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9 Denver Post Tournament Champions As the '40s began, not all loved the Clowns. Foremost among Clowns detractors was Homestead Grays owner Cum Posey. Posey doubled as a columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier, the world's largest black weekly, and was also creator of the short-lived 1932 East-West League. His motives may have been fear of losing crowds, games and players to the Clowns and a remembrance that Dad was slow to put his Cuban Stars in the East-West League and quick to pull them out because Dad made more money with his own schedule as an independent club. Posey's opposition to the Clowns was echoed by Alejandro Pompez, owner of the New York Cubans, who likely feared Dad would reclaim players Pompez stole from the Clowns. Posey, by 1945, was great friends with Dad. But in the late '30s and early '40s, he and Courier editor Wendell Smith berated the Clowns with sizzling hometown pens in Courier columns for mocking the African heritage with African names and painted faces, providing a "minstrel show." Using their exclusive forum, they told readers Dad was white but did not report that in 1933, Dad helped Ed Hamman start Ed's Canadian Clowns, a white semi-pro comedy team. The Clowns' entry into the league was delayed because the Clowns, according to Posey, acted contrary to league principles. The Courier columns did not report that Posey had built his imposing team with numbers money. So much for league principles. Criticism of the names, warpaint and use of "Ethiopian" had merit, but the source and forum resulted in unjust attacks. Clowns humor was nothing like a minstrel show. The team was good or great. The players were black and proud, and Dad loved the level of play and entertainment they achieved. In one 1940 aJ:"ticle sent to all promoters for pregame release, Dad stated, "The Clowns, who sport humorous monikers merely to accentuate their painted faces and numerous pregame stunts, are in reality the pick of players from many outstanding Negro clubs:' Lacking in dignity and 96 PART FOUR THE FORTIES frankly causing confusion and contributing to the lack of recognition of individual talents of black players so sought by Dad, the names and paint were meant as fun, not to demean or deceive, and certainly weren't Dad's invention. He could have ended the names and the warpaint when he became Hunter Campbell's partner. Likely he'd have ended them after a few icy blasts from Cum Posey and Wendell Smith, but Courier readers nationwide came to the ballparks to see what it was they shouldn't see. Cum Posey and Wendell Smith had inadvertently produced the Clowns' best publicity. The importance of the Clowns as one of the best and most influential and compelling black teams has been obscured through the years by the Courier columns, given credibility in some histories of black baseball like echoes of dead scoldings. This adherence to the Courier perspective has in effect put the Clowns in the back of the bus by either ignoring the Clowns or stating as unqualified fact the Cum Posey/Wendell Smith myth that the Clowns were a minstrel show, a perpetrator of stereotypical concepts and a perverter of black baseball. As a result, individual Clowns greats and great Clowns teams remain virtually unknown and unrecognized among those who never saw them play. Eventuallyled byJ. 1. Wilkinson and Tom Baird of the Kansas CityMonarchs , Tom Hayes of the Birmingham Black Barons and Tom Wilson of the Baltimore Elite Giants, the majority of Negro leagues owners favored the Clowns. The Clowns entered the Negro American League in 1943, agreeing to call Cincinnati home and to drop the names, warpaint and "Ethiopian" portion of their moniker. Some have sin~e reported that owners came down on the Clowns because Clowns comedy betrayed league principles and that the Clowns stopped comedy once they entered the league. None of that is true. The truth is that black baseball was never hypocritical. It was always joyous. It was never mercenary. It always struggled to survive. And while black baseball was played seriously, with risk, improvisation, aggressiveness and daring seldom seen in white baseball, it was always fun. And that was exactly how the Clowns played baseball. Negro leagues owners no more stopped Clowns comedy than they did the windmill windups, showmanship and clowning of Satchel Paige with the Kansas City Monarchs. Clowns comedy [3.129.67.26] Project MUSE (2024...

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