Picked up this image of the 1905 Harvard team, featuring William Clarence Matthews, in Leland’s. I’ve been looking for an image of Matthews for about five years to fill I hole in a collection of images related to baseball’s color line.
Matthews went on to play for an integrated team in Vermont before leaving baseball. Boston’s Traveler newspaper wrote at the time:
“Because his skin is black he can never play on any but itinerant colored nines that at best eke out a hand to mouth existence.
With all its insurmountable handicaps, baseball is not the place for Matthews.
He should begin the battle for life somewhere else.”
And so he did.
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