November 7, 1972 - Girls Allowed to Join New Jersey Little League Teams

Maria Pepe, 1972

Over thirty years ago, a young girl named Maria Pepe changed Little League baseball forever. She was the first girl to ever step foot on a Little League baseball field and play a game with the boys in 1972. Little did she know she was about to become the center of national attention and a legal battle that would help shape the role of women in sports around the world.[1]

Protests begin because the parents of the Hoboken community believe girls should not play in Little League baseball and the matter is sent to Williamsport, New York, home of Little League baseball. The ruling is that the Young Democrats, Marias team, can't play anymore Little League games unless they take Maria off the team. The 12-year-old Hoboken girl started three games for the Young Democrats and pitched all three games until she was kicked off by her coach.[2] Revealing the prevailing social views on girls in sports, the little league stated that, “girls’ bone strength, muscle strength and reaction time were inferior to those of boys”.[3] That ends her Little League career, but the National Organization for Women sues Little League Baseball on her behalf that it is against equal rights. On November 7, 1973 Sylvia Pressler a Hearing Examiner for the New Jersey Civil Rights Division, ruled in favor of letting girls into Little League baseball. This ruling was later upheld in the Superior Court in early 1974; once passed it was a change that eventually allowed millions of girls on a global scale to participate in the largest organized youth sports program.[4] Maria is in high school and too old to play Little League baseball, but doesn't take long for the ruling in Maria’s case to start to make a difference in 1974 when Bunny Taylor another 12 year old girl becomes the first girl to pitch a no-hitter.[5]

Women in the 1970s dealt with major hardship of still not being equal to men. One great example of none equality rights was with girls like Maria being turned away from a male sport because of gender. The National Organization for Women gets involved in this case because of the gender problem and they were looking for strives in women’s rights during the 1970s. Women were striving in the 1970s to be a part of the Women Rights movement and Maria left her footprint in Women Rights history. [6]


- Frank F.





1. “Landmark Decision Allowed Girls to Play Little League. (n.d.). MomsTeam. Retrieved October 30, 2013, from http://www.momsteam.com/sports/baseball/general/landmark-decision-allowed-girls-to-play-little-league”

2. “ESPN top 10 Women sports movment. (n.d.). ESPN. Retrieved October 30, 2013, from http://espn.go.com/page2/s/list/moments/uswomen.html”

3.”ESPN top 10”

4. Settimi, Christina. "Before Title IX There Was Maria Pepe Waiting 'His Turn At Bat'." Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/sites/christinasettimi/2012/06/24/before-title-ix-there-was-maria-pepe/2/ (accessed November 2, 2013).

5. “Women and their Roles throughout American History. (n.d.). : Women in the 1970's. Retrieved October 30, 2013, from http://womenrolehistory.blogspot.com/2011/09/women-in-1970s.html”

6. “Women and their Roles”

7. “Landmark decision Allowed”

October 16, 1968 - Two Americans Give the Black Power Salute at the Olympics

At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Mexico, American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos won the gold and bronze medals in the 200m sprint. During the medal ceremony, the two men planned their wardrobe in one of the most political visual statements in recent memory. The two men received their awards without shoes but wearing black socks to represent the poverty of African Americans in the United States. Smith in particular wore a black scarf as a symbol for black pride and woke a bead necklace for all of the lynched blacks in the south.

Even though the two black sprinters stole the show, Australian Peter Norman won the silver medal in the race and stood on the podium next to Carlos and Smith wearing an OPHR (Olympic Project for Human Rights) badge to show support and to protest against the White Australia bill passed by his own government. This statement was so powerful because of the volatile conditions in the United States for black people following the assassination of Martin Luther King a few months before the Olympics. It showed that the struggles of the blacks to be recognized as equals along with white people were not in vain. Furthermore, the black power salute put the Civil Rights Movement on a global stage as more countries became aware of what was happening in the American south.

