Frances Jelks-Brown shares stories of her father, Osibee Jelks, who was among the first African American umpires in Major League Baseball. Among the places he worked was Hinchliffe Stadium, a Negro League stadium located within Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park.

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TRANSCRIPT:

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MPS Episode 9: Frances Jelks-Brown

[intro music] Dave: Welcome to My Park Story, presented by the National Park Service. People form connections with their favorite national parks and programs, and this park-cast is a place to come together and share those stories. I’m your host, Dave Barak. Today's guest, Frances Jelks-Brown discusses Hinchliffe Stadium, one of the last standing Negro League Baseball stadiums in the country, where her father umpired.

[intro music fades out]  Dave (voiceover): What did the National Park Service and the National Pastime have in common you ask? Hinchliffe Stadium, located within Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park, is one of the last remaining stadiums used by the Negro Leagues. Completed in 1932, the stadium served as a Home Park to several teams in the league. Larry Doby, the first African American player in the American League, played there as well as other Hall of Farmers. After serving as a field for high school baseball, Hinchliffe Stadium closed in 1996. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004 and became a National Historic Landmark in 2013. These designations helped secure a historic tax credit as well as grants through the National Park Service totaling $1 million in funding. It officially reopened in 2023 and is currently the home of the New Jersey Jackals, a member of the Major League Baseball Partner League.

Dave: My guest today is Frances Jelks Brown, who has a family connection to Hinchliffe Stadium. Frances, hi. How are you?

Frances: Hi. Thank you for having me.

Dave: We're delighted to talk to you and to learn more about your family history and story and connection to this really special place. It's unique amongst features of national parks and we're eager to hear what your connection is.

Frances: My connection to Hinchliffe Stadium is just that. It's very unique. My father's name was Osibee Julian Jelks. My dad was a baseball umpire before I was born and, unfortunately, he is he's now deceased, and our connection to Hinchliffe is is that he was a Negro League umpire and and had many games there at Hinchliffe Stadium there in Paterson NJ. And then fast forward to present day my son, who is 15 years old, is a baseball player and so that is my special unique story which with Hinchliffe Stadium

Dave: He was an umpire with the Negro Leagues and he actually worked at Hinchliffe Stadium.

Frances: Yes he he did some some games there at Hinchliffe Stadium. He, my dad, was from Louisiana.

Dave: And being from Louisiana, do you know how he ended up in the northeast, in New Jersey?

Frances: So you may be on-seasson, like baseball now is on-season, in, the you know summer, the mid-spring to early-fall. While on off-season he would travel around, and so how he got to the northeast was, he was traveling and he met my mom. My mom, who also happens to be from Louisiana, he met in Elmira, NY when he was coming up there, and they met and they ended up getting married two years later. And he still continued in baseball traveling around the country and traveling outside the country to the DR, to Puerto Rico, to Hawaii, to so many different places. And, but that's how he met my mom in the northeast, and they decided to settle in the, northeast because that's where my mom was working primarily because she had also come from Louisiana.

Dave: So the fact that Hinchliffe stadium, which is only one part of your father's storied career, the fact that it has now been reopened, they're playing there again, which is just remarkable and it's been closed for for years, and with a few grants from the National Park Service and other entities, has reopened. What does that mean to you knowing this space is now again being used the way that it was when your father was working there?

Frances: You know, as you said, it's now a landmark. And you know, we we look at, we look back at history and we say, you know what preserves something to be a landmark. And when you think about Hinchliffe Stadium, you think about this was a place where people traditionally of color, whether African American or Latin X, went to be able to play a game where they weren't able to play with other people. You know, when my dad was an umpire, you know, the players will walk through the front door while he would have to walk through the back, and he couldn't stay at some of the hotels where they stayed at. He would have to stay in colored only hotels, especially, you know, those areas really deep in the South. And so Hinchliffe Stadium was a landmark for those who traditionally weren't able to be in in the sport, and to know that they were able to rectify this wonderful landmark and to preserve that piece of history for generations to come. You know, it means a lot just walking in the stadium for my family and I. You know, it sent chills up our, for me personally, it sent chills up my spine because here it was a stadium where my, you know, dad and his and other people could play freely, but they weren't free necessarily outside of the stadium of race and discrimination. And here, you know, over 40-plus years later, is my son, who is able to reap the benefits of the things that they did and the struggles that they sought through. I mean it. It really is a magical place for my family.

Dave: I mean, that's beautiful to have that intergenerational connection to place and to space. And Hinchliffe is really one of the very few remaining Negro League stadiums in the country. So there's not that many opportunities to visit places like that. And, you know, it's remarkable how much work went into it at the local, state and federal level to bring it back to life the way that it is. I want to go back to ask you, your father started his career as an umpire in the Negro Leagues, but he did eventually work for Major League Baseball. What was that transition like for him?

Frances: The transition. Well, let me go back and say by the time I came along, by the time I was born, my dad was not working in baseball anymore.

Dave: Right.

Frances: And for so many years, almost until I was about 18 years old, I didn't, in fact, know my dad had anything to do with Major League Baseball because he didn't speak about it. It was, it was something that was a shock to me when I found out, I mean, but it made sense. I, growing up, I knew a lot of baseball players. But my assumption and my thought to that was that my my father knew, you know, these were just his friends. And, you know, we always went to baseball games and we always went to sporting events and we had tickets to it- but I just assumed that it was from my father's business that he acquired these things. I used to always wonder why so many people knew him wherever we went

Dave: [laughs]

Frances: You know, and and, you know, and I would have, you know, people at my house like, you know, Dave Winfield and things like that. But to me, they were just people. They weren't, they weren't celebrities. I didn't even know, I don't even... At that time, I didn't even like baseball. So you know, I didn't know who they were. Other people around me knew who they were, but they were just people for me and you know, they were my parents friends or whatever. And so back to your question, you know my dad was very close-lipped about his experience with baseball because in the end it was very hard for him. He he struggled. He, you know, it's hard when you break barriers. My dad was the second African American umpire in the league and so breaking those barriers came with a price. And you know the price could be very steep, you know, on your your mental well-being and your social well-being, at that. You know, making sure, ensuring that your family stayed safe and ensuring that you yourself stayed safe. So it was both a blessing and a curse at the same time, if that makes sense.

Dave: It it does make sense and it's, from a contemporary standpoint, I don't know that we as, you know, the public or even as baseball fans can really comprehend what your father went through. And to to make that decision you have to be so strong-willed and so sure of yourself and it's clear that your father was. The stadium where your father worked is part of the National Park Service, and we say now you know what you did and others did this was important and it it's bigger than you. It's bigger than the handful of people that had the opportunity to play there. It's emblematic of a people that contributed to civil rights and to, really the history of this country.

Frances: I think, you know, that's why my dad didn't didn't speak about it a lot because he loved baseball, and he'd never wanted to talk out of turn or ill will about it. He knew that, and necessarily it wasn't baseball. It was just the time and the place and the way that we lived at that time, you know. But for himself, you know, he had to make some really hard decisions about doing something that he loved and also standing up for beliefs and rights that he believed in that safeguarded and him and his family.

Dave: You know he's not the only one, that there were other players and staff and umpires that were a part of this league, that for so long people didn't know about and, you know, grateful for places like Paterson Great Falls, where the stadium is located, and places like the Negro Leagues Hall of Fame that raise up these stories and say ‘These are important. You may not have heard of these individuals but co