Fielding Opportunity: The History of the Ogden Assembly Club and the Legacy of African American Baseball Teams in Utah

Introduction

On Saturday, March 25, 1905, a short, curious article appeared in the Salt Lake Herald announcing a pickup baseball game to be played the following day between the Salt Lake Browns and the Ogden Chocolates at Walker's Field in Salt Lake City.¹ Not only would this be the first formally organized game of baseball between two Black teams in Utah since 1897, it was also the beginning of what would become known as the Assembly Club baseball team of Ogden, the city's first formal all-Black baseball team. The burgeoning railroad industry in Ogden had made the once-quiet Mormon agricultural town flourish, which in turn meant an increasing Black population by 1905. Additionally, baseball had become popular in Utah and was widely recognized as America's game. The time was ripe for an African American ball club to take hold.

Beginning in 1897, Black baseball began in earnest in the state. It was one year after Utah officially entered the Union and one year after the United States Supreme Court allowed separate but “equal” accommodations in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Although Black baseball had been played in America since the 1850s,² and white baseball had been established as early as 1864 in Salt Lake City with the creation of the Union Base Ball Club,³ there had been no competitive teams composed of all-Black players in Utah. Then, in 1897, four teams were created, starting with the Fort Douglas Browns, which was made up of Buffalo Soldiers of the Twenty-Fourth Army Infantry Regiment stationed at the fort, who had arrived one year earlier. The team was formed largely for recreation, and they also had something to prove to the skeptical population of the Salt Lake Valley. Nonetheless, the Fort Douglas Browns team won over the hearts of baseball fans in the region. According to African American baseball historian Ronald Auther, the team would be well respected both on and off the field and long remembered by fans and opponents for their baseball skill during the era.⁴ Although perhaps biased as the 1908 manager of another preeminent Utah Black baseball team, the Salt Lake Occidentals, Hal Hayden dubbed the Fort Douglas Browns the “best team in the history of Salt Lake baseball.”⁵

The second Black team was the Black Rubes, who came primarily from the African American sector of Salt Lake City, which was located near the center of downtown and concentrated on dense urban blocks, with Commercial Street as its center. Bruce Johnson, a prominent African American businessman and an active Republican in Utah, organized the team, and it was captained by his friend, Charles Catlin, who helped oversee Johnson's saloon on Commercial Street.⁶ Johnson, who was born in Arkansas, made his way to Utah by 1890, after living in New Orleans for several years, which had become “a difficult and dangerous place for a black man in politics,” in the words of one historian. Although being non-Mormon and African American presented societal barriers in Utah, the “chaotic and exciting” 1890s did offer some opportunity for an aspiring individual like Johnson.⁷ Johnson and Catlin had also been involved in promoting boxing in Utah, and like their foray into prizefighting, the creation of the Black Rubes was more of a business venture than anything.⁸ As soon as the team was established, Johnson was reported wagering bets as much as $250 a side, mainly targeting the Fort Douglas Browns.⁹

Then, at the age of seventeen, Joseph J. Bamberger—the nephew of the mining magnate, railroad owner, and future governor of Utah, Simon Bamberger—organized a Black team called the Salt Lake Monarchs. Young Bamberger put together the Monarchs and also created a white team, and he developed a baseball field to play on in the north end of town near Beck's Hot Springs.¹⁰ One of Joseph's goals was to grow the game of baseball in Utah and make Beck's Hot Springs a more popular destination, as his uncle's railroad company had one of its key early stops located at the hot springs.¹¹

The fourth team, the Fort Duchesne Giants, was formed by the Ninth Cavalry Regiment Buffalo Soldiers, who had been stationed at the fort since 1886 in the Uinta Basin, 150 miles east of Salt Lake.¹² The soldiers were encouraged to play sports by Colorado headquarters and would often do so recreationally at the fort. After word spread that the Fort Douglas Twenty-Fourth Infantry had created a formidable baseball team, the Ninth Cavalry did so too to face off against the Browns. The team was managed by Lieutenant Harry Cavanaugh and captained by James Berry.¹³

Thus, the year 1897 was a watershed moment for African American baseball in Utah. Unfortunately, due to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War and other changes in the Army in 1898, the Fort Duchesne and Fort Douglas teams were mostly dissolved. Joseph J. Bamberger moved on to other endeavors, even if his Monarchs team did try to make a run of it the next season in 1898, though unsuccessfully. And Bruce Johnson's team, the Black Rubes, couldn't gain traction either. In fact, Johnson likely lost a significant amount of money in 1897 playing against the likes of Fort Douglas. Nevertheless, these teams did put the wheels in motion for the next wave of Black baseball in the state.

