An potentially astonishing integrated baseball find... tell me what you think!

[dbrown]

Great photo and research. The crop marks indicate this photo was used in the weekly — have you looked through the 1935 Sporting News?

FWIW here's a good story that focuses on the 1935 tournament.

https://www.cncmsbl.com/history/inte...ring-jim-crow/

"The historical significance of the tournament, however, has less to do with the Bismarcks being crowned the first national semi-pro champions than with the presence of racial diversity among the participants.

The eleven thousand black and white fans on hand in Wichita, Kansas, to see the Bismarcks battle the Duncan (Oklahoma) Cementers for the ten-thousand-dollar first-place prize, however, were witnesses to something more significant than a championship baseball game.

...

Four different races will be found in the list of 32 clubs,” reported the Wichita Beacon. The Memphis Red Sox, San Angelo Sheepherders, Denver Stars, Texas Centennials, and Monroe Monarchs were teams comprising all black players.’ In addition to all-black teams, the Nipponese Stars were Japanese and the Stanolind Indians were Native Americans.’ However, the most racially diverse team was the Bismarcks, considered one of the best teams in the country with its victories over both the American League All-Stars and the Kansas City Monarchs the previous year. The Bismarcks presented a team of five white and six black players.’

Twelve years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier of major league baseball, the integrated Bismarcks, as well as the other black teams, played without incident before tens of thousands of fans in Wichita, Kansas.

The participation of black players without incident in the 1935 Wichita tournament was no accident. The previous fifteen years had exposed Wichitans regularly to African Americans and whites playing interracial baseball. This history had largely prepared them to accept teams like the Bismarcks in 1935."