Historic Oakland Oaks Baseball 1903 Tapestry

The Oakland Oaks were a minor league baseball team in Oakland, California that played in the Pacific Coast League from 1903 through 1955, after which the club transferred to Vancouver, British Columbia. The team was named for the city and used the oak tree and the acorn as its symbols. Hired by the Oaks and fired was multiracial Jimmy Clayton, the first African American to ever cross the professional baseball color line. He was hired as an American Indian, but later revealed he his father was black. He was fired. It was nearly thirty years before another black man played organized white baseball.