Seven little colored girls who should’ve been born boys             

        They laughed, cried, loved, and hated just like men; especially at a time when each other was all that we as a black race had to rely-on. And just like the black man, so also did the black woman shed her blood, sweat and tears to help build this country into the prestigious and outstanding nation that it is today; while along the way trying to prevent the black family unit from being torn apart, as well as our ancestral heritage that was thrown to the wind as we were sold without papers authenticating who we really were, and where our roots originated from, as our heritage was forcibly taken from us at a time when blacks were considered to be less than second class citizens, especially when our position in this country at that time was less than that of cattle.

        It was also the black women who fought side by side with their men folk in demonstrations, marches, sit-ins, boycotts and riots when it came to fighting against the prejudice and injustice of our kind, up close and personal, as they; in their own rights helped to push for equal rights, opportunities, stability and freedom for blacks in general, as well as a fair chance to play a pass time sport that they also enjoyed.

        Selena, Belinda, T.C., Regina, Patrice, Erma, and Josie Steele were all born little colored girls, but had they been born little colored boys instead, they then would have grown-up to become black men, and then there was an even better chance that they would have been recognized in the competition sport that they came to compete-in with their male counter-parts; at a time when black men also came to be shunned from this white man’s sport, because they themselves were considered to be the wrong color. But nevertheless the black male eventually overcame this color barrier with time and went-on to be recognized for their attributions and achievements to this past time all American sport.

Where unlike the black women of this particular story, who also played this same pass-time sport, and took-on the same award winning roles, just as well as the men, black or white, yet still, their contributions to the history of baseball went on unrecognized, simply because in the eyes of all men, they were colored women.

        It’s not exactly clear in the Steele’s family’s bible as to which African country Jonathan Steele’s great grandparents and his children’s great great grandparents were taken from, but what their family bible does reveal through centuries-old hand written notes, scribbling and letters was that upon the birth of Jonathan Steele’s grandfather his mother; Jonathan Steele’s great, great, grandmother was told not to name her child, simply because he was the property of her master/slave owner and the master/slave owner was well within their rights to name their slaves Negro children because it identified them as their masters own personal property.

        Where after being born into slavery, at the tender age of only minutes old the male child was then named Theodore Washington by his new slave owners, which came to be his given slave birth name until two years before he was lynched/murdered.

        Theodore Washington was born unto parents who were slaves themselves, and their parents likewise before them were also slaves, but in Africa as Theodore was determined to have this black legacy of being born a slave to end with his tenure.

At the time of his birth in 1725, he received a bless-it kiss on his forehead from both his parents, then soon after he was forcibly wrenched from his mother’s arms and sold into slavery.

        As this child born into captivity would grow in the following years, it was the ways and the life of a slave that he found repulsive, degrading and demeaning to all phases of human life, and most of all depraving him of a free life.

            Harriet Tubman's Underground Railroad had yet to be established in 1748, so it was through another well know abolitionist of that time named Olaudah Equiano often times referred to by other blacks as Gustavo, who helped groups of other slaves to find their ways to the freedom states, upwards to the north.

        People often ask what’s in a name. Yet in American black history blacks were forced to take on the names given to them by their masters/slave owners as a way of identifying them as their owned property. And much like other slaves, Theodore Washington despised his given slave name and what it represented, and the first chance he got away from the plantation he would change it to one that would instantly tell others who happened upon him that he was a free man.     

        It was a new found territory known as Wisconsin, where runaway slave Theodore Washington eventually found himself relocating to as he now went by the name of Nathan Steele.

        Once born and sold into slavery, now a free man, but that would come to be a short lived victory, and only a temporary taste of freedom for Nathan Steele because he was eventually sought-after and recaptured under a Jim Crow law which stated that a slave would always be the property of his lord and master, no matter how far he ran away from the plantation that he served under, and until a slave could legally obtain their freedom papers from their lord and master they would always be the slave and personal property of their said masters.

          It was during those two years of his short lived new found taste of freedom that Nathan Steele met-up with the daughter of one of the native chiefs of Wisconsin's Chippewa tribe whose name was Dancing Waters, to which the two of them soon wed and within those two years, they had a their first and only child whom they named Ottawon Steele, a non-slave name.

          It was in 1750 when Ottawon was just a year old when his father was forcibly dragged-off from their cabin home by a group of white slave retrievers, whose job it was to recapture and return escaped slaves back to the plantations from where they originally fled from, and this would be the last time that Dancing Waters and Ottawon would ever see her loving husband and father to this young child alive ever again. Because Nathan Steele a slave, husband and father would see the last of his freedom at the end of a lynching rope, while en route back to North Carolina. And only through his death would Nathan Steele find his eternal freedom.

        It was only after hearing of her husband’s lynching/murder did Dancing Waters fear for the life of her and her child, and any future children that she may have under her married name of Steele, where after hearing that this runaway slave retrieval law includes any offspring born to runaway slaves were said to also belong to the slave masters. Dancing Waters and her male child Ottawon moved on to a reservation located in Canada and it was there just outside of a native encampment among other once slaves and free coloreds that dancing Waters found a home in which to raise her child.

Canada was a beautiful wide open country full of opportunities for coloreds and minorities to advance beyond the slave mentality that was now evolving from the southern states of the United States as it slowly crept its way north, at a time in our history where blacks were literally running for their lives as they sought their freedom.     

Where from the very beginning of them attempting to play a man’s past time sport that they were laughed at, ridiculed and not being taken seriously, simply because they were seven little colored girls from a close-knit black family of eight children. Seven girls and one brother; with the girls ranging in ages 9 to 15, with the youngest standing just 4 feet tall to the oldest who stood 5’7”, but they would all eventually grow into their own characters, their own skin, and their own type of woman over the course of this story.

        Their younger brother Joseph was shorter than his youngest sister, but was a year older. They say that their father had high hopes for raising boys; but instead fate dealt him a brood of girls whom he loved all the same. Although it wasn’t the same as having boys and hoping to one day eventually end-up raising strong black men in order to carry-on the family's name sake.

But had they not been born girls, chances are that they would have been somewhat spared from the rigorous hard labors of sun-up to sun-down strenuous farm work when it came to running the family farm, which was considered a man’s job, and because they lived on a farm, there were always chores that had to be performed on a daily routine, but seeing as how they were born girl to a hard working farmer, they weren't spared the task of being delicate little farmers daughters.

Yet while in between the tasks of performing their around the farms chores, they all attended the little red school house, just seven miles away.

        They were seven little colored girls that should have been born boys, but because they weren’t, the world of men and their inflated egos would not record, or recognize the game that these girls who became women played. After-all who knows where they would have stood in the sports history record books today, but instead they were denied their rightful places in the world of baseball as it’s known today.