I think it is an outrage that colored men are discriminated against in the big leagues. What a shame it is that black men are barred forever from participating in the national game. I should think that Americans should rise up in revolt against such a condition. Many negroes are brilliant players and should not be shut out because their skin is black. As a Harvard man, I shall devote my life to bettering the condition of the black man, and especially to secure his admittance into organized baseball —William Clarence Matthews as quoted in the Boston Evening Traveler, July 15, 1905
Following four years at the famed Tuskegee Institute, Selma Alabama native William Clarence Matthews was sent to Philips Andover Academy in the Fall of 1897. From there, the exceptionally talented student athlete went to Harvard where, as shortstop, he led the Crimson to a won/lost record of 75-18 in his four years. This came at a time when college baseball was regarded just as highly as football, thereby making Matthews one of the most respected college athletes in America. McClure’s Magazine even described him as “the best there is in a college athlete.”
Matthews excelled in an era when contemporaries such as Christy Mathewson of Bucknell, Eddie Collins of Columbia, Jack Barry of Holy Cross, and Ed Ruelbach of Notre Dame made seamless transitions to the major leagues where they soon became stars.
During his time at Harvard his team faced several protests, canceling their southern tour in his sophomore year. In addition, he was kept out of games against Navy and Virginia. Yet he batted .400 and stole 22 bases in 25 games as a senior while attracting the attention of the Boston Nationals, whose manager Fred Tenney very much wanted to add Matthews to the roster of his seventh-place team.
When the executives who ran organized baseball rejected Tenney’s suggestion, Matthews observed, “If the magnates forget their prejudices and let me into the big leagues, I will show them that a colored boy can play better than lots of white men and he will be orderly on the field.”
Denied the chance to further prove himself athletically, Matthews took courses at Harvard Law School and completed his law degree at Boston University. In 1913 Booker T. Washington helped get him a position as special assistant to the U.S. attorney in Boston, and from 1920 to 1923 he served as legal counsel to the famed Black separatist Marcus Garvey.
He remained active in Republican Party politics and campaigned for Calvin Coolidge in 1924. He died of perforated ulcer in 1928 and was remembered in the Boston Globe as “one of the most prominent Negro members of the bar in America.”
Decades later, the Ivy League named their baseball team championship trophy in his honor.