Between 1898 and 1902 there were no new all-Black teams organized in Utah. The color line in professional baseball was drawn in America in the 1880s, when International League executives voted to ban contracts for future pro Black players.¹⁴ Nevertheless, some of the more talented Black players were occasionally allowed (if they agreed to, not all were interested) to play on largely white yet integrated amateur teams as they had in the past in Utah, often facing hostile opponents and animosity from teammates. For example, “Steam-drill” Jackson played for the predominantly white Salt Lake Elks team of 1898 after he had been a key player on the Fort Douglas Browns in 1897.¹⁵ There were a few other notable Black players who had spots on integrated teams in Utah. George William Castone played on an 1888 Salt Lake City team and would later play for integrated teams in Colorado and Kansas and for Black clubs such as the Lincoln Giants in Nebraska and the Cuban Giants in the northeastern United States.¹⁶ Robert Dobbs, who played for the 1890 Ogden club, made his way to Utah from Colorado, where he had played ball for teams in Colorado Springs and Aspen; he would later become a prolific professional boxer in the United States and in Europe.¹⁷ In 1892, George Taylor, future star of the renowned Page Fence Giants and St. Paul Colored Gophers, played briefly for the semipro Ogden team.¹⁸ And in 1910, Hyrum Leggroan was the star player for the Granite High School baseball team in the Salt Lake City area and was offered a spot on the Salt Lake Occidentals club, which he declined.¹⁹

In 1903, baseball movement picked up once again in Salt Lake City's African American neighborhood. A new team, noted as an aggregation of “Colored Stars” made up of men who were associated with this part of the city, started to play throughout Utah.²⁰ The Keith O'Brien department store, a large early white Utah retailer and dry-goods merchant, sponsored the team, mostly to advertise their company, and the Browns wore Keith O'Brien uniforms.²¹

The Keith O'Brien Browns played throughout the 1903 year and started up again in 1904; however, halfway through the season an African American social club, the Americus Club, took ownership of the team.²² Bruce Johnson, who had organized the 1897 Black Rubes, was a co-owner of the Americus Club social club.²³ An important early development of the Keith O'Brien/Americus Browns team was the combination of Joe Burns and Hays Gann as the battery starting in 1903, two of the most prominent Black baseball players in Utah over the next decade.²⁴ And, never shying away from hyperbole, the team members were branding themselves as the Middle West champs and colored champs of the West in 1904.²⁵ They were managed by George Simmons, also the club's right fielder, who was employed as a waiter for a restaurant on Commercial Street.²⁶

Apparently, the team continued the next season in 1905 as they played one early game in March as the Salt Lake Browns against a Black team thirty miles north of Salt Lake, the Ogden Chocolates.²⁷ However, the Browns players soon joined forces with the Chocolates to create one super team in Utah that became known as the Ogden Assembly Club for the 1905 season, the main topic of this article.

The Assembly Club Social Organization

The Assembly Club baseball team was sponsored and managed by the Ogden Assembly social club. The social club had been incorporated a few years prior in 1902 as an African American association to “promote social intercourse among its members and associates” and included African Americans who lived in and around Ogden, as well as those from other areas associated with the railroad.²⁸ Assembly, which took over a previous club called the Eureka Club, catered to the large population of porters and waiters making their way to the city.²⁹ Ogden was a major junction for the Union Pacific and other railroads, and by the turn of the twentieth century, the city became a common resting spot for many Blacks from across the nation working the railroad. There were several reasons for this, including its geographic location at the crossroads of the West, clubs like Assembly that catered to Black workers, and amenities such as “a dismantled Pullman car in the middle of the [Union Station] freight yard where porters could lodge,” in the words of one historian.³⁰ For perspective, there were about fifty Blacks living in Ogden in 1900, and by 1910 the number had quadrupled to over two hundred (the second-largest Black population in Utah, after Salt Lake City). A lot of that growth occurred around the same time as the Assembly team's formation.³¹

