88-year-old Rock Hill resident Wali Cathcart’s family story stretches across generations of Black struggle in America, from slavery to integration.
For Cathcart, many of those challenges and triumphs played out through his love of baseball, a sport that didn’t fully integrate for Black players until the late 1950s. As part of Black History Month, WFAE explores Cathcart’s journey from living under Jim Crow segregation to being honored for promoting equality.
A rooster strolled in a cage next to a group of hens on a 30-acre farm in South Carolina. Nearby, a duck splashed in the water. 88-year-old Wali Cathcart owns the farm.
He entered the barn and opened a bucket with a load of baseballs.
Cathcart is a local star. His barn is full of family pictures, obituaries and memorabilia. The African American grew up in the South and played in the Negro Leagues. The highest level of professional baseball for African Americans during segregation.
“When you grew up down here, opportunities were limited. That somebody was going to come out here to look at you and scout you,” Cathcart said. "That wasn’t the case. And if they had a baseball team or minor league team, it was all white.”
That’s why in the 1950’s he headed up North to New Jersey to pursue his dreams. Segregation wasn’t as strict as in the South under Jim Crow laws.
“You had your separate water fountains, you saw that on the news,” Cathcart said. "One said white, one said Black or negro. At the bus station. There was a colored reading room and a white, and when you got on the bus, you knew you had to go to the back. No matter how empty it was.”
Cathcart remembers a phrase African Americans said to keep children in line.
“Everybody would remind you, ‘Don’t, you get into no trouble,’” Cathcart said. "Getting in trouble meant doing something that white people didn’t like.”
About 10 minutes from downtown Rock Hill, Bob Gorman pulls out a few books from his shelf in his home office. The book's focus on game-related fatalities in baseball and tied to players, fans, and officials, which Gorman has written.
Gorman is a former librarian and a baseball historian. He recounted how Black players struggled to break the color barrier.
“It wasn’t until Jackie Robinson came along at 47 that it even opened the possibility of them having that opportunity. Even then, it was a long haul; it didn’t just desegregate,” Gorman said.
Robinson played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Gorman says some major league owners tried to play off race to incorporate other players into the league.
“They would bring in a Black player who would be light-skinned and could pass for Latino, and so they would attempt to integrate using that technique,” Gorman said. "It hardly ever worked. People realized what was going on. And the Latin players started integrating baseball before the Black players.”
After baseball, in the 1960s, Cathcart went into the army. He continued living in New Jersey with his family. In 1992, Cathcart returned to the family farm in Rock Hill to support his ageing parents. Now, he drives a tractor on the farm while his young sister, Margarie Cathcart, focused on completing errands in the family home one recent morning.
The 74-year-old is a retired caregiver. As her older brother pursued his dreams on the ballfield and in the army, she stayed on the family farm performing tough tasks.
“Well, it was back-breaking. You picked cotton. You’re carrying a sack. You dumped on this big sheet where the other cotton is,” Margarie Cathcart said. "It got to be a little back-breaking. But when you're living on your own land, you have to be grateful for something because we had our own land, whereas a lot of Black people did not.”
The family’s land, which used to span 60 acres, was purchased in the 1920s by Cathcart’s grandparents and their oldest son.
Wali Cathcart says they were able to buy the land because his great-uncle was a veteran of World War I. When his uncle died in 1923, the insurance money made the purchase possible.
Fannie Cathcart, Wali’s grandmother, was born on the Brattonsville Plantation three years after slavery ended in 1868. But her mother, Lila, was enslaved on the plantation, Wali Cathcart says. The former plantation site is about 10 minutes from the family farm.
Margarie Cathcart says picking cotton on their farm helped support the family.
“We got paid for that cotton that we took to be ginned. I don’t know if it was $200 or maybe $150,” Margarie Cathcart said. "But things were much cheaper then, and when you have mouths to feed, and your daddy is working and your momma is not working, that comes in handy.”
In a world where most Black farmers were sharecroppers, her family took pride in owning the land.
“I loved the fact that we lived here and we had our own property. We didn’t have to pick for somebody else,” Margarie Cathcart said. "We didn’t have to worry about somebody getting upset with us because we didn’t come up with our share. And that, I just loved.”
A ceremony was held in Downtown Rock Hill last year to honor Wali Cathcart and two other African American baseball players for what they represent and their role in integrating baseball in the South.
Hundreds of people showed up. Allan Miller, a member of the Freedom Walkway Initiative committee, spoke that night.
"It's important for people to realize how far communities have come,” Miller said. "It hasn't been that long ago, 75 or 80 years ago, that the Black population, the minority population, were not treated as equals.”
Sitting on his bed, reflecting on his family history that includes slavery, Wali Cathcart says.
“The more I live, the more I understand it. It means a lot. Because if you're familiar with how us Blacks have approached slavery, the phobia, and shame of not wanting to talk about it, and not wanting to discuss it, we all go through that,” Wali Cathcart said. "But the more you learn about it and you understand it, the more you feel a need (and) a responsibility to stand up for those ancestors.”
