- Bismarck Churchills
The Bismarck Churchills were an integrated semi-professional
baseball team based inBismarck, North Dakota in the 1930s. Led by Satchel Paige, Moose Johnson, and Double Duty Radcliffe, the club won the 1935 national semi-pro baseball tournament in Wichita, Kansas.The Churchills played independently of any league because their mixed race roster was a problem in a period of segregation, and because there were no formal leagues at the semi-professional level in North Dakota in the 1930s. The team was owned by
Neil Churchill , a local car dealer who owned the city's Chrysler dealership, and regularly played against Valley City, Jamestown, and other teams across North Dakota and Manitoba.Although the club is recalled as the "Churchills" today, the team was not formally named in the 1930s, as North Dakota newspapers such as the "Bismarck Tribune" simply referred to the club as the "Bismarcks" in 1935. The team was also referred to as the "Giants" (written on old team photo)
Notable players
*Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe (1934)
*Leroy "Satchel" Paige
*Quincy Trouppe
*Hilton Smith
*Moose JohnsonReferences
* [http://www.pitchblackbaseball.com/northdakotabaseball.html#northdakotawhipsbigleagues McNary, Kyle P. 'North Dakota Whips Big Leagues', " Pitch Black Baseball" (2001)] Retrieved
July 25 2005 .*Roper, Scott C. 1993. "Another Chink in Jim Crow? Race and Baseball on the Northern Plains, 1900-1935." "NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Social Policy Perspectives" 2 (1) 75-89; reprinted in Bill Kirwin, editor, "Out of the Shadows: African American Baseball from the Cuban Giants to Jackie Robinson" (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005) 81-93.
*Roper, Scott C. 1994. "A Summer in North Dakota: Uncovering Satchel Paige's 1935 Season." "Baseball Research Journal" 23, 51-54.
*Roper, Stephanie Abbot. 1993. "African Americans in North Dakota, 1800-1940." Master's Thesis, Department of History, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND.
* [http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/primer/hom_discussion/28163/ Various 'Hall of Merit discussion:Ted Radcliffe', "Baseball Think Factory" (2005)] RetrievedJuly 25 2005 .
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