Striving to move forward and give greater meaning to their lives, social organizations like the Assembly Club helped provide a feeling of permanence and validity in the community.³² This was important because during the city's early history, African Americans remained largely disregarded and faced indifference by the city's overwhelming white population. Although in many ways the general attitudes toward Blacks were like other parts of the country, Ogden had a more “live and let live” mentality (albeit separately), as most whites were content to merely ignore Blacks. As an analogy, Jim Gillespie, Ogden's NAACP president from 1963 to 1996, stated, “In Mississippi . . . they'll kill you, in Utah they just starve you to death.”³³

The club was housed along lower Twenty-Fifth Street. This area, located near the hub of the railroad and the Union Station, was the heart of the segregated Black and immigrant population of Ogden. As historian Val Holley states: “One of the railroad's most enduring legacies in Ogden is the coalescence of an African American community in the blocks near the Union Station.”³⁴ The two-story club building, which was visible as one departed the train at the Ogden Union Station, featured a saloon, clubrooms, baths, a café, and a barbershop. The founders of the club undoubtedly established it, and the baseball team a few years later, as a way to confront and challenge the segregated society they faced in Ogden. As could be seen in Utah on Twenty-Fifth Street and on Commercial Street in Salt Lake, African American sociologists St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton noted in their landmark Black Metropolis study, “The pattern of residential segregation inevitably gives rise to an intense community consciousness among Negroes.”³⁵

Among the many notable Utah African Americans involved with the club were William Carter, George Dover, Clarence Ernst, Lawrence Fair, William Housbon, Samuel Poole, Frank Turner, and Charles Woods.³⁶ Most of them, along with the approximate three dozen baseball players they sponsored, were born in the South or Midwest during the Civil War or Reconstruction era. They spent their formative years during the early Jim Crow period and made their way to Ogden, via train, at the turn of the twentieth century in search of economic opportunity that the city's railroad industry afforded, mainly through employment as porters and waiters. At the same time, once these men arrived in Ogden, they formed their distinctive path by opening Black businesses, creating their own spaces, starting social clubs, and sponsoring athletes and sports teams. And, although the men of Assembly were pulled toward Ogden in the early 1900s, within a couple of decades they were ultimately pushed out of the community. The club was shuttered in 1918 because of police clampdowns as the city worked to clean up Twenty-Fifth Street as a result of Progressive Era politics, in addition to Utah's enactment of Prohibition in 1917, competition from new Black social clubs (at one time Assembly was the only one in town), and the impact of World War I on the local labor market and economy.³⁷ By 1920, very few of the men who organized the club or those who played on the baseball team still called Ogden or Utah home.

The Assembly Club Baseball Team Origins

The Assembly social club was interested in athletics primarily as a business opportunity, as well as for entertainment and out of a sense of pride; it initially became involved in organized sports in 1904 when it hosted the Black boxer Rufe Turner from Stockton, California. He stayed at the Assembly Club building, and they provided him with a place to train in the second-floor clubroom spaces before his fight (and ultimate win) against Boston's Barney Mullin.³⁸ Turner was the first of many quality fighters who Assembly hosted over the years. Boxing was popular in Ogden at the turn of the twentieth century, and, as can be seen with the Assembly Club, Black baseball and boxing often crossed paths.

In addition, by 1905, baseball in the United States and in Utah had never been so popular, drawing record crowds. Hall of Fame legend Christy Mathewson was establishing himself as a dominant pitcher on the mound, and legendary shortstop Honus “the Flying Dutchman” Wagner was leading the major leagues in multiple offensive categories. Black baseball was also on the rise as future Negro Leagues executive Andrew “Rube” Foster began making his run as a player for the Philadelphia Giants. The year 1905 also marked the year that Ogden fielded an amateur team, Wessler's Ogden Advertisers, and it was the year in which the Ogden Lobsters joined the Salt Lake Elders in the Pacific National League, a professional minor league that rivaled the notable Pacific Coast League.

