BLACK HISTORY

1946

Seattle Steelheads Play At Sick Stadium

The Seattle Steelheads were the allBlack minor league baseball team formed in the spring of 1946 as part of the West Coast Negro Baseball League. They played their first game in Sick Stadium on June 1, 1946, before a racially mixed crowd of 2,500. The Steelies split a double-header with the San Diego Tigers and later barnstormed across the region in non-league games as far away as Bellingham, Spokane, and Portland, Oregon.

Despite a winning season, the Steelheads never drew large crowds and the other league teams fared worse.

The Steelies played their last game at Sick Stadium in September 1946 just three months after their first game. On September 9, 1995, the American League Seattle Mariners honored the Steelheads during their home game by wearing replicas of their uniforms and giving away Negro League hats. They also recognized the only surviving team member, 92-year-old Herbert Simpson, first baseman of the historical Seattle Steelheads.

1949

Kay Coles James Born

Kay Coles James is a conservative political figure who has served prominent government and executive roles, including as Associate Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President George Bush, and as the Convention Secretary for the 1996 Republican National Convention in San Diego.

Most notably, James was the first African American president of the Heritage Foundation, an influential Washington, D.C. -based conservative public policy research institute. Born June 1, 1949, she was raised in Richmond, Virginia and graduated from Hampton University. She founded the Gloucester Institute, an organization that trains and nurtures college-aged Black community leaders and draws its inspiration from the work of Dr. Robert Russa Moton, the successor to Booker T. Washington at the Tuskegee Institute.