Outfielder Nat Peeples, the pawn in the unsuccessful attempt to integrate the Southern Association. He played in two games for the Atlanta Crackers in 1954.
The story goes like this: Earl Mann, owner of the Crackers, in 1949, scheduled an exhibition series in Atlanta's Ponce de Leon Park against the Brooklyn Dodgers, who by then had Jackie Robinson in their lineup. The final game of the series drew a club record 25,221 fans -- including 13,885 Negro fans -- in what was the first time that black and white players had ever competed against one another in an Atlanta sporting event.
By 1954, the Crackers had entered into a PDC with the Milwaukee Braves, and Mann had decided, for almost surely pure financial reasons, to try to integrate the Crackers. Two players were being considered: Henry Aaron and Nat Peeples, but Aaron made the major league club, while Peeples ended spring training with the Crackers. Peeples pinch-hit in a game at Mobile on April 9, 1954, to become the first black player in Southern Association history, and the next day he started and played all nine innings.
But he did not play in another game, and on April 17, was optioned to Jacksonville, which had broken the Sally League color barrier the year before with several players, including Aaron. No other black player competed in a Southern Association game before it disbanded in 1962.
Peeples is picture with Louisville of the American Association in 1959. From the Lexibell files.
(much of the above comes from an article by SABR's Skip Nipper and Roy Darnell's Crackers history for the Georgia Encyclopedia)