And, as noted, it was after the loosely gathered Salt Lake Browns and Ogden Chocolates game in March 1905 that the all-Black Ogden Assembly Club baseball team officially formed. George Dover—the Assembly social club proprietor, baseball team manager, and occasional first baseman for the club—took his pick of players from both the Browns and the Chocolates, formally kicking off the 1905 season.

The Assembly Club Baseball Team 1905 Season

The 1905 season was the only complete year that Assembly played ball. During their first game, against the local amateur team the Wessler Ogden Advertisers, Assembly was trying to establish its lineup. Local newspapers quipped that Assembly, in front of a sizable crowd split between white and Black fans, appeared to be “bamfuzzled” at times during their first game. The Ogden Standard even poked fun at one of their players, who inexplicably slid into first base:

A couple of games later, in its reporting of the game, the Salt Lake Tribune stated that the professional minor league Ogden Lobsters team beat Assembly 8 to 3 and that pitcher Hastings “made monkeys out of all who faced him.”⁴⁰ Newspapers tended to be uneven and inconsistent in their reporting, but overall they did a good job covering Assembly, regularly praised their play, and kept interest in the team high—although with racist overtones, as the “monkeys” remark could well be interpreted. Unfortunately, only one complete box score exists from the season, but the paper's descriptions help illuminate the nature of their play—which was exemplary for a first-year team. Early in the season the press treated the team as a novelty, but later they described it more seriously as the squad improved. No other Utah Black sports entity prior to Assembly received this much press, with dozens of articles written about the team during their 1905 run.

The local press particularly took a liking to Joe Robinson, the shortstop. The Ogden Standard's description of an early-season game read:

Robinson's performance aside, Assembly played this and most of their games for money, as sports editors noted that side bets between $100 and $250 were routinely wagered.

The newspapers regularly reported that games would feature vaudevillian or burlesque sideshows and shadow ball performances (where players pretended to play games with an imaginary ball) by Assembly, to entertain spectators and to lure fans to future games. Focusing on this aspect, for example, the Salt Lake Telegram described one game's performance, once again in the racist overtones of the 1905 Utah press:

The press often perpetuated racism and used derogatory language in the early 1900s (coverage slowly improved throughout the twentieth century).⁴³ And the team is not to be obscured by the “minstrel” antics that the press reported on, as Assembly played outstanding ball. Furthermore, these comic traditions can in some ways be traced back to African folk culture and more directly from the team's predecessors the Cuban Giants—the country's first viable Black baseball venture, originally formed in 1885 (in the early part of the 1907 season, the Salt Lake Occidentals went by the name Cuban Giants).⁴⁴ The Cuban Giants, who were not actually Cuban, were said to have played great ball and to have also done a lot of talking, yelling, howling, and bluffing.⁴⁵ Players often felt like they were playing the role of trickster when performing such stunts and were financially benefitting from the racial prejudice of white fans, thus earning a degree of power over those who held financial control within society—so, even if the Assembly team participated in stereotyped vaudeville routines, the joke was on the white audience, because the players were the ones who profited from it.⁴⁶ And, even though many whites weren't supportive of Blacks playing baseball, racial tension brought intrigue and excitement and sold tickets.

With a sense of pride, the team had the support of the African American community in Utah, particularly from religious institutions. Ahead of one game, ace pitcher Hays Gann sent word to the Salt Lake Tribune that

The barbecue he referenced was organized by the Salt Lake African Methodist Episcopal and Calvary Baptist Black churches; however, there was not much to celebrate for the Assembly squad, as they lost the game in a pitcher's duel, in true dead-ball-era fashion, with a score of 2 to 1.⁴⁸

Teams from Salt Lake City would often make their way to Ogden to play Assembly, with the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad running special fare excursion rates for Salt Lake fans to attend the games in the Junction City.⁴⁹ Once the train arrived in Ogden and fans departed, a trolley car awaited them with a direct line to Glenwood Park, located east of downtown on Canyon Road near Sixteenth and Seventeenth streets (although the ballfield is now gone, the area is known as Lorin Farr Park today). Built in 1900, Glenwood was one of Utah's finest fields; it was also a private park in 1905, so they had to pay a fee to use it, and they split gate fees with their opponent. Salt Lake City's fields where Assembly played included Dubei's Salt Palace Park, Walker's Field, and Calder's Park. Assembly also played at the Morgan City baseball diamond near the county fairgrounds.

