months later, an African American seamstress named Rosa Parks would refuse to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Ala.

The Cannon Street YMCA Little League All Stars stayed with the rest of the teams in the dorms of Lycoming College in Williamsport.

In the summer of 1955, fourteen boys from the Cannon Street YMCA Little League in Charleston, S.C., were looking forward to entering the Little League Tournament, along with tens of thousands of other boys in all 48 U.S. states and several other countries. Like all Little League players their age, they knew the tournament ended for a lucky few with a trip to the Little League Baseball World Series in Williamsport, Pa.

In the summer of 1955, there were 62 chartered Little League programs in South Carolina. All but one of those leagues – the Cannon Street YMCA Little League – was composed entirely of white people. Until then, no South Carolina teams with African-American players had entered the post-season tournament.

In the summer of 1955, every one of those 61 white leagues refused to play the Cannon Street YMCA team.

The Cannon Street YMCA Little League All Stars watch a game from the stands at Original Field.

“We were only 12 at the time, so we just didn’t understand it,” John Rivers, one of the team members, said. “It was all the adults who were making it happen.”

The white leagues’ contention: Little League officials in Pennsylvania should not be able to meddle in the internal affairs of local Little League programs in South Carolina.

Little League refused to budge: If the white leagues refused to play a duly franchised league, regardless of race, they would not be permitted to participate in the tournament. The white leagues staged their own, whites-only, tournament. Not only that, the leagues formed their own program: Dixie Baseball for Boys.

The mass exodus left only one “legal” team in South Carolina – the Cannon Street YMCA team which played its home games, ironically, only a few miles from Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the U.S. Civil War were fired nearly 90 years earlier. However, Little League Tournament Rules said all teams advancing to another level must have played and won the previous tournament’s title.

Therefore, while the Cannon Street YMCA Little League had played a full regular season of Little League ball, and chose an all star team to represent it, it was prevented by Little League policy from entering the playoffs. However, Little League invited the team to Williamsport for the World Series. The Cannon Street team, guests of Little League, experienced all the things any other Little League World Series team would, including bunking in Lycoming College dorms – except they did not play a game.

The Cannon Street YMCA Little League All Stars, as they appeared on July 20, 2002, at  Charleston Riverdogs game. The team is accompanied by local Little Leaguers wearing replica uniforms like those worn by the Cannon Street YMCA Little League in 1955.

Little League ended up losing hundreds of franchises over the controversy as white leagues in the South left the program en masse. Yet the incident remains one of the organization’s shining moments.

To commemorate that moment, the surviving members of the 1955 Cannon Street YMCA Little League all star team will be honored during opening ceremonies of the 2002 Little League Baseball World Series at 2 p.m. on Aug. 16 at Little League Volunteer Stadium.

“There is no way to right the wrong perpetrated on the boys of the Cannon Street YMCA Little League team, just as there is no way to right the wrongs perpetrated throughout history on people because of their skin color,” Stephen D. Keener, president and chief executive officer of Little League Baseball, said. “Little League will be honored to have the Cannon Street team with us as our special guests.”

The team players are: John Bailey, Charles Bradley, Vermont Brown, William Godfrey, Vernon C. Grey, Allen Jackson, Carl Johnson, John Mack, Leroy Major, David Middleton, Arthur Peoples, John Rivers, Norman Robinson, and Maurice Singleton. Alternates are Leroy Carter and George Gregory. Coaches and founders are Lee J. Bennett, Walter Burke, Rufus Dilligard, A.O. Graham, Robert Morrison, R.H. Penn, and Benjamin Singleton. Honorary team member, and one of the driving forces behind the move to help honor them, is Charleston American Little League president Augustus Holt.

© 2002, Little League Baseball Incorporated

article provided by: http://www.littleleague.org/media/archive/cannonstreet.htm

Film to recall ‘Cannon Street Boys’

Moviemakers to tell story of Charleston youths denied place at 1955 Little League World Series
By: YVONNE WENGER
The Post and Courier
Tuesday, June 24, 2008

A little-known saga was being written in Charleston at the same time that Jackie Robinson was breaking color barriers on the national baseball scene.

The story Jason Scott first saw on ABC’s “Nightline” three years ago about the all-black team from Charleston that was denied its shot at a Little League World Series title played out the same year Rosa Parks refused a seat in the back of an Alabama bus. It was only a year after the U.S. Supreme Court ended school segregation.

“It is one of those moments in time, it was at a point in history — the story has not been told to the extent that I believe it deserves,” said Scott, who along with longtime friends Ben Hammock and Joe Pinto will turn the drama and heartbreak of the 1955 Cannon Street YMCA All-Stars into a film.

“The research shows they had a very good chance of being one of the better teams in South Carolina and in the United States, and they weren’t given the chance to prove that,” Scott said.

The Charleston men were awarded one of three 2008 Production Fund grants, each worth up to $100,000, from the S.C. Film Commission. The

money is intended to help develop the state’s movie industry by pairing professionals with students.

“The Cannon Street Boys” will be about 30 minutes long and will employ about 10 Trident Technical College students.

The film is in casting, Hammock said, and hopefully will include cameos, if possible, of the All-Star players. It might include as extras the children who now play at the YMCA.

Back in 1955, the All-Stars made it to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa., by default because South Carolina’s white teams refused to play against them. The boys, ages 11 and 12, traveled to Pennsylvania but were told it was against the rules for them to play because they had advanced based on forfeited games.

The team was invited back to Williamsport in August 2002 to receive a 1955 championship banner.

Filming on the movie is scheduled to wrap up by the end of October. The finished product is due this time next year.

The grants are a way to help new artists, the state’s students and professionals while raising the bar for film production in South Carolina, state Film Commissioner Jeff Monks said. The short films are eligible to compete in international film festivals and, in turn, could promote South Carolina and its colleges and universities.

“I was pretty blown away about it,” Hammock said of receiving the grant.

Hammock and Scott both have experience in the field, including work on “Army Wives” and “The Patriot.” For the “Cannon Street Boys,” Hammock will serve as producer and Scott will hold the position of director and producer.

Pinto wrote the script, which he said he fictionalized in parts, mostly to help condense the story. He will be the lead writer and producer. They brought on a fourth friend, Michael Poplin, to serve as production designer.

Hammock noted, though, that so far the film has been a community effort. For example, they were given office space at reduced rent by the Cigar Factory on East Bay Street.

The filmmakers also are relying on local expertise to tell the story. They called on team historian Agustus Holt and Paul Stoney, president of the Cannon Street YMCA.

Stoney said he believes the story offers a number of lessons.

“We should never allow politics or any form of divisions to impact our children,” he said.

For Holt, the state will benefit from the additional exposure of what the All-Stars endured. Their story has been told on ESPN, “Nightline” and other places, including a book by Margot Theis Raven, “Let Them Play.”

“It is a true civil rights story,” Holt said.

Reach Yvonne Wenger at 803-799-9051 or ywenger@postandcourier.com.

article provided by: http://charleston.net/news/2008/jun/24/film_recall_cannon_street_boys45436/