A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 27

This is the 14th year in a row I’ve run this series in April. Why a story idea each day for the month? Because the best way to come up with a great story idea is to come up with a lot of ideas. And the best way to come up with a lot of ideas is to be proactive in sourcing story ideas.

Today’s story: The first integrated Little League team in the South.

On June 4, 1951, a bunch of little boys in Norton, Virginia, did an extraordinary thing. They played baseball.

They made history, too, although none of them knew it at the time. Norton, the small city in the heart of Southwest Virginia coal country, became the first place in the South to play integrated Little League baseball when teams that featured white and Black players on the rosters took the field 71 years ago this week.

Four years after Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s “color barrier” in becoming the first African-American big-league baseball player when he took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Norton, which had long been a mostly white city cradled in the coal-filled Appalachian Mountains, quietly broke its own color barrier.

The city’s citizens and ballplayers further dignified themselves later that summer when they stood up to a team from Charlottesville that refused to play against Norton’s integrated all-star squad for the state championship. The Norton folks held firm and the game was played.

How about we don’t do a “white savior” story? What if our Protagonist is one of the “Black boys” who broke the color barrier by playing on the local Little League team? It’s like the Jackie Robinson story only told from the perspective of children … in the segregated South … in the early 1950s.

There you go, my 28th story idea of the month. And it’s yours. Free! What would YOU do with it?

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17
Day 18
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21
Day 22
Day 23
Day 24
Day 25
Day 26
Day 27

Each day in April, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are valuable skills for a writer to develop.

See you in RESPONSES to hear YOUR take on this story idea. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.