Assembly played most of its games on Sundays or holidays either in Ogden or Salt Lake City, apart from one Saturday game in Morgan City, located thirty miles east of Ogden. They barnstormed to Morgan to face the local amateur team dubbed the Heiners. Assembly effortlessly won as, the Salt Lake Tribune reported, “the locals were badly outclassed.”⁵⁰ The Heiners were a club made up of nine brothers coached by their father, Daniel Heiner, a prominent merchant, property owner, local politician, and ecclesiastical leader in the community. The final game of the year came on Labor Day against the Salt Lake Dubei Tailors. The season-ending Tailors game was one of several features during a free day of entertainment at the Salt Lake Palace Park, with the Assembly team now a popular attraction.⁵¹

After a rocky start, Assembly eventually found its way during the 1905 season, playing about twenty games, having a couple more losses than wins, and dividing play between their home field in Ogden and different parks in Salt Lake. The team earned the respect of newspapers and fans in Utah. Despite some concerns with gambling, there were no issues with fighting, unfair play, and other problems, as many worried. Although teams and leagues were segregated, numerous clubs—at varying levels and in different leagues throughout the state—were willing to play Assembly, both for money and for experience against a quality team.

With the opportunity to prove themselves playing America's pastime, there was a great deal of interest from many athletes. The team fielded over three dozen different players over the course of the 1905 season. It featured men from Ogden, Salt Lake City, and surrounding areas, as well as some who made their way through Ogden while working for the railroad, with word of the opportunity to play ball in the Beehive State certainly passing through the trains. (Short biographies of noteworthy Assembly players are provided in the appendix.)

Conclusion

Assembly had several ingredients that ensured its overall success. In addition to top-notch players, the team scheduled a full season of games, thanks to the diligence of their charismatic business manager George Dover; they were able to secure Glenwood Park, Ogden's finest field, for home games; they had a well-organized entity that supported them; and they had a respectable fan base.⁵² Altogether, Ogden Assembly had one of the most productive Black baseball seasons in 1905 in the western United States.

More than being a mere novelty, Black baseball in the West and throughout the United States was alive and well in the early 1900s. From teams at military forts to teams representing mining, railroad, and other working-class urban and rural communities, and everything in between, these teams reflected a slice of American society and culture. A prime example and a local byproduct of that greater phenomenon, Assembly played a vital role within that mix, just like their successors would become over the next several years. The time was right for a serious Black team in Utah, and Assembly was that team, coalescing into something much bigger. Assembly did not disband in 1906; rather, they reformulated as the Salt Lake Occidentals, since most of the new great Occidentals team were former Assembly players (including star players William Beckley, Claude Burns, Joseph Burns, Anthony Coleman, Hays Gann, Henry Page, Joe Robinson, and Frank Rogers). The Salt Lake Occidentals team of 1906 through 1911 was the preeminent Black baseball team in the western United States. They were known as the “Rocky Mountain Champs,” the “West Coast Champs,” the “Fastest Team West of Chicago,” the “Utah Colored Champs,” and, for a season, the “Utah State League Champs.”

As many Assembly veterans moved over to the new Occidentals roster, they filled some of the same roles they had done previously; for example, just as Gann and Burns often worked together as pitcher and catcher for Assembly in 1905, they did the same for the Occidentals. They played many of the same opponents. The Occidentals made regular return visits to Ogden's Glenwood Park. Joe Burns served as assistant manager for the Occidentals as he did with Assembly. And, when previous Assembly players later joined the Occidentals, newspapers made it a point to recognize that player as being of Assembly fame.⁵³ Black social clubs connected to the Assembly social club were closely associated with the Occidentals. Although it would have been exciting to see Assembly continue in Ogden in 1906 and to see what might have been, it made sense that as the team positively evolved, they moved to Salt Lake. The capital city was still the epicenter of the limited Black population in Utah—not to mention that there were more teams to play against and fields to play on there.⁵⁴ After the breakup of the 1911 Occidentals team (they briefly regrouped a couple of years later), many of the former Assembly and Occidentals players went to play for other notable African American teams in the 1910s in places such as Portland, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC, to name a few.