However, as heroic and brave the salute was, at the time it was considered villainous. There was a backlash from the groundbreaking gesture as the newspapers compared the men to Nazis as the salute is visually similar to the Nazi Salute. ABC reporter Brett Musburger likened them to storm troopers with dark complexions. TIME Magazine called their salute reprehensible and ugly and the black sprinters’ actions led to Smith being discharged out of the military for his “Un-American” actions and both sprinters receiving death threats after the event. The final straw was reached when someone threw a rock through a plate glass window at Smith’s baby’s crib.

Negative reception aside, this event is important to American history as a whole because of how it coincided with the Black Power movement in the United States but diffused the criticism about how the Black Power Movement was primarily violent. This event showed that people of all races could in fact come together and combat racism and all those who practice it. In conclusion, the Black Power Salute at the 1968 Olympics put the United States on notice that it could not keep its bigoted customs any longer.

- Anthony S. and Joe E.

October 3, 1920 - the first American Professional Football Association game was played

Historical Marker at Triangle Park [9]

The American Professional Football Association was organized in Canton, Ohio on Sept. 17, 1920.[1] Fourteen teams belonged to the APFA in the 1920 season. Carl Storck, the owner of the Dayton Triangles, founded the team in 1916 and was one of the founding fathers of the APFA. He “served as a league executive for 21 years and as its president from 1939 to 1941.”[2]

The Dayton Triangles and Columbus Panhandles played the first APFA game on October 3, 1920. The Panhandles, who were originally formed in 1901, were a charter team of the APFA in 1920. The other team, the Dayton Triangles, named after the industrial triangle of factories where some players worked, won the game with a score of 14-0.[3] The game’s first score was a Dayton touchdown, the Triangles' Louis Partlow scored and George Kinderdine of the Triangles kicked the first extra point of the game.[4] Dayton's own Francis Bacon, a running back, scored the other touchdown. By 1927, the Triangles were the last of the five Ohio teams in the original APFA still playing a full season. None of the Triangles’ players joined the new team, which moved to New York years later, and only five of them continued their football careers. As for the Panhandles, they were disbanded and reconstituted as the Columbus Tigers in 1923, before folding after the 1926 season.[5]

Dayton Triangles Team Emblem [10]

Organized professional sports were new and exciting. The APFA brought action and competition to the public as did Major League Baseball. These new professional sports leagues gave individual towns and communities a chance to show team spirit and support their favorite teams. These teams became a source of pride for citizens while also giving the teams a fan base. Also, the rise of professional sports gave the working class a desire to play recreational sports, inadvertently exercising and improving their health.[6] Progressive reformers, recognizing the benefits of exercise, pushed for shorter work days, partly to allow more time for recreational sports. [7] From 1920-1940, the Great Depression and World War II shaped health and human services. Without health insurance, many people depended on charities for health care. Playing sports and exercising were free ways to stay fit and healthy.[8] Just as Americans want to have better food, better prices and better living conditions, they also want to have the better team. The teams of the APFA brought competition to the communities of those cities and states who had APFA teams. Football brings people together not only because of the teammate bond, but also because fans bond over their team, over their rivalries, and over their love for the sport.

- Frank F. and Kenneth F.



1. Braunwart, Bob, and Bob Carroll. "Pro Football Reasearch." Pro Football Reasearch Oct. 3. www.profootballresearchers.org/Coffin_Corner/03-02-059.pdf (accessed September 25, 2013).

2. Goodman, Rebecca. "Ohio moments." Moments in Canton on October 3rd. www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/10/03/loc_ohiodate1003.html‎ (accessed September 25, 2013).

3. "Ohio Moments."

4. "Ohio moments."

5. "Ohio moments."

6. "Public Health History Timeline." Southeast Public Health Training Center. http://www.sphtc.org/timeline/timeline.html (accessed October 1, 2013).

7. Hoffman Phd, Beatrix. "Heslth Care Reform." Health Care Reform in The U.S. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447696/ (accessed October 1, 2013).

8. "Public Health History Timeline

9. "Site of First NFL Game." Site of First Game in the NFL. http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMB90D_Site_of_First_Game_in_the_NFL (accessed September 25, 2013).

10. "Remarkable Ohio." Remarkable Ohio.” http://www.remarkableohio.org/HistoricalMarker.aspx?historicalMarkerId=1066 (accessed September 26, 2013).