Oak Ridge Bombers

Oak Ridge Bombers. Segregated Sports in Oak Ridge. During World War II, one of the few organized recreational opportunities available to African American men in Oak Ridge was baseball. In early August 1944, an African American baseball league was formed of six teams named after Clinton Engineer Works contracting companies: Roane-Anderson; Stone and Webster; J.A. Jones; Ford, Bacon and Davis; Keith Williams; and Carbide and Carbon. Games were held at sites throughout Oak Ridge including a segregated baseball diamond near the African American hutment area and an integrated diamond near much of the segregated housing at K-25., This African American league could have been the genesis of the Oak Ridge Bombers, a semi pro team created and managed by Robert Lee and James Capshaw in the late 1940s. Lee and Capshaw organized the African American men excluded from playing on white teams. These players, primarily workers from the postwar Oak Ridge plants, would work fulltime jobs and play traveling baseball on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays throughout the Southeast. The Oak Ridge Bombers continued to play into the mid-1960s, well after Jackie Robinson integrated professional baseball in 1947.