The Assembly team came together successfully—even with their varied backgrounds and at times through trials and hardships—during a moment of change in Ogden's history to prove themselves on the ballfield and to enjoy America's new favorite pastime. And, intricately interconnected, the Ogden Assembly social club had ties to the Americus social club in Salt Lake City, which was affiliated with the Occidentals team.⁵⁵ Americus, in turn, was connected to Bruce Johnson, who organized the 1897 Black Rubes team that played the Fort Douglas Browns. Further, as the Assembly team evolved into the Occidentals in 1906, and then as the Occidentals baseball club grew, by 1908 they expanded their sporting pursuits by organizing the Occidental Giants football team (later known as the Occidental Tigers in 1911 and 1912) and created junior level baseball and football teams.⁵⁶ In 1910, the football squad was managed by Joe Burns's brother Ollie, and they were captained by Walter Washington, who also managed the junior-level Occidentals baseball club.⁵⁷ Thus, more than just a mere reflection, Assembly and the Occidentals were reacting to a society that had largely shut them out. Significantly, along with their baseball and boxing endeavors, with their organization of football and creation of junior level teams, they were able to establish a compelling Black sports enterprise system within the state of Utah. As demonstrated here, BYU professor and sports historian Richard Ian Kimball noted in his article on heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, “The tactic of using sports to create a community identity became commonplace in American cities and towns during the twentieth century.”⁵⁸ Assembly and the Occidentals also laid a foundation for later teams. These teams included the Ogden Colored Giants of 1920 and 1921, the Salt Lake Tigers of the 1920s and 1930s, the Salt Lake Monarchs of the 1940s and 1950s, the Sahara Village Giants based out of Hill Air Force Base in the late 1940s, and also teams off the Wasatch Front like the Sunnyside Monarchs, made up of men who worked in the local mines and played in the Carbon Coal League in 1943. To understand Utah and western society and culture, one need not look further than baseball history; these Black teams formed a legacy in Utah and the West that deserves a closer look.

Appendix

Montrose William Beckley: Beckley was born in Cairo, Illinois, in 1883 and moved to Iowa as a youth. As a teenager he began working for the railroad; he was in Salt Lake City by 1905. Beckley is shown working as a waiter at the Wilson Hotel in Salt Lake, while living on State Street near the city's African American neighborhood, from 1905 to 1908. During that time, he played for the Assembly and Occidentals teams as a first baseman, outfielder, and pitcher. Beckley then moved back to Iowa by the late 1910s and opened a billiards hall with his wife. He was active in the Bethel AME Church and in the Masonic order. He passed away in Keokuk, Iowa, in 1955.⁵⁹

Charles “Kid” Bell: Bell was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1886. He spent his early life working as a porter and at other jobs for the railroad, and as a janitor later in life, while also prizefighting in the West and training boxers throughout the country. He shows up on the Assembly team lineup, playing left field, whenever he traveled from his residence in Denver to Utah for boxing matches during the 1905 season. He spent his later years in Los Angeles and passed away in San Bernardino, California, in 1966.⁶⁰

Satto Armstead Bills: Bills was born in Bolliver, Tennessee, in 1862. By 1902, after working many years in Tennessee and in Chicago, Illinois, as a cook and a waiter, Satto made his way to Ogden and started to work for the Union Pacific Railroad as a cook. He later became head chef of the Pullman service out of Ogden. He played third base for the Assembly baseball team in 1905. At the time of his death in 1923, he was survived by his widow Hannah Erickson Bills, but he had previously been married to the prominent African American suffragist Kizzie Bills.⁶¹ Bills is the only known Assembly baseball player buried in Utah; he is interred at the Ogden City Cemetery.

