Dr. Bismark Pinchback (left) and Dr. James W. Ames (right) participated in the first documented series of games involving two HBCU schools in 1887.
Later today, the Dillard University baseball team will travel a little over an hour northwest on I-10 from its campus in New Orleans to take on Southern University’s diamondmen of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
There was a day when the distance to face each other was far closer, when both Dillard’s founding predecessor institution Straight University and Southern were based in the Crescent City before the then, Southern University for Colored Students, relocated in 1914 to the Scotlandville section of Baton Rouge.
Baseball at both Straight University, which merged with New Orleans University in 1934 to form Dillard University, and at Southern University was first played prior to the onset of the nineteenth century.
In fact, the first documented game between two black college baseball teams was possibly the one played in early 1887 between the two New Orleans based schools.
In that contest, Straight University took the measure of Southern by a score of 24-9. Then, a few weeks later, on April 23rd, the “Bergers” of Straight University (presumably named for Professor of Theology M. L. Berger) again defeated Southern University, this time by the score of 29-10. The most recognizable name in those contests was that of Southern’s pitcher, Bismarck R. Pinchback. Pinchback was the son of the country’s first African-American governor, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback, who served as interim governor of Louisiana for two months in late 1872 through early 1873. Governor Pinchback, an influential Republican, also had a significant role in the founding of Southern University in 1880.
On the other side of the baseball diamond, Straight University’s club included two others who, besides Bismark Pinchback, would become medical doctors of note. The second baseman, Dickerson Alphonse Smith, became the first African-American doctor in Shreveport, Louisiana. Team president James W. Ames, like Pinchback, graduated medical school from Howard University and later led a group of fellow Detroit doctors in founding what was one of the few hospitals readily providing care to African-Americans. Ames also served in the Michigan House of Representatives.
Will Coach Chris Crenshaw and his Southern University Jaguars turn the table on the Dillard University Bleu Devils and its coach Rod White? Will Straight University, I mean Dillard University, pound out another nineteenth century type of victory? No matter what, it should be a great game as both teams have picked a good time to get hot.
Stay tuned!