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Oscar Charleston: Life and Legend

Oscar Charleston: Life and Legend

Category Archives: Pittsburgh Crawfords

Charleston Chronology

25 Sunday Nov 2018

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Biography, Brown Dodgers, Cuba, Early Life, Harrisburg Giants, Homestead Grays, Indianapolis ABCs, Indianapolis Clowns, Lincoln Stars, Managing Career, Philadelphia Stars, Philippines, Pittsburgh Crawfords, Toledo/Indianapolis Crawfords

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Oscar Charleston

I had intended to include in Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball’s Greatest Forgotten Player a chronology of Charleston’s life. I thought it would be particularly helpful in Oscar’s case, given how peripatetic he was, and given the errors floating around in the online ether. But including it would just make the darn book too long, said the University of Nebraska Press, no doubt wisely. So I have now included that chronology here. You can navigate to it using the top menu of the site.

As always, if you spy any errors or have any questions, please let me know.

Oscar Charleston photo in WSJ

16 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Homestead Grays, Pittsburgh Crawfords

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Cum Posey, Gerald Early, Gus Greenlee, Mark Whitaker, Oscar Charleston, Smoketown, Teenie Harris, Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal runs the photo below, not often seen, of our man Oscar in last Saturday’s issue. The photo, taken by Pittsburgh photographer Teenie Harris, depicts Oscar standing in a dark suit outside Gus Greenlee’s Crawford Grill. It comes from the Harris Archive at the Carnegie Museum of Art, and if all goes well will also be included in my Charleston bio.

Charleston at Crawford Grill

The Journal runs the photo along with a review (which doesn’t mention Charleston), by Gerald Early, of Mark Whitaker’s new book Smoketown, which tells the story of the mostly unknown black cultural renaissance that took place in Pittsburgh in the first half of the twentieth century. Pittsburgh Crawfords owner Gus Greenlee and Homestead Grays owner Cumberland Posey figure largely in Whitaker’s account, and rightly so. Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige also get a lot of coverage.

Charleston is mentioned a number of times, but I think Whitaker doesn’t quite do him justice with respect to how close he was to the center of this renaissance–certainly more than any other black baseball player was at least until the mid-1930s. That is understandable, given Charleston’s neglect in the secondary literature. At any rate, Whitaker’s book is a wonderful read, and he clearly understands the Negro Leagues’ cultural importance as a symbol of black achievement as well as anyone.

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Oscar Charleston: Life and Legend

Oscar Charleston: Life and Legend

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