Sports

This rare image is a team photograph of the 1938 Durham Black Sox and was taken at El Toro Park in Durham, NC which burned down in 1939

1968 Football Team from DuBois High School in Wake Forest.

Photograph shows an 84 year old Effa Manley along with Buck O’Neil, Joe Black, Webster McDonald, Buck Leonard-(who is a native of NC), Ted Page, and Leon Day.

Irwin R. Holmes (center) with left to right: Craig Page, Rep. Larry Hall, Ulis Malloy, Dennis Corbitt, Bonnie Logan, Joe Austin, Mike Spears, Ivan Harrell and coach Ike Barnes.

Tennis legends who played in Durham include Joe Williams (standing far left) and Arthur Ashe at age 14 (far right).

The Legacy of African Americans and Tennis in the Triangle
The first African American tennis club in the Triangle started almost 100 years ago. It was located at 1308 Fayetteville Street , Durham NC.

An African-American Woman Pioneer In Professional Tennis And Golf

Bonnie was inducted into the Black Tennis Hall of Fame in 2009. Seven time ATA Women's Singles champion. First African-American woman to play in the Virginia Slims Tournament. Won 1968 Eastern Carolina Closed Championship in singles and doubles. Won 1970 North Carolina State Closed Championship in singles and doubles.

Courtesy of USTA North Carolina / Bonnie Logan plays tennis during her heyday.

May 17, 1956, Olympic gold medalist and professional boxer Charles Ray “Sugar Ray” Leonard was born in Wilmington, NC.

Golf legend and Charlotte native Charles “Charlie” Sifford is often referred to as “the Jackie Robinson of golf” for his role in breaking down color barriers in the sport.

Pat White was Ligon High School’s sports prodigy. Excelling in tennis, basketball, football, and baseball. White was a football All-American scoring more touchdowns that any quarterback in the school’s history.

He is an African-American competitive swimmer and Olympic gold medalist in freestyle sprint events.

He was an American professional boxer who competed from 1952 to 1972, and twice reigned as the world heavyweight champion from 1956 to 1962. At the age of 21, he became the youngest boxer in history to win the title, and was also the first heavyweight to regain the title after losing it. As an amateur, he won a gold medal in the middleweight division at the 1952 Summer Olympics.

Fred "Curly" Neal (born May 19, 1942) is an American former basketball player best known for his career with the Harlem Globetrotters, instantly recognizable with his shaved head.

He is an American former basketball player best known for his career with the Harlem Globetrotters, instantly recognizable with his shaved head. Following in the footsteps of Marques Haynes, Neal became the Trotters' featured ballhandler, a key role in the team's exhibition act.

March 2010 when Freddie “Curly” Neal, of the famous Harlem Globetrotters’ as a good will ambassador, watches the antics of the current team games taking place on court at the coliseum.

A L.A. Laker And Man Of The Community

Irwin Holmes on the NC State University tennis team in 1957.

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Jimmy McDaniels in action at the New York State Negro Tennis Championship at the Cosmopolitan Tennis Club in New York City, Aug. 5, 1940.

THE STANTONSBURG HAWKS.

A "prodigious power-hitter", he made his Negro leagues debut in 1937 for the New York Black Yankees.

Lemon was a slick ballhandler and a virtuoso passer, and he specialized in the long-distance hook, a trick shot he made with remarkable regularity. But it was his charisma and comic bravado that made him perhaps the most famous Globetrotter.

Mr. Williams is 86 years young and a community member from Ahoskie, North Carolina who has been Harness Racing since he was a young boy.

On this date in 1892, the first Black College Intercollegiate football game was played. The game was played in the snows of North Carolina, two days after Christmas.

Russell Mosley, in 1955 was a shortstop with the Memphis Red Sox in his first year in the Negro Leagues. He spent time with the Raleigh Tigers of the Negro American League.

Sam Allen, who competed for the (Raleigh) Tigers in 1958, one year after he led the Negro American League with the Kansas City Monarchs and one year before the Tigers themselves joined the NAL.

On June 24, 1933, legendary Boston Celtics player Sam Jones was born in Wilmington, North Carolina and raised in Laurnburg, NC, he was a high school graduate of the historic Laurinburg (N.C.) Institute,

Believed to be Siler City Giants, late 1960s.

"Sandlot teams known as the "Cornfield Boys' created one of the state's greatest sports stories when they beat teams from the Negro Major Leagues in the 1940s and 1950s."

The Negro League documents the careers of more than four thousand black baseball players. To date there are less than 50 living players.

The Royal Giants were Asheville‘s first black baseball team, founded by community leader E. W. Pearson Sr.

When it comes to the history of Black baseball in Charlotte, this was one of the earliest reported games.

The historic Algonquin Tennis Club, which served the African American community in the early and middle 20th Century, was located roughly in the area of the current W.D. Hill Recreation Center on Fayetteville Street.

The nine played the Bull City Aces (of Durham), the Harlem (N.Y.) Black Sox, the Hamlet Airliners, the Camel City Aces (of Winston-Salem), and teams from Leaksville and Greenville and went 9-2.

Walter Fenner "Buck" Leonard (September 8, 1907 – November 27, 1997) was an American first baseman in Negro league baseball and in the Mexican League.

Buck Leonard and Josh Gibson, known as the “Thunder Twins”, were compared to Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth respectively. All four achieved the highest distinction – induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, New York.