Bringing back the Black Crackers’ practice field — and a farm
Urban ag group wants former Negro Leagues team’s old playing area in southwest Atlanta turned into living lab
Call it southwest Atlanta’s field of dreams.
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An urban agriculture organization is crowdfunding a plan to build a “mini-farm” and ball field to highlight a little-known piece of Atlanta baseball history: the former practice field of the Black Crackers, a Negro League team of the segregation era. The field is now part of the Outdoor Activity Center, a 26-acre city parkland in the Bush Mountain neighborhood off Cascade Road.
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“Not a whole lot of people know” the field’s baseball history, says Eugene Cooke, whose for-profit urban-farm business Grow Where You Are is masterminding the revitalization plan.
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In an Indiegogo campaign launched Feb. 21, Grow Where You Are aims to raise $15,000 for what it calls the Atlanta Black Crackers Lab Camp. The two-acre practice field area would become a farm site growing fruits and vegetables that locals might have grown in the early 20th century, along with food-prep facilities such as an outdoor baking oven. A small baseball diamond would be open to locals, and historical displays would inform them about the Black Crackers. A camping area and an observation deck made partly of old tires dumped at the site would round out the plan.
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“Gaining a sense of place can be one of the most empowering things that the modern human can do,” says the fundraising pitch. “For a community that is half-vacant and underinvested this outdoor space will offer the opportunity to examine an alternative way to develop communities through seasonal gatherings and beautification.”
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The plan also would require “at least one farmer in residence,” Cooke says, adding that he’d like to purchase and rehab a local house for that purpose in yet another way to boost the community.
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Baseball historians and fans could be another big source of support. The Black Crackers had connections with, and apparently were named in reference to, the Atlanta Crackers, the white minor-league team that was the city’s local ball club until the Braves moved from Milwaukee in 1966. Starting life as the Cubs, the team became known as the Black Crackers around 1919, apparently in response to fans’ informal use of the name, according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia. The team stuck around in various forms until Major League Baseball integrated around 1950.
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The Crackers and Black Crackers both played on a ball field that once stood at 650 Ponce de Leon Ave., now replaced by the Midtown Place shopping center. The Black Crackers practice field in the Outdoor Activity Center may be the last tangible site of that baseball history. Even so, local history is hazy as to why the field was there, in what at the time was considered a semi-rural part of town.
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“Maybe this was close to home for some people” who played on the team, Cooke speculates.
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Cooke has a track record of pulling off big urban-farm projects. He was a co-founder of Truly Living Well, the nonprofit behind the Wheat Street Gardens and the Good Shepherd Agro-Ecology Center, and led the design team for both. Grow Where You Are is his separate company, a food-growers’ collective that manages those urban farm sites and helps sell their products.
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The Outdoor Activity Center is operated by the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance, a nonprofit working under a city agreement. Grow Where You Are became involved in the center about three years ago, when WAWA commissioned the group to revitalize and manage its community gardens.
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That’s how he learned the history and potential of the park’s field, which is mowed twice a year by the city and used only for the local edition of the National Wildlife Federation’s annual Great American Backyard Campout. He saw a need for activities for local youth, who have “semi-frequently” vandalized the gardens, presumably for lack of anything better to do.
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“WAWA loved the idea, but they didn’t have funds,” says Cooke.
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In fact, WAWA has a “visioning plan” for the entire park, formulated in 2011, that includes a baseball field in the same area. It remains unfunded, but Cooke says his plan would involve no permanent structures so that everything could be changed later if WAWA preferred. Jenna Garland, a spokeswoman for Mayor Kasim Reed, says the city is aware of the proposal, has a good relationship with WAWA, and that it’s subject to the usual design review and approval process.
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Imran Battla, WAWA’s board treasurer, says they’re ready to re-engage the community and mix the past and the present.
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“We’d love to show that we can do some improvements to an area that has been long neglected and underserved,” he says. “There is a rich history and it should be recognized for what it was and can be. We’re trying to highlight the legacy of our ancestors — and the importance it plays in southwest Atlanta.”