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Miriam Wright

Miriam Ontario

The Clio Prizes

2024

Miriam Wright, Sporting Justice: The Chatham Coloured All-Stars and Black Baseball in Southwestern Ontario, 1915-1958. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 2023.

Miriam Wright’s Sporting Justice offers a compelling history of the Chatham Coloured All-Stars baseball team, and in so doing situates the story of this small-town Ontario team within the broader contexts of racial and class tensions in the first half of 20th century North America.  Methodologically, it represents the best in oral history, drawing on a rich collection of interviews to highlight the many ways that Black players and their families fought for excellence in sport in the face of economic and racial marginalization. The author beautifully captures the spirit of resistance in the voices of those who are interviewed. In Wright’s account, the achievement of winning the 1934 Ontario Baseball Amateur Association championship was as much about earning respect for Black communities as it was winning the big game. With a deft writing style, Wright’s book meaningfully contributes to histories of class, gender, and race. In vigorously pursuing this “outlet through sport” in a world of extremely limited options, Wright shows how Black players were able to leverage their baseball success to challenge racism in “white” spaces – on and off the playing field.