Chris Lamb - Stolen Dreams: The 1955 Cannon Street All-Stars and Little League Baseballs Civil War

It was a long time ago.

I have almost forgotten my dream.

But it was there then,

In front of me,

Bright like a sun

My dream.

And then the wall rose,

Rose slowly,

Slowly,

Between me and my dream.

Rose until it touched the sky

The wall.

Shadow.

I am black.

I lie down in the shadow.

No longer the light of my dream before me,

Above me.

Only the thick wall.

Only the shadow.

My hands!

My dark hands!

Break through the wall!

Find my dream!

Help me to shatter this darkness,

To smash this night,

To break this shadow

Into a thousand lights of sun,

Into a thousand whirling dreams

Of sun!

Langston Hughes, As I Grew Older (1925)

I met Gus Holt in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2012, when I was teaching journalism at the College of Charleston.

Historian Steve Hoffius, a mutual friend, told me about the 1955 Cannon Street All-Stars and suggested I write their story. I had never heard of the team. Steve introduced me to Gus. Gus and I then met at the colleges library. He came to our meeting with several folders full of research. Gus and I probably met a dozen times over the years and he almost always brought research with him.

I received my PhD more than twenty-five years ago, and Ive been a college professor longer than that. Gus, who had a high school diploma, was a better researcher than a lot of people with PhDs. He was intrepidas a researcher and as a man, whether he was challenging bigotry in the East Cooper Recreation Department, organizing reunions for the Cannon Street All-Stars, urging reporters to tell the teams story, reviving Little League Baseball in Charleston, or struggling with the overwhelming health issues of loved ones or the health issues that eventually took his own life.

This is the story of the 1955 Cannon Street All-Stars. But it is really Guss story, even though he didnt live to see the publication of the book. Gus brought the story back to life and willed it into something that transcended the saga of eleven- and twelve-year-olds being denied the chance to play baseball because of the color of their skin. Gus understood what I finally understood myself: The Cannon Street All-Stars are part of a much larger story of how racial bigotry poisoned the people of Charleston and so many others since the arrival of the first slave ship. People continue to suffer and die every hour of the poison of bigotry because much of white America denies the existence of this virulent virus. This virus is particularly toxic among children because it takes away their dreams, as Langston Hughes wrote about in his poem HarlemA Dream Deferred.

I initially told Gus I wasnt interested in writing the book. I was working on other books. I would be leaving Charleston soon to take a job at Indiana UniversityPurdue University at Indianapolis. There would be so many other things gnawing at my time.

But when I got to Indianapolis, I couldnt get the story out of my head.

Trey Strecker, then the editor of Nine: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, asked me to give the keynote speech at Nines spring-training conference. I talked about the Cannon Street team. I kept getting deeper into the story. I met Mike Lennox, the executive director of Play Ball Indiana, an affiliate of RBI , Reviving Baseball in the Inner Cities, which gives boys and girls the opportunity to participate in baseball and softball. Mike asked me to talk about the Cannon Street All-Stars during a fundraising for the organization.

Whenever my wife, Lesly, son, David, and I went to see my in-laws, Dan and Eleanor Jacobs, in Charleston, I went to the Avery Research Center, which includes archives of the Black experience in Charleston, and to the South Carolina room of the Charleston County Public Library, where I looked at 1955 newspaper articles about the Cannon Street All-Stars. I often met with Gus, who kept asking me questions. If I didnt know the answer or if I answered incorrectly, he would stare at me in disbelief. I finally got to the point when I could answer his questions, and his stare turned to a smile as he said, You got it.