Fred Thomas (athlete)
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Fred Thomas (athlete)
Fred Thomas (December 26, 1923 – May 20, 1981) was a Canadian multi-sport professional athlete. He played on semi-professional or professional teams in basketball, baseball, and Canadian football. He was a standout on his college basketball team and is known as one of Canada's finest basketball players. A 2019 profile by TVOntario described Thomas as "the greatest Canadian athlete you've never heard of". He would likely have been more well-known had blacks not been denied opportunities to compete in major professional sports leagues in the 1940s and 1950s. Early life and education Thomas grew up in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. He was a fifth-generation Canadian whose ancestry can be traced to enslaved Africans fleeing North Carolina and Barbados, Barbadian immigrants. His parents were Charles Fred Thomas and Edith May Thomas. He had seven siblings; one brother and six sisters. He was the second oldest and his athletic prowess let him excel at many sports. He attended high school at ...
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Windsor, Ontario
Windsor is a city in southwestern Ontario, Canada, on the south bank of the Detroit River directly across from Detroit, Michigan, United States. Geographically located within but administratively independent of Essex County, it is the southernmost city in Canada and marks the southwestern end of the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor. The city's population was 229,660 at the 2021 census, making it the third-most populated city in Southwestern Ontario, after London and Kitchener. The Detroit–Windsor urban area is North America's most populous trans-border conurbation, and the Ambassador Bridge border crossing is the busiest commercial crossing on the Canada–United States border. Windsor is a major contributor to Canada's automotive industry and is culturally diverse. Known as the "Automotive Capital of Canada", Windsor's industrial and manufacturing heritage is responsible for how the city has developed through the years. History Early settlement At the time when the fir ...
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Royal Canadian Air Force
The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF; french: Aviation royale canadienne, ARC) is the air and space force of Canada. Its role is to "provide the Canadian Forces with relevant, responsive and effective airpower". The RCAF is one of three environmental commands within the unified Canadian Armed Forces. As of 2020, the Royal Canadian Air Force consists of 12,074 Regular Force and 1,969 Primary Reserve personnel, supported by 1,518 civilians, and operates 258 manned aircraft and nine unmanned aerial vehicles. Lieutenant-General Eric Kenny is the current commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force and chief of the Air Force Staff. The Royal Canadian Air Force is responsible for all aircraft operations of the Canadian Forces, enforcing the security of Canada's airspace and providing aircraft to support the missions of the Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Army. The RCAF is a partner with the United States Air Force in protecting continental airspace under the North American Aerospac ...
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Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. The NL and AL were formed in 1876 and 1901, respectively. Beginning in 1903, the two leagues signed the National Agreement and cooperated but remained legally separate entities until 2000, when they merged into a single organization led by the Commissioner of Baseball. MLB is headquartered in Midtown Manhattan. It is also included as one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. Baseball's first all-professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, was founded in 1869. Before that, some teams had secretly paid certain players. The first few decades of professional baseball were characterized by rivalries between leagues and by players who often jumped from one te ...
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Quebec Provincial League
The Provincial League, sometimes known as the Quebec Provincial League, was a minor league baseball league based in the Canadian province of Quebec. It went through a number of incarnations during the 20th century, spending time as both an independent baseball league (1922–23, 1935–1939, 1948–49, and 1958–1971) and as a member of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (1924, 1940, and 1950–1955). It is notable as a successful independent league at a time when few existed, and was a haven for black and indigenous players excluded from organized baseball. Early history The Provincial League was part of a long history of Quebec-based minor leagues. The first iterations played in 1894 and 1900. Later, the Ontario–Quebec–Vermont League played from 1922 to 1924, spending two years as an independent league before joining the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, the governing body of minor league baseball, in its last season. Like later ...
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Farnham Pirates
The Farnham Pirates were a minor league baseball team located in Farnham, Quebec, Canada. They played in the Provincial League from 1948 to 1951. The team was managed by Sam Bankhead, who was a player-manager. He was the first black coach in Minor League Baseball. Outfielder Fred Thomas played 58 games in the 1948 season batting .351 which caught the attention of Major League Baseball scouts. He was selected by the Cleveland Indians The Cleveland Guardians are an American professional baseball team based in Cleveland. The Guardians compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Central division. Since , they have played at Progressive Fi ... to join the Wilkes-Barre Barons farm-team who played in the Eastern League, where he was the first black player in the league. References Defunct minor league baseball teams Defunct baseball teams in Canada Baseball teams in Quebec Baseball teams established in 1948 1948 establishments in Q ...
