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The U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp of Larry Doby in 2012, honoring his role in pioneering racial integration in Major League Baseball.<\/p>\n
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Gwen Shannon, a volunteer at the African-American Cultural Center, says that the story of Larry Doby is important because his story is relatively unknown and there is so much to learn.<\/p>\n
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Elizabeth Robinson volunteers at the African-American Cultural Center of Camden on Wednesdays and she says her time learning about Larry Doby has sparked her previously minimal interest in baseball.<\/p>\n
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Located on York Street, the African-American Cultural Center of Camden is showing an exhibit on the life of baseball great Larry Doby. It will run until Aug. 30.<\/p>\n
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Located in front of the Camden Archives and Museum on Broad Street, the Larry Doby statue was installed in 2013. The ceremony was attended by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and MLB Hall of Famer Jim Rice.<\/p>\n
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CAMDEN, S.C. – The small city of Camden,\u00a0tucked away about 45 minutes northeast of the state capital Columbia,\u00a0is the birthplace of an often overlooked pioneer in racial integration. Larry Doby, the second African-American player to play major league baseball,\u00a0was born here and spent\u00a0the first 14 years of his life in this place he always called home.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Earl Benedict, a lifelong Camden resident, felt the influence of the game-changing second baseman\u00a0as a child, even though he never saw Doby play in a game.<\/p>\n \u201cCertainly, when I played ball, I thought of Doby as one of the main people to be,\u201d Benedict said. \u201cI don\u2019t know if emulate is the right word, but he was in my mind at times.\u201d<\/p>\n Doby, who died in 2003, was a phenomenon in his time but seemed to fall\u00a0through the cracks of baseball history in comparison to Jackie Robinson<\/a>,\u00a0who broke professional baseball’s color barrier in 1947.\u00a0<\/span>Robinson’s story has been documented in hundreds of stories, books, documentaries and in the popular motion picture, “42<\/a>.”<\/p>\n But the African-American Cultural Center of Camden is trying to pique interest in Doby\u2019s story as the first black player in the American League.<\/p>\n On the field, Doby was a seven-time all-star<\/a>, the first black player to get a hit and homerun in the World Series, and was the first black player to win the World Series in 1948 with the Cleveland Indians. Unlike Robinson, who spent a year in the Brooklyn Dodgers farm system, Doby went straight to the majors from the Negro League’s Newark Eagles. He made his debut on July, 5 1947, three months after Robinson played his first MLB game.<\/p>\n These accomplishments, plus the immeasurable social contributions\u00a0Doby\u2019s presence in the league created made him a logical choice for\u00a0National Baseball Hall of Fame<\/a> honors.\u00a0But he dropped off the ballot in 1984 after running out of eligibility.<\/p>\n Doby had to wait until 1998, when he was 74, to get the call that he was a member of baseball\u2019s most prestigious club. The Veterans Committee, which looks at long-retired players, managers, umpires and executives, elected him.<\/p>\n Doby opened his induction speech by saying: \u201cI\u2019m from a little town in South Carolina called Camden.\u201d<\/p>\n The\u00a0free museum<\/a> has been running a comprehensive exhibition of\u00a0Doby since Feb. 24, complete with photos, memorabilia and an hour-and-a-half long documentary on his life, which ends Aug. 30.<\/p>\n The exhibit is open Monday, Wednesday Friday, 1-4 p.m., and Saturday 10 a.m.-4 p.m.<\/p>\n Gwen Shannon volunteers at the Larry Doby exhibit on Monday\u2019s and despite her aversion to\u00a0baseball, she decided to donate her time to Camden\u2019s most accomplished athlete in its history.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t stand baseball!” Shannon laughed. “It\u2019s more about the history. I was really unfamiliar with him, but once they decided on the exhibit it intrigued me to come and see someone like Larry Doby, and I\u2019ve learned so much about him.\u201d<\/p>\n Elizabeth Robinson, a former middle school teacher, also volunteers at the African-American Cultural Center of Camden. She hopes it will raise Doby’s profile and fill in some of the historical gaps for school children who visit.<\/p>\n \u201cIt will be promoted through the schools but it will be hard to have field trips because they normally do whole grades at a time and this is such a small space,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cBut what they can do is have small groups like gifted classes, special education classes and after-school clubs.”<\/p>\n Elizabeth Robinson, like Shannon, was not a baseball fan before she volunteered at museum. But after forgetting her phone and crochet needles one day while volunteering, Robinson toured\u00a0the exhibit\u00a0and found herself more absorbed than she thought she\u2019d be.<\/p>\n \u201cI am more interested in baseball now and I have more respect for Larry Doby,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cThe other night I was flipping through the TV and I stopped at baseball and I never would have done that before.\u201d<\/p>\n While he was not as well-known as other pioneering black stars of the mid-twentieth century like Jackie Robinson<\/a>, Willie Mays<\/a>, and Don Newcombe<\/a>, Doby was a player of similar caliber and experienced the same level of racism as his counterparts.<\/p>\n