Montclair Elementary School students and parents got a surprise in their 2025 yearbook. The school was celebrating its centennial, and the yearbook featured articles about the school's history over the past 100 years. One of the articles described the 1940 annual carnival, and a particular game was highlighted in the story.
“Boy and Girl Scouts will have charge of booths and many attractions such as n****r babies.”
Parents were outraged, the gist of the comments were about how unsettling it was having to explain the article to their children. Some were annoyed that such a thing could be discussed in 2025.
“I was like, what the hell is this?” said Brenda Mitchell, a grandmother of a student at the institution.
“I was very upset,” added Natalie Golden, an aunt of a student.
“This is 2025…why would you bring that out?" asked Brenda Mitchell. "Why would you even put that in there? It was very inappropriate.”
Montclair Elementary principal David Kloker sent an email apologizing and suggested that parents either remove the offensive page or cover the article with a sticker provided by the school. Along with the PTA, he convened a “restorative justice circle” for people to talk about their feelings.
“And today we are leading a restorative justice circle so that we’ve invited the community out so we can hear their voices and how this event made them feel,” said Sloane Young, PTA president
The PTA historian apologized for only reading the first paragraph of what she thought would be “an interesting story” and not reading every word. A four-member yearbook review committee made the same error. The school ultimately decided to replace the yearbooks with a new edition. The PTA historian resigned from her volunteer post.
I’m not calling for the head of the historian or the yearbook committee. These are unpaid volunteer positions, and mistakes happen. The Oakland NAACP has questions, but I have no reason to believe this was done on purpose.
I do view it as a teachable moment and think that people should understand what America was like in 1940 and why the Boy and Girl Scouts felt comfortable including such a game at the event.
People unfamiliar with the game began researching it to understand what it was and how it was played. A 1942 YMCA brochure for Camp Minikani, a children’s summer camp in Wisconsin mentioned “Hit the N****r Baby” (also known as “The Black Dodger” or “Hit the Coon”) which was a common fairground game in which players hurled objects (usually eggs or baseballs) at African-American people serving as human targets. The Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University said, “It sounds like a common carnival target game, but there was one unsettling part of the game, namely, the game’s target was a real live human being, a ‘negro’ human being.”
There is evidence that the game was staged as early as the 1880s and as recently as the 1950s. In several instances, the stand received top billing in newspaper bulletins promoting upcoming carnivals and fairs, along with the shooting gallery and fish pond. In July 1948, a “soldiers reunion and homecoming” held in the public square in Brownstown, Indiana, was advertised in the Jackson County Banner with the exhortation “Make this big week your vacation time — Bring the family — meet old friends — Hit the ‘N****r Babies’ — Eat Hot Dogs — Join the Fun.”
In November 1935, the Iowa newspaper Lake Park News recounted a recent successful high school carnival which featured a musical show and a “thrilling athletic event,” touting that “After this show, the crowd enjoyed themselves in visiting the various booths or trying to ring a duck’s neck in a tank of water or hit the n****r baby.”
The game title is misleading, as there is no evidence of actual babies being used. Black adults were at significant risk of being hit by baseballs thrown at top speed. Here are a few accounts of injuries, along with an advertisement promising immediate medical care if needed.
In 1904, the Meriden Daily Journal reported that one Black carnival employee named Albert Johnson worked as a dodger, and avoided “fifty or sixty cents” worth of balls thrown at him by a man named “Cannon Ball” Gillen of the Clifton Athletic Club — a professional baseball player. However, one of Gillen’s balls finally struck Johnson, and the damage was so severe that the Journal wrote it would “probably be necessary to amputate the nose in order to save Johnson’s life.”
In Connecticut, a Black man named Walter Smith was struck so hard in the face that several of his teeth were knocked out. Reportedly, the baseball was lodged so tightly in his mouth that it had to be cut apart for removal.
In Hanover, Pennsylvania, William White was assaulted by a team of baseball players who brought their own heavy balls and hit him nearly every time. A reporter at the time noted that White “was pretty well used-up” by the end of it. White suffered several internal injuries that could have been fatal.
On Sept. 11, 1924, an advertisement in the Providence News asked the question, “Do you want to earn a few precious dollars on the evening of September 19 and 20?” The ad goes on to encourage “lion-hearted and hard-headed” young men to apply for a job as a dodger, with the promise that they would be treated fairly and “reach the Rhode Island Hospital safely if one of the baseballs comes in contact with your head.”
Given that fairs travel from state to state. You can bet that people all over the country had the opportunity to hit a n****r baby, it wasn’t a bad idea that started and ended in Oakland, California. The furor will eventually die down at Montclair Elementary, though you can bet next year’s yearbook will get heightened scrutiny. But there was this moment, a light shone on this racist game, before the race began to put a sticker over it.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of William Spivey's work on Medium. And if you dig his words, buy the man a coffee.