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South Carolina leagues refused to play the 1955 Cannon Street All-Stars, leading to the all-black squad's exclusion.
©Associated Press
August 16, 2002
CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Even 47 years later, Vermont Brown has few doubts how his Cannon Street YMCA All-Stars would have fared at the Little League World Series.
"We would have won the whole thing," said Brown, then a pitcher and first baseman and now a 58-year-old semiretired aviation worker. "We were that good."
Few questioned the team's talent in 1955, only its skin color.
The same year Rosa Parks made headlines for refusing to move to the back of an Alabama bus, the group of black 11- and 12-year-olds became part of a little-told saga in civil rights.
The squad was declared state champs after the 61 all-white leagues in South Carolina refused to play it in the state playoffs.
The Cannon Street All-Stars were invited to the World Series but then banned because Little League president Peter McGovern said they did not earn their berth on the field.
"What's that they say? 'Kids don't mess things up. Only the adults,"' said William "Buck" Godfrey, a Cannon Street All-Star.
Godfrey, teammates and coaches will be honored today during the opening ceremonies of the Little League World Series, marching behind a banner they never used.
Brown said he remembers the team's pitching, power, speed and defense. Cannon Street formed an all-star team after the season, poised to become the first minority club to play in the state tournament.
But white administrators balked despite 1954's Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that struck down the "separate but equal" standard that had ruled the South.
McGovern said if the leagues refused to play Cannon Street, they would forfeit the playoffs.
As a result, the white teams left for their own program, Dixie Baseball for Boys. That became the Dixie Youth Baseball leagues that still exist in 11 Southern states, including Florida.
As the only legal Little League team in South Carolina, Cannon Street YMCA was crowned champion by default. Still, McGovern was bound by rules to exclude Cannon Street from the Series, said Lance Van Auken, the national Little League spokesman.
Van Auken said the same decision banning Cannon Street likely would be made today.
But the ceremony is "Little League's way of recognizing these players," he said. "They were 12-year-olds who couldn't understand why ... because they had black skin they weren't allowed to play."
Some connected with Cannon Street believe the white teams realized they were overmatched.
"It was about segregation, but it was also about protectionism," said Gus Holt, considered the historian of the Cannon Street All-Stars. "Who wants to be the first white team to lose to a black team in the all-American game of baseball?"
Cannon Street was invited to the Little League World Series. A school bus carried it to central Pennsylvania, the first time most of the players had traveled so far from home. They found an acceptance they rarely felt among whites in the South's Jim Crow days.
They were cheered and asked for autographs. They stayed in the same Lycoming College dorms as other teams.
Leroy Major, who pitched and played centerfield for Cannon Street, said he remembered the team showing up for a World Series breakfast and sitting at its own table.
"They told us, "No, no, no, sit with all the teams,"' he said. "They treated us like real all-stars."
Until the tournament began.
Brown said he recalled Cannon Street warming up on the field and the crowd chanting, "Let them play! Let them play!"
"It kept getting louder and louder," Brown said.
But the players went to the stands to watch the others vie for a title they expected to win.
Well after their experience, the players understood their role in the battle for civil rights. Godfrey, who became a championship football coach at Southwest DeKalb High in Decatur, Ga., said it was not until the mid 1960s that he was hit by what happened.
"I've told my team to watch for us on TV because we're a living history lesson," Godfrey said.
Major received a letter last year from a youngster in Pennsylvania who thanked the team.
The team's legacy is honored in its hometown. A plaque at Charleston's Joseph P. Riley Park, home of the Rays' Class A affiliate, the RiverDogs, calls the Cannon Street All-Stars, "The Team Nobody Would Play."
At a RiverDogs pregame ceremony this season, local Little Leaguers stood alongside the 1955 team.
"The players were white, black, Hispanic, all races," Holt said. "We're not there, but we've come a long way."