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Detroit Senators
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 census, making it the 27th-most populous city in the United States. The metropolitan area, known as Metro Detroit, is home to 4.3 million people, making it the second-largest in the Midwest after the Chicago metropolitan area, and the 14th-largest in the United States. Regarded as a major cultural center, Detroit is known for its contributions to music, art, architecture and design, in addition to its historical automotive background. ''Time'' named Detroit as one of the fifty World's Greatest Places of 2022 to explore. Detroit is a major port on the Detroit River, one of the four major straits that connect the Great Lakes system to the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The City of Detroit anchors the second-largest regional economy in the M ...
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Cincinnati Crescents
Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line with Kentucky. The city is the economic and cultural hub of the Cincinnati metropolitan area. With an estimated population of 2,256,884, it is Ohio's largest metropolitan area and the nation's 30th-largest, and with a city population of 309,317, Cincinnati is the third-largest city in Ohio and 64th in the United States. Throughout much of the 19th century, it was among the top 10 U.S. cities by population, surpassed only by New Orleans and the older, established settlements of the United States eastern seaboard, as well as being the sixth-most populous city from 1840 until 1860. As a rivertown crossroads at the junction of the North, South, East, and West, Cincinnati developed with fewer immigrants and less influence from Europe than Ea ...
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Negro League Baseball
The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams of African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latin 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 1920 that are sometimes termed "Negro Major Leagues". In the late 19th century, the baseball color line developed in professional baseball, excluding African Americans from league play. In 1885, the Cuban Giants formed the first black professional baseball team. The first league, the National Colored Base Ball League, was organized strictly as a minor league but failed in 1887 after only two weeks owing to low attendance. After several decades of mostly independent play by a variety of teams, in 1920 the first Negro National League was formed and ultimately seven major leagues existed at various times over the next thirty years. After integration, the quality of th ...
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NCAA
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges and universities in the United States and Canada and helps over 500,000 college student athletes who compete annually in college sports. The organization is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. Until 1957, the NCAA was a single division for all schools. That year, the NCAA split into the University Division and the College Division. In August 1973, the current three-division system of Division I, Division II, and Division III was adopted by the NCAA membership in a special convention. Under NCAA rules, Division I and Division II schools can offer scholarships to athletes for playing a sport. Division III schools may not offer any athletic scholarships. Generally, larger schools compete in Division I and smaller schools in II and III. ...
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Toronto Globe And Mail
''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it falls slightly behind the ''Toronto Star'' in overall weekly circulation because the ''Star'' publishes a Sunday edition, whereas the ''Globe'' does not. ''The Globe and Mail'' is regarded by some as Canada's "newspaper of record". ''The Globe and Mail''s predecessors, '' The Globe'' and ''The Mail and Empire'' were both established in the 19th century. The former was established in 1844, while the latter was established in 1895 through a merger of ''The Toronto Mail'' and the ''Toronto Empire''. In 1936, ''The Globe'' and ''The Mail and Empire'' merged to form ''The Globe and Mail''. The newspaper was acquired by FP Publications in 1965, who later sold the paper to the Thomson Corporation in 1980. In 2001, the paper merged with broadcast a ...
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Harlem Globetrotters
The Harlem Globetrotters are an American exhibition basketball team. They combine athleticism, theater, and comedy in their style of play. Created in 1926 by Tommy Brookins in Chicago, Illinois, the team adopted the name ''Harlem'' because of its connotations as a major African-American community. Over the years, they have played more than 26,000 exhibition games in 124 countries and territories, mostly against deliberately ineffective opponents, such as the Washington Generals (1953–1995, since 2015) and the New York Nationals (1995–2015). The team's signature song is Brother Bones' whistled version of "Sweet Georgia Brown", and their mascot is an anthropomorphized globe named "Globie". The team is owned by Herschend Family Entertainment. History The Globetrotters originated on the South Side of Chicago in 1926, where all the original players were raised. The Globetrotters began as the Savoy Big Five, one of the premier attractions of the Savoy Ballroom, opened in January ...
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