This is an undated file photo of Toni Stone, the first woman baseball player in the Negro Leagues. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Negro Leagues Baseball Museum)
Playwright Lydia R. Diamond
Everyday a woman makes history somewhere in the world, often simply by surviving her circumstances, and other times achieving things that other women before her had yet to dream. When I heard about the life of Toni Stone, I was embarrassed to say, I had not heard of her or the women like her who played baseball among men, in the era when baseball was still a segregated sport in the United States. But I was interested. And while I’m not a sportswriter, it was on the occasion of award-winning playwright Lydia R. Diamond’s work, Toni Stone, staged by ACT in San Francisco, I had the opportunity to interview Davis, learn more about Stone, and write further into the lives of some other women based in the Bay Area whose stories and actions made history in their respective fields. I hope you’ll read more about Davis, Stone, and the other women’s history makers in my cover story for this week’s San Francisco Chronicle Datebook. Read the whole piece here>
Filed under: Arts and Culture, Women's issues, ACT, African American women, baseball, International Women's Day, Lydia R. Diamond, play, sports, theater, Toni Stone, women, Women's History
Denise Sullivan 