Western League Baseball Grounds

Oklahoma City had organized baseball almost from its inception. The Oklahoma City Indians were in the Western League of minor league baseball from 1918-1932, winning the league championship in 1923. Ralph Ellison and Jimmy Stewart often watched Indians baseball games from the vantage of a nearby bluff which overlooked the riverside park.

While as children, Ralph Ellison and Jimmy Stewart often watched Indians baseball games on the margins of the Western League Baseball Stadium, the grounds themselves were sometimes welcoming to Black children. Ellison, remembering fondly the music programs of Mrs. Zelia Breaux of Douglass school, described the playing field under very different circumstances. "On May Day children from all of the Negro schools were assembled on the playing field of the old Western League baseball stadium, the girls in their white dresses and the boys in blue serge knickers and white shirts, and there to the music of the Douglass High School Band, we competed in wrapping dozens of maypoles and engaged in the mass dancing of a variety of European folk dances. As was to be expected, there were those who found the sight of young Negroes dancing European folk dances absurd, if not comic, but their prejudiced eyes missed the point of this exercise in democratic education. For in learning such dances, we were gaining an appreciation of the backgrounds and cultures of our fellow Americans whose backgrounds lay in Europe. And not only did it narrow the psychological distance between them and ourselves, but we saw learning their dances as an artistic challenge."

Ellison, Ralph. Going to the Territory. New York City, New York. Vintage, 1986.