The Chatham Coloured All-Stars were Canadian amateur baseball team during the 1930s. The team included notable players such as Earl “Flat” Chase, Wilfred “Boomer” Harding, Ferguson Jenkins Sr., and Willie Shaugnosh. The 1934 edition of the team broke colour barriers as the first Black team to win a title in the Ontario Baseball Association, then known as the Ontario Baseball Amateur Association.
The team was formed in 1932 as a group of friends playing baseball in Stirling Park in the east end of Chatham, Ontario. The following year in 1933, the team was noticed by Archie Stirling, a local business owner and representative for the Ontario Baseball Amateur Association (OBAA).[2] This was significant because until the late 1940s black players were banned from major league baseball and were not always welcome onto white teams at the amateur level in Canada either. As the team was already barnstorming exhibition games in southern Ontario, Stirling brought them into the city league where they were able to compete against white teams. Quickly gaining in popularity, The Chatham Coloured All-Stars became known by many, including local reporters. In their second year playing in the league, they won the provincial championship, Intermediate B division, making them the first black team to win an OBAA title.[2] In 1935, the team won the city title as well as the Western Counties Baseball Association Championship, Intermediate A division.
In 1939, the Chatham Coloured All-Stars reached the all-Ontario finals but there was a dispute regarding the game location and no title was awarded that year.[2] After this, the team ultimately stopped playing as several team members went to serve in World War II. Some of these members included Wilfred “Boomer” Harding, Andy Harding and one of the coaches Lou Pryor. Although the team had been playing for more than a decade before Jackie Robinson entered the major league in 1947, none of the Chatham Coloured All-Stars had the opportunity to play in the major leagues.