Barnstorming Years
The Nashville Standard Giants was formed as an amateur all-Negro team in Nashville, Tennessee in the early 20th century. Tom T. Wilson took control of the club in 1918. On March 26, 1920, the team was chartered as a semi-professional team. The Standard Giants welcomed any and all competition, including white-only teams. The team was renamed the Nashville Elite Giants in 1921. This team would play independently, that is to say that they did not play in an organized league, through 1929.
Also in 1929, Wilson built a new ballpark for his team to play at, Tom Wilson Park, which also served as a spring training site for other Negro league teams, as well as white-only minor league teams. Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Roy Campanella are known to have played at the park. The 8,000 seat facility featured a single-decked, covered grandstand. The ballpark was centrally located in Nashville's largest black community, known as Trimble Bottom, near the convergence of Second and Forth Avenues. Before his death in 1947, Wilson converted the park into a dog racing track and later the Paradise Ballroom, a popular black nightclub that attracted top musical talents of the day, including Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. The structure was later demolished and is presently the site of semi-truck loading dock.
Read more about this topic: Baltimore Elite Giants
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“In these years we are witnessing the gigantic spectacle of innumerable human lives wandering about lost in their own labyrinths, through not having anything to which to give themselves.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)