Fred Thomas (December 26, 1923 – May 20, 1981) was a Canadian multi-sport professional athlete. He played on semi-professional or professional teams in basketball, baseball, and Canadian football. He was a standout on his college basketball team and is known as one of Canada's finest basketball players. A 2019 profile by TVOntario described Thomas as "the greatest Canadian athlete you've never heard of".[2] He would likely have been more well-known had blacks not been denied opportunities to compete in major professional sports leagues in the 1940s and 1950s.
He graduated in 1943 and then enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He earned his wings shortly before the end of World War II. After being discharged from the service, he enrolled at Assumption College where he became known as one of the country's best basketball players.[2] He played four years under coach Stanley Nantais.[5]
In 1945, the Harlem Globetrotters, who were "widely considered the best team in the world",[2] were defeated by the Assumption basketball team 49–45.[5] A 1952 newspaper article said Thomas "was a constant thorn in the side of his visitors" and "His terrific speed enabling him to leap high into the air after burning down the floor to break up passing plays. His performance was amazing and the most amazed were the confused Globetrotters."[2]
In 1949, his senior year, he led the team to the Ontario Senior Men's Finals where they defeated Toronto Central by 90–56, 47 of which he scored himself. At the time, the Toronto Globe and Mail called him the "best Negro athlete in Canada".[6] During Thomas's college four-year basketball career (1945–1949), he scored 2,059 points, the third-highest on the NCAA scoring list at the time of his graduation.[2] This includes a record 639 points in the 1948–49 season.[3] His time at Assumption was known as the "Thomistic Era". The 1952 newspaper article summarized his college basketball career by saying "There was probably never a Canadian basketball player who so dominated the key area and was so deadly with the hook shot as Fred. He played the game with the grace of a swan and the agility of a gazelle."[2]
Baseball
Thomas (1952) in a Kitchener Panthers uniform.
Outside of college, Thomas turned to baseball. He played with the Negro league's Cincinnati Crescents in 1946, the Detroit Senators in 1947, and the Farnham Pirates in 1948 in the Quebec Provincial League. Over 58 games with Farnham, he was batting .351 which caught the attention of Major League Baseball (MLB) scouts.[7] He was selected by the organization's Cleveland Indians to join the Wilkes-Barre Baronsfarm-team who played in the Eastern League, where he took the field for the first time in a July 4, 1948, doubleheader. This appearance was the first by a black player in the league, and he had two singles, and RBI, and a stolen base in the second game.[2] He broke the colour barrier in this league about a year after Jackie Robinson did so in Major League Baseball.[1] He was the 21st black player to sign a contract with a team in the MLB organization and the first from Canada.[6] Thomas played 12 games with the Barons in 1949 but never played professional baseball again.[7]
Thomas spent the early 1950s playing in Ontario's Intercounty Baseball League.[8] During the 1951 season, he won the league batting title as a member of the Kitchener Panthers.[2] The same year he was named the league's Most Valuable Player, with a batting average of 0.383.[1] In addition to his time with the Panthers, he played fastball for the Windsor Jets and Toronto Beaches.[1]
In 1952, he was not selected for the Canadian Olympic basketball team, where he would have been the only black on an otherwise all-white team.[5] After having surgery to repair a knee injury, he could no longer play professional sports but continued to play in smaller independent leagues in Canada. He played basketball for the Toronto Tri-Bells, a Canadian men's amateur team,[1] leading the team to the 1953 Canadian senior men's basketball title.[6]
Following his athletic career, Thomas became a coach and physical education teacher. He joined the staff of Valley Park High School in East York, Ontario in 1970, where he worked until his death.[2][3][10]
Thomas died on May 20, 1981 in Toronto.[8][11] He was buried in Windsor's Greenlawn Memorial Gardens.[10]
Lack of recognition
Thomas was known mostly in the Windsor area. He competed during a time of racism in sports just before the beginning of integration. According to William Humber, a historian on Canadian sports, racial barriers prevented Thomas from becoming a national star, as well as kept him relatively unknown. "Today, he would have been a star in any of those sports" said Humber.[2]
According to Miriam Wright, a history professor at the University of Windsor, Southern Ontario was racially segregated like parts of the United States during the Jim Crow era. Thomas and his black teammates were often not served at restaurants and his teams were not allowed to compete with white teams. As a black, he did not have the same opportunities as whites. Wright says that Thomas's story is not well known because "African-Canadian history was not something that was considered important or was only considered in the context of the Underground Railroad story."[2]
After decades of not being recognized, Thomas was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame on November 16 2021.[8][12]
Awards and honors
Voted second in a 1950 Canadian Press poll to determine Canada's finest basketball player of the 1900–1949 period.[1]
Windsor/Essex County Sports Hall of Fame (inducted 1981)[1]
