- On a warm summer day back in July of 2021, contributing producer and editor Dorothy Dickey asked Rhode Island artists April Brown to take us on a tour of Kinsley Field, home of the Providence Colored Giants.

The team played integrated baseball years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the Major Leagues in 1947.

- So here we are at Kinsley and Acorn Street.

Imagine in 1919 this was a huge field.

- [Michelle] What was this field used for back then?

- So this was the place where community could come and see fireworks and see boxing, soccer, and football.

- And what about baseball?

= In the 1920s, this location was where you could see amateur and professional baseball events.

This was the location you could see Black teams playing against White teams.

And in 1931, this became the home field of the Providence Colored Giants, Rhode Island's first professional Black baseball team.

(gentle music) - Kinsley Park was built in the early 1920s.

The geographic significance really rests with an old trope in sports history, which is there's a lot of ballparks which are built on railroad property.

large pieces of property which railroads no longer use and they become ball fields.

Kinsley Park is probably synonymous with Rhode Island's featured minor league baseball team, the Grays.

And really the park is built with the Grays in mind, and that's where you see incredible professional teams coming in and out.

Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig played there in an exhibition game.

Kinsley Park had always been an enclosed stadium, which was what made it so special.

Professional teams, or semi-professional teams, almost exclusively sought out stadiums where people had to pay to enter.

Daniel Whitehead, or Big Dan Whitehead, is oftentimes referred to as the father of Black baseball in Rhode Island.

He's referred to that because in 1905 he establishes the original Providence Colored Giants.

In 1908, he incorporates the team and it becomes Rhode Island's first money-making African-American team.

Arthur Daddy Black comes to Rhode Island in the early 1880s from South Carolina.

He becomes involved in what was then called the numbers.

This is as early as 1924.

The numbers racket was an illegal gambling scheme based on lottery numbers, and he's incredibly successful at that.

So that by the early 1930s he is the numbers king of Rhode Island.

So he has a significant amount of income.

One of the things that Arthur Black became involved in very early, in fact, as early as 1924, is supporting African-American baseball teams.

And then in 1931, full owner of the Providence Colored Giants.

Arthur Black was very much interested in creating a professional team with professional players.

In 1931 there were players who were scrambling for contracts.

The professional Negro Leagues, as they were called back then, went under because of the Great Depression and because of the death of Rube Foster, who had organized the league back in 1920.

Arthur Daddy Black is able to sign some of the most incredible Black baseball talent along the East Coast to play up in Providence.

Again, because he can promise them a weekly check.

And those payments, from what I gather, were pretty good.

And for the first time, really, Providence has a Black professional baseball team in '31.

Their home field is Kinsley, and they pack Kinsley and they showcase some of the best baseball talent, period, Black or White.

One of the most talented players that Arthur Black was able to sign for the Providence Color Giants was Oliver Marcelle.

Marcelle had established himself as the premier third baseman in Black baseball.

I mean to the point where in 2006, he was shortlisted for induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

But one of the interesting things about African-American baseball in Rhode Island during this time is the way in which African-Americans negotiated segregation or the racial barrier.

In baseball, you see integration occurring much sooner than you see it occurring in other walks of life.

The White teams were happy to have the Black team because the Black team was always a draw.

People came to see the incredible Black talent.

It also opened up a fan base to African-American fans.

Folks would go to church and then they would come back from church and they would go right to the games.

Sometimes wouldn't even change out of their Sunday clothes.

It was a wonderful sort of social and cultural event for the community.

When we're talking about the 1920s, baseball and money sort of go hand in hand, and integration and money go hand in hand.

So essentially what happens in 1931, is that Daddy Black's professional team doesn't do as well as he had expected.

In fact, he has a major disappointment at the Polo Grounds in New York when his team doesn't do all that well against Bill Bojangle's team, the Harlem Stars, which would later become the New York Black Yankees.

And Arthur Black walks away from that team in '31 and Dan Whitehead comes in to take over the Providence Colored Giants in 1932.

Arthur Black was very much in favor of a contract in which players were paid regularly.

Daniel Whitehead had always agreed that the players should split the gate.

And when Daniel Whitehead informs the players that they're no longer getting a regular paycheck as they did under Daddy Black, in fact they're gonna have to split the gate, the players mutiny, they refuse to play.

And as a result of that, the team falls apart.

You know, the fans want their money back.

For Black, you know, the game was important but the game was a business opportunity.

But for Whitehead, that was his life.

You know, Whitehead was a player.

You know, Whitehead, back in 1905, shared time on first base or right field, and very close to his players, very different sort of relationship than the business relationship that Black had.

So when the players mutiny in '32, Whitehead walks away from the game, and dies a year later, pretty much brokenhearted really.

In a boarding house, penniless separated from the game that I think he loved so much.

And in 1932, prohibition is coming to an end and money streams for organized crime are drying up.

And as a result of that, people are looking to take over territories and Black is murdered for his territory.

Whitehead passes, Daddy Black is murdered, and Kinsley Park, you know, this sacred ground, is torn down and it all ends by the early 1930s.

You know, sports is oftentimes an avenue which can not just mirror what's going on in the broader society, but can also change what's going on in the broader society.

Rhode Island does experience integration, at least in baseball, a lot sooner or a lot quicker than its neighboring states.

Baseball has always been a local game, enjoyed by local fans.

As much as integration is needed and desired and fought for, it's bittersweet because all Black baseball games on a Sunday afternoon had meant so much to the community.

That celebratory event and the men who lived in those communities and played that local game, no longer existed.

But Kinsley Park was the place where they showcased their talent.

(gentle music) (gentle music)