Tracking the teams and names at the heart of Black baseball in Chattanooga
For nearly a century, the game flourished in a segregated city.
By William Newlin
From the Tigers to the Stars, Black baseball teams flourished in Chattanooga for decades
Charles White, father of Hall of Fame footballer Reggie White, played baseball in Chattanooga at a turning point for the sport.
Despite the MLB beginning to integrate in 1947, Chattanooga baseball remained segregated from the pros down to the little leagues into the 1960s.
A member of the professional Chattanooga Stars and other semi-pro and amateur clubs, White, now 84, remembers when regional leagues finally integrated.
“When we broke the barrier of white and Black, man, it was amazing to see the Black and the white teams get together and play with each other,” White said. “And we had some great baseball teams, man.”
WATCH: Click here to watch our video exploring Charle White’s trailblazing career as a local star athlete.
Black baseball flourished for nearly a century in Chattanooga. Future legends of the sport dazzled crowds at Andrews Field and Engel Stadium, and contests at Lincoln Park were a mainstay of weekend entertainment.
They received less attention than the Lookouts since the team formed in 1909, but Black teams and athletes formed a crucial — and often spectacular — part of local baseball history.
From ‘Pitcher Satchell’ to the Knothole Gang
The Chattanooga Tigers competed in the Negro Southern League, an organization of Black teams from Knoxville to Montgomery to Memphis that sent players to the highest-level Negro Leagues of the era.
They followed unaffiliated traveling teams such as the Chattanooga Unions and the Chattanooga Colored Base Ball Club, which dated back to the 1880s.
Chattanooga Daily Times. April 29, 1921.
A Chattanooga Daily Times article briefly reported on the Tigers’ first win in 1921, describing a packed house of both Black and white fans, who were kept separate at then-Lookouts’ stadium Andrews Field. The game scheduled that afternoon would have “special seats reserved for white people,” the article concluded.
Five years later the Chattanooga White Sox were the local Southern League contender. They became the Black Lookouts the next season and pitched teenaged “star hurler” Satchel Paige, who attracted fans across the city.
After decades of success in Black baseball circuits, Paige finally reached the MLB in 1948. He pitched for Cleveland and was among the first 10 Black baseball players to make the majors.
“The older guys really taught us what we know today,” White said. “The older guys always said, ‘Don't never let people forget the Black history of the athletes that came through Chattanooga that played baseball.’”
And Paige — despite coming and going before White was born — was a key name to remember.
Chattanooga Daily Times. April 21, 1927.
Joe Engel took over the white Lookouts in 1930. By then Chattanoogans were familiar with a youth organization known as the “Knothole Gang” formed a few years before. Boys aged 10-15 could get free passes to Lookouts games in exchange for strong school attendance, good grades, and regular Sunday school attendance.
Engel expanded the program to include Black students the year he became team president, and in line with his reputation as a renowned showman and promoter, the group soon became known as “Engel’s gang.”
Chattanooga Daily Times. April 27, 1938.
In 1938, youth Knothole baseball leagues popped up around Chattanooga. They included both white and Black teams.
“We got in the Knothole League, and that’s when I got to go out to Engel Stadium to play in there,” White said. “I always wanted to get on that field.”
Stars everywhere
Willie Mays arrived in 1948, competing for the Chattanooga Choo Choos in the second iteration of the Negro Southern League. The previous loop folded in 1936 due, in part, to a lack of financing and media coverage.
After he wowed as a 16-year-old standout for the Choo Choos, Mays moved on to the Birmingham Black Barons before starting his 22-year, hall-of-fame career in the MLB.
White was in elementary school when Jackie Robinson made it to the big leagues and Mays swept through Chattanooga. And he watched his pro idols manage the vitriol and hate he would experience throughout his playing career in the segregated South.
“The way they treated (Robsinson) — I don't know how he stood it,” White said. “But we went through the same thing, and we overcome. But it was tough, man, it was tough. A lot of people don't know.”
Negro Leagues struggled in the years after the MLB integrated — scouts more and more often signed top talent to big league rosters. Yet Black teams at all levels continued to compete in Chattanooga, including the professional Chattanooga Stars.
Three decades after local news reports praised “Pitcher Satchell” for his arm, White made a name for himself pitching for the Stars. He was the new “17-year-old whiz” taking the mound in Chattanooga, per the Daily Times in 1957.
Chattanooga Daily Times. July 6, 1957.
The Stars met teams like the Knoxville Packers and Birmingham Stars in league play in 1951 before traveling to smaller-scale regional exhibition games from Athens, Georgia, to Benham, Kentucky, throughout the decade.
Clarence Dodds, a renowned local athlete who graduated from the Howard School, managed and played for the Stars throughout their existence. Each spring, a short paragraph in the Daily Times advertised that Dodds was holding their first practice at Lincoln Park.
Chattanooga Daily Times. June 26, 1955.
“The Black teams, we played right there at Lincoln Park, right behind Erlanger Hospital,” White said. “You couldn’t even get into Lincoln Park on the weekends.”
Lincoln Park was the center of recreational life for Black communities in Chattanooga, White said. With a pool, tennis courts, and even a zoo, he said the park “was the place to be,” drawing busloads from across Chattanooga to gather and watch baseball.
‘20 years too early’
Several Stars members made it to MLB tryouts, helped in part by Dodds' connections as a major league scout himself. Outfielder Junior Sims even landed a contract with the St. Louis Cardinals organization, still a rarity in the late 50s.
Despite an uptick in the number Black ballplayers appearing on MLB lineups, White said it remained difficult for him and his peers to get a foot in the door.
“They just wasn’t signing Blacks too much then,” White said. “You had to be in a position where some big backer backed you to go further.”
The Stars were one of the last Black semi-pro teams to compete in Chattanooga. Negro Leagues had mostly disappeared, and the Chattanooga Lookouts — still the pinnacle of local pro ball — finally fielded four Black players in 1963.
Charley Fields, Bob Sanders, Adolfo Phillips, and Hank Allen suited up that year. The latter two would go on to careers in the MLB.
From "Just Between Us Fans," a sports column from longtime Times writer Wirt Gammon. Chattanooga Daily Times. Jan. 31, 1962.
It was the Lookouts’ first season back after their minor league, the Southern Association, crumbled in part because of some members’ refusal to integrate.
Although White never made it to the big leagues, he went on to success playing softball across the country.
He and his brother Al White are both enshrined in the Greater Chattanooga Sports Hall of Fame for softball, and he looks back fondly at a sports career that helped clear the way for his son, Reggie White, to become a local legend.
My mom always says, she said, ‘You just came along 20 years too early,'” White said. “And we did.”