THOMASVILLE- Historic footage from a baseball game played at Thomasville, Georgia’s Pebble Hill Plantation has made its way for inclusion in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. The 26-seconds of 28 mm film, from around 1919, is the earliest known footage of organized Black baseball in existence. Visitors to Pebble Hill Plantation may now view this historic footage, which is available on video in the Kennel Cottage.

“’The Souls of the Game: Voices of Black Baseball,’ examines the Black Baseball experience, from baseball’s earliest days through the game today,” said Tom Sheiber, Senior Curator for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. “We were thrilled to include the stunning and revealing footage of employees from Pebble Hill Plantation and the other from nearby Chinquapin Plantation. Not only is the clip the earliest known footage of Black baseball play, but it is a reminder of the importance of baseball in the Black community at the time and provides a window into the Black baseball experience from well over a century ago.”

Baseball enjoyed enormous popularity in Thomasville and Thomas County in the early 20th century with several of the local plantations forming baseball teams. Rivalries were fierce and spirited. The short clip of one of these matchups features the Pebble Hill and Chinquapin teams. The film is part of a collection of home movies kept by Pebble Hill’s last owner, Elisabeth Ireland Poe.

All of the Pebble Hill films were donated to the University of Georgia in 2011. Since then, they have been preserved and digitized and are now housed in the University of Georgia’s Walter J. Brown Media Archives as, “The Pebble Hill Plantation Collection.”

Film Archivist for the Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards at the University of Georgia, Margaret Compton, who was involved with the acquisition of the footage from Pebble Hill and with its preservation, has conducted extensive research into the history of Black baseball. She presented her findings, along with the Pebble Hill footage at the 26th Annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture in 2014. Her efforts are what led to the inclusion of the Pebble Hill footage in the Hall of Fame exhibit.

“As a film archivist, it was a thrill to have been the first person in decades to see that this very short segment of film shows a moment from a baseball game between employees of Pebble Hill and Chinquapin Plantations,” said Compton. “We are honored to preserve Pebble Hill’s films here at the University of Georgia Libraries’ Brown Media Archives, and to make them available to the public. It’s even more exciting that this film is recognized as the earliest known existing film showing African Americans playing baseball, and that everyone who walks through the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s latest exhibition, “The Souls of the Game:  Voices of Black Baseball” gets to see it, too.”

Kent State Associate Professor of History and author of Black Ball, Leslie Heaphy, said, “The addition of the footage from Pebble Hill adds an element rarely seen from such an early period. To be able to see African American ball players enjoying the game from such an early time frame enhances our understanding of the history and importance of baseball for all Americans.”

For more information on “The Souls of the Game: Voices of Black Baseball,” visit https://baseball.org/The-Black-Basbeall-Initiative/the-souls-of-the-game.

Visit https://dlg.usg.edu/collection/ugabma_pebblehill to view more historic video footage of Pebble Hill Plantation.

More information about Pebble Hill may be obtained by visiting https://pebblehill.com/ or by calling 229-226-2344. Pebble Hill Plantation is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a 501c3 nonprofit organization.