South Bend's 'Foundry Field' project paying homage to Black ballplayers adds new murals

SOUTH BEND — Ashley Nora, a muralist who traveled to South Bend to depict an African American softball team that played here around the 1940s, was pleased with the work she'd done at a public baseball field in Southeast Park.

But a final test remained. Nora had to watch the family members of two women painted prominently — players Renelda Robinson and Doris Grady — behold their images.

At a Monday event unveiling new murals at Foundry Field of a local team that played in the American Negro Girls Softball League, Nora recalled the reaction from Marguerite Taylor, Robinson's oldest daughter, on the last day of painting: "'That looks just like my mama.'"

And then, Monday afternoon, the muralist said she won the approval of Lily Grady, the sister-in-law of Doris Grady. She attended on behalf of Doris, who is 100 years old and lives in Florida.

"I knew that I did it. I didn't care if anybody else liked it," Nora said, as Lily Grady and Taylor sat next to her grinning.

Murals installed near the train tracks this month at Foundry Field build on efforts last year to honor the Foundry Giants, a team of Black Studebaker workers that played in an otherwise all-white local baseball league in the 1920s and the 1930s. The work — a partnership spearheaded by the Sappy Moffitt Field Foundation, an adult baseball league founded in 2013, and the University of Notre Dame's Center for Social Concerns — aims to share the history of minority athletes who faced discrimination just for showing up to play.

"These sports teams helped to build and reinforce important community institutions that allowed African American residents to stake their claim to full citizenship in South Bend," Greg Bond, the sports archivist at Notre Dame's Hesburgh Libraries, said on Monday.

One new mural shows Seabe Gavin Sr., a star baseball player at South Bend Central High School in the early 1930s who played for a later iteration of the Foundry Giants that same decade. Waleed Johnson, a recent Notre Dame graduate, painted the mural and won over the star athlete's son, Seabe Gavin Jr., who serves as the athletic director at Riley High School.

"After going through the Great Migration, picking cotton every day … my grandmother made a conscious effort to bring her family up north for him to have the opportunity to go to school," Seabe Gavin Jr. said of his father. "Lo and behold, he became this great athlete."

The other addition pays homage to a team coached by Ernest "Uncle Bill" Harris, a west side restaurant owner who gave Black girls and women a chance to play high-level softball despite the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League barring Black women. Nora, a Mississippi native who now lives in Indianapolis, did this portion.

Robinson, the namesake of the Robinson Community Learning Center on Eddy Street, started playing ball after she joined the baseball team at Perley Elementary School. She joined Uncle Bill's team while attending Central High School. In adulthood, she became a well-known advocate for the Northeast Neighborhood.

"Her business was helping people," Taylor said of her mother, "and she did a lot of that."

Research is ongoing to incorporate the histories of more underrepresented athletes into the Foundry Field landscape. In coming semesters, Notre Dame American Studies professor Katherine Walden's class will research two local Latino teams from the 1970s and a Potawatomi team that played around the turn of the 20th century.

Foundry Field will host some games by September of this year, according to Matthew Insley, co-founder of the Sappy Moffitt League. The park has an infield with bases, a pitcher's mound and a grassy outfield. It's awaiting the addition of dugouts, fences, netting for the backstop and a hand-operated scoreboard.

Insley said children from the Boys & Girls Club of St. Joseph County and South Bend middle schools will use the field, and so will the adult league. The field is a public park maintained by South Bend Venues Parks & Arts, so when it's not scheduled for use, anyone can enter and play ball.

Email South Bend Tribune city reporter Jordan Smith at JTsmith@gannett.com. Follow him on X: @jordantsmith09

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: South Bend murals honor African American softball, baseball players