The Junaluska Story

The Boone Mountain Lions Baseball Team

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In the 1950s and 1960s, the Boone Mountain Lions, an all-Black baseball team from the Junaluska Community, was a significant part of Junaluska culture. The Mountain Lions regularly played against all-White baseball teams in surrounding counties. Morris Rockford Hatton Jr., a Junaluska native, explained that “[It] used to be that all the communities had baseball teams, and we were very much a part of that. We had a team called The Mountain Lions. Black guys would play the white guys, and everybody couldn’t wait until the game was over, and then they mixed it up and played together on teams. People don’t realize that about up here.”1

A significant aspect of the baseball team was their friendly relationship with the surrounding White baseball teams. This contrasted with the prevalence of racism during the 1950s and 1960s throughout the region. The Boone Mountain Lions baseball team was known for the fair play and good sportsmanship they demonstrated on and off the field.2 Junalaska’s baseball team gave players a sense of pride and belonging, and it inspired and kindled their friendly competition throughout the region.

At one point, some of the team’s equipment was on display in the Belk Library on the campus of Appalachian State University.3 One of the fields on which the Mountain Lions once played their games is located near Vilas, North Carolina, though the property is no longer in the possession of the family that owned it when the Boone Mountain Lions played there.4

The Boone Mountain Lions Baseball Team

The Boone Mountain Lions Baseball Team

Boone Mountain Lions, photograph, Junaluska Heritage Association, 1960s, https://junalu1skaheritage.org/document/45

Bibliography

Cruz, Chamian. “Uncovering Boone’s Historically Black Community: Junaluska.” The Appalachian, April 18, 2015. https://theappalachianonline.com/uncovering-boones-historically-black-community-junaluska/

Keefe, Susan, ed. Junaluska: Oral Histories of a Black Appalachian Community. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company Inc. 2020.

  1. Morris Rockford Hatton Jr., Interview by Jim Casey (2011), Susan Keefe (2013), Junaluska: Oral Histories of a Black Appalachian Community, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2020, 161. ↩︎

  2. Morris Rockford Hatton Jr., Interview by Jim Casey (2011), Susan Keefe (2013), 161. ↩︎

  3. Chamian Cruz, “Uncovering Boone’s Historically Black Community: Junaluska,” The Appalachian, April, 18, 2015, https://theappalachianonline.com/uncovering-boones-historically-black-community-junaluska/. ↩︎

  4. Peggy Horton, Interview by Maria Braswell (1989) Susan Keefe (2013), Junaluska: Oral Histories of a Black Appalachian Community, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2020, 122. ↩︎