As we prepare for tomorrow’s Emancipation Day celebration at Lockwood Field, it’s interesting to recall how this beloved local Negro playground resort got its name. The field is the home diamond of our local Negro teams. When it needed a name, someone remembered three local baseball stars who made it big in the major leagues. These players are LeRoy Matlock and James Crutchfield, now with a Pittsburgh team, and William Gatewood, a former big leaguer and current manager of the Gatewood Browns. The park sponsors cleverly combined the last syllables of their names—”lock-wood-field”—to create the name.

Prominent figures in the creation of the field have been W. E. Green, a local Negro, and his brother, J. P. Green of Sedalia. Over the last ten years, they have reportedly invested nearly $10,000 to fund and maintain the ball diamond and adjoining grounds.