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Sam Scott

Sam Scott, born July 20th, 1879 in Arkansas,1 was a black Arkansan who mentioned 19th Century black baseball in Arkansas as part of the Federal Writers' Project. See also Ed Allen.

Biography

Scott was the son of Sam Scott and Mollie Scott.2 3 He lived in Russellville, AR most of his life.4

In an interview with Thomas Elmore Lucy of the Federal Writer's Project in the 1930s, Scott mentioned having played baseball, though not explicitly as a youth. Based on Scott age's, he would have been playing baseball in the 1880s or later, not in slave times as elsewhere described.5

Excerpts

"No, I never did dance, but I sure could play baseball and make de home runs!"6
1 This is the birth date that Scott gives in the interview he gave to Thomas Elmore Lucy. He also gave his age as 79, which, as the interview notes, would make his birth year 1859, before emancipation. However, it's clear from the 1880 U.S. Census and Scott's WWI and WWII Draft Cards that he was indeed born in 1879.
5 E.g., in Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball, by Lawrence D. Hogan, p.5