Breaking The Colour Barrier Project Launching This Weekend

On June 10, 2017, members of the Chatham Sports Hall of Fame, the University of Windsor, and the Harding Family will officially launch the “Breaking the Colour Barrier: Wilfred ‘Boomer’ Harding and the Chatham Coloured All-Stars (1932-1939)” project.

Funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation, this project documents and celebrates the legacy of the Chatham Coloured All-Stars, the first black team to win an Ontario Baseball Association provincial championship in 1934. The project features oral histories from friends and family members of the 1930s Chatham Coloured All-Stars team, digitized materials related to Mr Harding and the All-Stars players, a timeline documenting newspaper coverage of the 1934 season, K-12 educational resources drawing on the Ontario curriculum, a display in the Chatham Sports Hall of Fame, an 8-panel traveling exhibition, a cartoon history of the All-Stars and a set of Chatham Coloured All-Stars trading cards.

The website will go live on June 10, 2017 (http://cdigs.uwindsor.ca/BreakingColourBarrier/).

June 10, from 1-3pm at the W.I.S.H. Centre in Chatham, several speakers, including Chatham Sports Hall of Fame treasurer Don Bruner, Heidi Jacobs, Dave Johnston, and Miriam Wright of the University of Windsor, and Pat Harding (no behalf of the Harding family and families of the Chatham Coloured All-Stars) will speak to unveil the project.