Stolen Dreams

Chris Lamb provides an opportunity for the voices of a long-forgotten Little League team to be heard and better understood within the context of racial strife in Charleston, South Carolina. Lamb places the story of the 1955 Cannon Street All-Stars in the larger context of the Civil Rights Movement, pointing out that these eleven- to twelve-year-old boys were involved in the fight even if they did not realize it at the time. Lamb takes the reader all the way back to the beginnings of slavery in South Carolina, providing a backdrop for this baseball story. In chapter 3, for example, we learn about a riot that took place in 1869 after a Black fan was arrested by police following a game at the Citadel Green. Or in Chapter 4, readers are given the details of a lynch mob killing a postmaster and his daughter near Charleston, simply because of their skin color, after burning down the family's home. Baseball does not become a real part of this story until chapter 8, as we are first introduced to Little League baseball's history. The story that Lamb tells is a tale of inhumanity that is not new in American history but, in this account, shows the devastation of racial strife against children. Young men who simply wanted to play in the Little League World Series were denied that opportunity by men who were afraid of change. Adults took out their racial hatred on a group of boys. Lamb argues that the story of Cannon Street is a story of Charleston and its racial past. He says the story cannot be separated from the city's past.Lamb explains the history of the Cannon Street team using the stories of a few key players as well as the roles played by the director of the parks and recreation department along with a prominent judge and a local Black businessman. The fight that develops between the law and customs of the South explains the reference to a civil war in Charleston. Robert Morrison set out to desegregate Little League in Charleston, hoping that, like Brown v. Board of Education, the success would be the catalyst to open doors for other opportunities denied to Black youth throughout the city and the state of South Carolina. The Cannon Street schedule put the team straight in the crosshairs of the fight caused by the Brown ruling. Senator Strom Thurmond and other local politicians set out to ensure that desegregation was not going to happen under their watch. As a result, team after team withdrew from tournament play so that Cannon Street was eventually denied the right to play in Williamsport because they had won by forfeit and not from playing. Lamb supports his thesis as he talks about boys on white teams being willing to play the Cannon Street All-Stars but prevented from doing so by adults who would not let the games take place. They saw these games as just the first step to the breakdown of all racial barriers in society, and they were not going to let that happen.Lamb presents a well-organized and researched story. He relies heavily on primary sources from both newspapers and interviews. He was able to talk with players and people from Charleston about the 1955 season and its greater significance. Lamb also draws upon his own previous work as well as a variety of secondary sources that help tell the story of race in Charleston, placing this baseball story in the larger context of the Civil Rights movement. Lamb's book is a significant contribution to baseball history as well as the history of race in America. The Cannon Street story is not one many are familiar with, and the book fills a void in connecting baseball to Charleston's history as well as America's history with slavery and ongoing segregation after the Civil War. It is a story of sadness and lost dreams rather than one of overcoming adversity. The boys never got to play in Williamsport. Little League invited them as spectators but gave in to the segregationists and did not enforce their own rules against racial barriers. Stolen Dreams brings baseball and the Civil Rights Movement into direct conflict, with the Cannon Street team ending up as the losers

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