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| Zulu Cannibal Giants | |
|---|---|
| Information | |
| League |
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| Location | Louisville, Kentucky |
| Year established | 1934 |
| Year disbanded | 1937 |
The Zulu Cannibal Giants were an American Negro league baseball team (they referred to themselves as a Baseball "Zulu Tribe", based on a concept inspired by the war in Ethiopia), formed in 1934 by Charlie Henry in Louisville, Kentucky.
The Zulu Cannibal Giants gained notoriety for their propensity to turn a baseball game into a comedy performance, much in the same way that the Harlem Globetrotters did with basketball many years later. The Zulu Cannibal Giants decorated their faces and bodies with African tribal paint, went shirtless, wore only grass skirts, used special custom-made baseball bats crafted to supposedly resemble Ethiopian war clubs, and always played barefoot. [1] The players did not use their real names, but rather played under "native" names, as shown in a game lineup from 1935 listing: "Wahoo, right field, Limpopo, first base," among others. [2]
Promoter Syd Pollock's booking agency scheduled games for the Cannibal Giants in 1935. [3] Pollock also managed a similar novelty team called the Indianapolis Clowns (also known as the Cincinnati Clowns, and the Ethiopian Clowns). [4]
Popularly regarded as a Negro league team, they technically were not accepted members of the formal league.
Although the team was extremely popular with the public, some black athletes disapproved of the Cannibals because of the stereotype. [4] The team, "shows the depths people would go to exploit African-Americans," says author Phil Dixon. [5] A popular player, John "Buck" O'Neil, wrote in his autobiography that, "looking back on it, the idea of playing with the Cannibal Giants was very demeaning". [6]
The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams of African Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the seven relatively successful leagues beginning in 1920 that are sometimes termed "Negro Major Leagues".
Oscar McKinley Charleston was an American center fielder and manager in Negro league baseball. Over his 43-year baseball career, Charleston played or managed with more than a dozen teams, including the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords, Negro league baseball's leading teams in the 1930s. He also played nine winter seasons in Cuba and in numerous exhibition games against white major leaguers. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1976.
William Hendrick Foster was an American left-handed pitcher in baseball's Negro leagues in the 1920s and 1930s, and had a career record of 143–69. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996. Foster was the much-younger half-brother of Rube Foster, a Negro league player, pioneer, and fellow Hall of Famer.
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William Julius "Judy" Johnson was an American professional third baseman and manager whose career in Negro league baseball spanned 17 seasons, from 1921 to 1937. Slight of build, Johnson never developed as a power threat but achieved his greatest success as a contact hitter and an intuitive defenseman. Johnson is regarded as one of the greatest third basemen of the Negro leagues. In 1975, he was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame after being nominated by the Negro Leagues Committee.
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John Jordan "Buck" O'Neil Jr. was a first baseman and manager in the Negro American League, mostly with the Kansas City Monarchs. After his playing days, he worked as a scout and became the first African American coach in Major League Baseball. In his later years he became a popular and renowned speaker and interview subject, helping to renew widespread interest in the Negro leagues, and played a major role in establishing the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2022 as an executive.
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Toni Stone, born as Marcenia Lyle Stone in West Virginia, was the first of three women to play professional baseball full-time for the Indianapolis Clowns, in the previously all-male Negro leagues. This also made her the first woman to play as a regular on an American big-league professional baseball team. A baseball player from her early childhood, she went on to play for the San Francisco Sea Lions, the New Orleans Creoles, the Indianapolis Clowns, and the Kansas City Monarchs before retiring from baseball in 1954. Stone was taunted at times by teammates, once being told, “Go home and fix your husband some biscuits,” but she was undeterred. It has been widely reported that during an exhibition game in 1953, she hit a single off a fastball pitch delivered by legendary player Satchel Paige, although this is also disputed.
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Edward Arnett Davis, nicknamed "Peanuts", was an American Negro league pitcher in the late 1930s, throughout the 1940s, and into the early 1950s. He sometimes used the pseudonym "Peanuts Nyasses" when playing baseball for iterations of the Clowns in Miami, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis. He was often called the "Clown Prince of Negro Baseball" by sportswriters who saw him play. But the sportswriters also acknowledged that in addition to clowning, he was considered "one of the top pitchers in Negro baseball;" in fact, many fans, believed he was as talented as the much better-known Satchel Paige. Davis was also praised for his versatility. "He’s a brilliant hurler...and a standout also if stationed anywhere in the outfield or infield."
shows the depths people would go to exploit African-Americans
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