Claude Burns: Burns was the only known Utah native on the Assembly team; he was born in Salt Lake City circa 1880, the son of a barber. He was a musician and an actor outside of baseball, although during his younger years he worked as a porter in Salt Lake City. Identified as a strong hitter, he started his baseball career playing right field for Assembly, then for the Occidentals, and later, in 1914, he went on to play for the Hubbard Giants in Portland, Oregon. Burns lived and worked in San Francisco and Seattle after his baseball career, traveling around as a vaudeville actor, a comedian, and a composer. He passed away in Seattle in 1968.⁶²

Joseph Franklin Burns: Burns (no relation to Claude) was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1879. His father, David, was a servant for President Abraham Lincoln in the White House during the Civil War. After moving around the country for several years, the family settled in Salt Lake City at the turn of the twentieth century. Burns held various jobs in Salt Lake, including managing a club and a saloon on downtown's Commercial Street and working as a chauffeur. He got his start in sports playing on the 1903 Keith O'Brien Browns team, playing catcher and co-managing the Ogden Assembly team, and then playing and coaching for the Occidentals. In addition to his baseball career, he was a boxing manager and promoter in Salt Lake and a friend of the champion boxer Jack Johnson. He later moved to Seattle, where he worked in various restaurants, clubs, and cafés. In 1946, Burns married the vaudeville star India Allen. He died in Sedro Woolley, Washington, in 1955.⁶³

Thomas Chivers: Chivers was originally from Kansas, born in 1876. He was only in Utah for two years, living and working in Salt Lake City in 1904 and 1905 as a porter. He then moved to Leadville, Colorado, where he worked as a laborer. His younger brother, Ben, was an amateur boxer in Leavenworth, Kansas, and played baseball in 1894. Thomas only played for the early part of the 1905 Assembly season before moving to Colorado; he also played for the Keith O'Brien/Americus Browns in 1904. Thomas briefly served in the US Army Ninth Cavalry, along with his brother Ben, while he lived in Leavenworth, from 1898 to 1899. Thomas always looked out for his younger brother. In June 1914, he brought Ben to Chicago from Leavenworth to give Ben his job, since he had landed a new one. Yet tragically, Thomas was shot to death that same month at the Chicago Moystin Villa Apartments, the site of his new janitorial job.⁶⁴

Anthony Julius Coleman: Coleman was born in Missouri in 1862. By 1899 he had connections in Salt Lake City, where he married Nellie Elmira Walker, although his address was listed as being in Wichita, Kansas. In 1900, he moved to Salt Lake and was living on Franklin Avenue, working as a hotel waiter. In 1902 he divorced Nelly and married Florence, whom he was married to until 1920. Florence and Anthony had one child together, Lawrence Randolph Coleman. Anthony Coleman died in 1922 in Owenton, Kentucky, where he and Florence had spent most of their married life. Coleman played in the outfield for Assembly in 1905 and for the Occidentals in 1906.⁶⁵

George L. Dover: Dover was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1860. He was raised in the Methodist church and went to school until the eighth grade. His mother died when he was fourteen; shortly thereafter, he left home to be on his own. He traveled around the country and by 1890 had landed in Denver, where he worked as a waiter for the railroad. Dover moved from Denver to Ogden in 1902, where he became involved in different business ventures and was one of the founders of the Assembly Club. He was a manager and played first base for the Assembly baseball team in 1905. Sometime just prior to 1906 he married his wife Mary; they divorced around 1906, shortly after he was arrested in Idaho for his involvement in a train robbery. Dover lived in Idaho after he was released from jail in 1909; he ended up back in Ogden by 1911, working as a porter. He married Laura Bowman in Box Elder County in 1914, where he was working for the railroad. He briefly lived in St. Paul, Minnesota, and then moved to Oakland, where he lived with his wife, continuing to work for the railroad until his death in 1921.⁶⁶

Clarence M. Ernst: Ernst was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in February 1864, during the midst of the Civil War. He left Alabama for Utah in 1888 with his new wife Georgie. After arriving in Salt Lake City, he became one of the best-known porters working in the city and soon landed a manager position at the popular Garfield Beach Resort, Great Salt Lake. In the early 1900s, Ernst moved to Ogden and opened several businesses, including a barbershop, saloon, and pool hall; additionally, he worked at the Utah State Capitol as a doorman for the Utah State Legislature. He fought for better housing opportunities for African Americans in Ogden and was a key organizer of the all-Black Eureka Social Club, Masonic order, and then the Assembly Club in 1902. He had previously been involved in baseball in the late 1890s for teams in Weber County as a mascot and assistant coach for integrated clubs. Although Ernst did not play on the Assembly baseball team, he was a key figure in its development and in the Assembly Social Club organization.⁶⁷

