THE FIRST AFRICAN-AMERICAN BASEBALL PLAYERS GAME POSTER, 1900
An especially rare hand-painted poster promoting a 1907 baseball game between a professional black baseball team and white college students from Dartmouth University. The poster, 20" x 24", is lettered in faded black paint: TODAY ALUMNI OVAL DARTMOUTH RESERVES VS CUBAN X-GIANTS 4:00 pm Admission 25 cents". The poster, cut from a Dartmouth student's scrapbook, still has a Dartmouth "Carnival Week 1899" notice pasted on the verso. Also from the same scrapbook is a 1900 Dartmouth "Base Ball Schedule" showing that the two teams met on May 16 and again the following day. Folds, else very good. The Cuban Giants were the first African-American professional baseball club, formed in Babylon, New York. The team was so skilled in the game, and achieved victory over so many of the nearby amateur "white" teams that they attracted the attention of a promoter, Walter Cook. To appeal to a broader audience, Cook styled them the "Cuban Giants", although there were rarely (if ever) any Cubans on team. In 1896 ownership issues would lead to a new offshoot team being created, the "Cuban X-Giants". The Cuban X-Giants played from 1896 to 1906, and most of the players were former Cuban Giants, or "ex-Giants". In 1900, the year this poster was painted, the X-Giants claimed the national championship.