Breaking the Colour Barrier

AMOS JOHNSON

MARCH 6, 2018

 

The Chimczuk Museum will hold a temporary display called Breaking the Colour Barrier: Wilfred “Boomer” Harding and the Chatham Coloured All-Stars during Black History Month.

From Feb. 1, 2018 – March 31, 2018, the Chimczuk Museum will host a travelling exhibit about the Chatham Coloured All-Stars, the first African-Canadian baseball team to win an Ontario Baseball Amateur Association Championship in 1934.

Breaking the Colour Barrier is one of several projects related to the Boomer Harding scrapbooks donated to the University of Windsor and the exhibit will act as an outreach project towards their recently launched website.

This project is about race, courage and the community in Southwestern Ontario in the early 20^th Century. They are also in partnership with the Harding family, the University of Windsor’s Department of History, the Leddy Library’s Centre for Digital Scholarship and the Chatham Sports Hall of Fame.

As well as stories from family and friends of these players, there will be newspaper archives of the 1934 season, artifacts relating to the team, developing curricular resources for school teachers and a storyboard/timeline exhibit.