Hays Gann: Gann was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, circa 1875. He lived in Danville, Illinois, in the late 1890s before making his way to Salt Lake City in 1902, where he worked as a coachman. Gann then moved to Ogden in 1905 and joined the Ogden Assembly team as their top pitcher. He played for the 1903 Keith O'Brien and 1904 Americus clubs. In 1907, he wedded Vera Lindsey in Ogden, moved back to Salt Lake for a year, then moved to Pocatello, Idaho, in 1909, and then Los Angeles, where he worked as a coachman at the well-known and wealthy Gorham Tufts family residence. Soon thereafter, Gann moved to his wife's hometown of Lawrence, Kansas, where he passed away in 1913. He was a pitcher (one article called him ambidextrous, but this could not be substantiated) and occasionally played first base for the Occidentals, off and on, throughout their 1906 to 1911 run.⁶⁸

John Henry Page: Page was born in Olathe, Kansas, in 1881. His father, David, a one-time slave from Virginia, then a soldier in the US Colored Troops Fifth Infantry in the Civil War, moved to Olathe after the war and started a successful laundry service in town. Henry's mother, Courtney, died in 1881 when he was a baby. He moved to Salt Lake City in 1901, where he opened a popular barbershop on Commercial Street; he married his wife Emma in 1909. Henry started playing for the Ogden Assembly team near the end of the 1905 season and played a couple of years for the Occidentals at third base and in the outfield. He passed away in Salt Lake City in 1922; his body was taken back to Olathe, Kansas, where he was buried in his family lot in the city cemetery.⁶⁹

Joseph Robinson: Robinson came to Ogden in 1905 from Walla Walla, Washington, in search of boxing matches; he had been boxing in the Pacific Northwest over the previous few years. He landed a job as a porter in a barbershop on Twenty-Fourth Street in Ogden and played second base for Ogden Assembly. He apparently stuck with baseball, because no mention of him boxing appears again, although he did train some boxers in Idaho in the 1910s. Robinson was referenced as a sure-handed defender and a high-caliber offensive player, even though he went 0 to 3 against hall-of-famer Walter Johnson, in “a case of too much Johnson,” in an exhibition game in California in 1910. While playing shortstop for the Salt Lake Occidentals in 1910, Robinson was selected as First Team All-League by sports reporter W. D. Bratz of the Salt Lake Telegram. He moved to Idaho Falls in about 1912, where he was active in the African American community and organized the Idaho Falls Industrial Club with other Blacks with Utah ties, including Roy L. Ellis, who would later manage an all-Black Ogden baseball team, and former Salt Lake police officer Ed Mitchell.⁷⁰ The African American communities of Idaho and Utah were closely connected because of the railroad and their proximity.

Frank Rogers: Although it is not entirely clear, it appears that Rogers was born in Missouri in 1882. By 1904 he had come to Utah and was living in the Commercial Street area of Salt Lake, employed as a porter and as a bootblack. Rogers was also involved in the boxing scene. He played third base for the 1904 Keith O'Brien/Americus team, as well as in the outfield for Assembly and the Occidentals. Rogers left Utah in about 1913 for Colorado to work at a Black-owned mortuary as an embalmer, later moving to Wyoming, then to Los Angeles in 1919 working in the same profession.⁷¹

Charles Eugene Shackelford: Shackelford was born in Austin, Texas, in 1875 and was in Butte, Montana, by 1903; from Montana he moved to Utah in 1905. He played second base for the 1905 Assembly team and worked for Lawrence W. Fair at the Assembly Club Saloon. Shackelford also served as the secretary and the treasurer of the club in 1906 and roomed at the Assembly building at 149 Twenty-Fifth Street. He moved to Chicago in 1909, married his wife Maud, and had a son named Thomas. From Chicago, they moved to Oakland, California, where he was employed as a porter and a waiter for a railroad company; for a while he co-owned a saloon and also worked as a cleaner for shipbuilding company. Charles moved back to Chicago in the late 1920s, and he passed away and was buried there in 1930 at the age of fifty-five.⁷²

Notes