Neil O. Churchill was a car dealer in Bismarck, North Dakota

Bismarck, North Dakota

Bismarck is the capital of the U.S. state of North Dakota and the county seat of Burleigh County. It is the second most populous city in North Dakota after Fargo. The city's population was 61,272 at the 2010 census, while its metropolitan population was 108,779...

 who funded an integrated

Racial segregation

Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...

 baseball

Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

 team in the mid-thirties more than a decade before Jackie Robinson

Jackie Robinson

Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson was the first black Major League Baseball player of the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947...

 broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball

Major League Baseball

Major League Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, consisting of teams that play in the National League and the American League...

.

Business

Churchill joined Wickham Corwin's Bismarck automobile dealership in 1925 and the company became Corwin-Churchill Motor Co. A colleague said he "was a hell of a salesman—a smart fellow and real promoter." In 1937, when Corwin moved to Fargo

Fargo, North Dakota

Fargo is the largest city in the U.S. state of North Dakota and the county seat of Cass County. In 2010, its population was 105,549, and it had an estimated metropolitan population of 208,777...

, Churchill stayed in Bismarck. When Churchill retired in 1952 he sold his share of the business to the Corwin family.

He also owned the Prince Hotel, Bismarck.

Baseball

Immediately after World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 Churchill took up baseball with the Bismarck semi-pro team and became their star player. He bought the team in 1933 and, from his experience of playing against black touring teams, he decided that recruiting black players would strengthen his new team. He called Abe Saperstein

Abe Saperstein

Abraham M. Saperstein was an owner and coach of the Savoy Big Five, which later became the Harlem Globetrotters...

 to recruit some Negro League

Negro league baseball

The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams predominantly made up of African Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the seven relatively successful leagues beginning in...

 players.

The first three black players to join the Bismarck Churchills

Bismarck Churchills

The Bismarck Churchills were an integrated semi-professional baseball team based in Bismarck, North Dakota in the 1930s. Led by Satchel Paige, Moose Johnson, and Double Duty Radcliffe, the club won the 1935 national semi-pro baseball tournament in Wichita, Kansas.The Churchills played...

 were Quincy Trouppe

Quincy Trouppe

Quincy Thomas Trouppe was an American professional baseball player and an amateur boxing champion. He was a catcher in the Negro Leagues from 1930 to 1949. He was a native of Dublin, Georgia....

 (Chicago American Giants

Chicago American Giants

Chicago American Giants were a Chicago-based Negro league baseball team, owned and managed from 1911 to 1926 by player-manager Andrew "Rube" Foster. From 1910 until the mid-1930s, the American Giants were the most dominant team in black baseball...

 catcher

Catcher

Catcher is a position for a baseball or softball player. When a batter takes his turn to hit, the catcher crouches behind home plate, in front of the umpire, and receives the ball from the pitcher. This is a catcher's primary duty, but he is also called upon to master many other skills in order to...

, Red Haley (Memphis Red Sox

Memphis Red Sox

The Memphis Red Sox were a professional Negro League baseball team based in Memphis, Tennessee from the 1920s until the end of segregated baseball....

 (infielder), and Roosevelt Davis (Pittsburgh Crawfords

Pittsburgh Crawfords

The Pittsburgh Crawfords, popularly known as the Craws, were a professional Negro league baseball team based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Named after the Crawford Grill, a club in the Hill District of Pittsburgh owned by Gus Greenlee, the Crawfords were originally a youth semipro team sponsored by...

) pitcher

Pitcher

In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throwsthe baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw a walk. In the numbering system used to record defensive plays, the...

. When these proved insufficient to beat Bismarck's great rivals in Jamestown

Jamestown, North Dakota

As of the census of 2000, there were 15,527 people, 6,505 households, and 3,798 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,246.7 per square mile . There were 6,970 housing units at an average density of 559.6 per square mile...

, Churchill recruited Satchel Paige

Satchel Paige

Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige was an American baseball player whose pitching in the Negro leagues and in Major League Baseball made him a legend in his own lifetime...

 from the Crawfords. Gus Greenlee

Gus Greenlee

William Augustus "Gus" Greenlee was a Negro League baseball owner and an African American businessman....

, the Crawfords' owner, threatened to knife Churchill for the 'theft' of Paige.

Paige arrived from Chicago on the day of the game in October 1933. It was the first time that he had played alongside white players. Churchill won his bet of $1000 with a Jamestown politician that his team would win. A rematch was held a few days later in Jamestown before a crowd of 4000. After twelve innings the game was ended, unresolved, by darkness. Churchill challenged Jamestown to a three-game series in Bismarck. Bismarck won that series and the state championship.

Next season (1934), Churchill spent $5,000 (using personal and city funds, and federal emergency relief labor) improving on the Bismarck ball park. He built a 3000-seat grandstand, children's bleachers, and a 500-space car park, with a clear view of the game along the outfield fence.

Churchill's 1935 team included Satchel Paige

Satchel Paige

Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige was an American baseball player whose pitching in the Negro leagues and in Major League Baseball made him a legend in his own lifetime...

, Hilton Smith

Hilton Smith

Hilton Lee Smith was an American right-handed pitcher in Negro league baseball. In 2001 he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.-Biography:...

, Quincy Trouppe

Quincy Trouppe

Quincy Thomas Trouppe was an American professional baseball player and an amateur boxing champion. He was a catcher in the Negro Leagues from 1930 to 1949. He was a native of Dublin, Georgia....

 (who joined the team in early June), and Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe

Ted Radcliffe

Theodore Roosevelt "Double Duty" Radcliffe was at his death thought to be the oldest living professional baseball player , one of only a handful of major league players who lived past their 100th birthdays, and a former star in the...

(who joined on June 21 after securing his release from the Brooklyn Eagles).