(Photo by Tom Gralish/The Philadelphia Inquirer)
A church that shares a property line with the 166-year-old club’s campus in the city’s Chestnut Hill section has asked it to change its American Indian head logo because of how it projects “a painful racial insensitivity into our neighborhood.” No records exist to explain why the logo was adopted. A petition has circulated among members of the club to consider a change, but some feel the logo represents an homage and tradition, and club leadership has not yet issued an official response.
A church in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia, Pa. has asked the neighboring Philadelphia Cricket Club to discontinue use of its feathered American Indian head logo, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, because it projects “a painful racial insensitivity into our neighborhood.”
The club had not yet issued a response to the request, The Inquirer reported.
The 166-year-old Cricket Club and the St. Martin-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church have long stood side by side in the Philadelphia neighborhood, The Inquirer reported, but the now church wants the club to retire its logo, which is similar to that worn by the National Hockey League’s Chicago Blackhawks, because it harkens back to an era when white settlers romanticized Native Americans, even as they were taking their land.
After the Blackhawks’ name and logo also recently came under question, the team responded that it had no plans to make any changes, stating that “The Chicago Blackhawks’ name and logo symbolizes an important and historic person, Black Hawk of Illinois’ Sac & Fox Nation, whose leadership and life has inspired generations of Native Americans, veterans and the public.”
The church’s complaint about the Cricket Club’s logo was registered in a letter sent on June 29th by its rector, Rev. Jarret Kerbel, to club President F. John White, The Inquirer reported. In the letter, Rev. Kerbel said that the use of a Native figure on the club sign that borders church property “represents the white supremacist legacy of our neighborhood,” and “for a club founded for white Protestant elites during the height of the genocide against Native peoples to continue with this logo is to deny our horrific past.”
The neighborhood’s growing diversity demands consideration of “what it means for children and families—especially children and families of color—to be exposed to your logo every day,” Kerbel’s letter added. “We ask you to retire the offensive logo and replace it with something more benign.”
The church has “struggled in recent years to come to terms with its own history of racist beliefs and practices,” its letter to the Cricket Club said, The Inquirer reported.
The Inquirer reported that its efforts to reach White and other Cricket Club leaders for comment were unsuccessful.
David Contosta, a professor of history at Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill College and author of The Philadelphia Cricket Club, 1854-2004, America’s Oldest Country Club, told The Inquirer there are “no records” that explain why the Cricket Club, which was founded in 1854 by a group of University of Pennsylvania alumni who played the game as students and wanted to continue their competitions, use the Native American face or head as part of its logo.“Nobody knows—at least [nothing has] surfaced so far,” Contosta said.
One possible explanation, Contosta speculated, is that when cities like Philadelphia became crowded and smoky in the 19th century, people yearned for an earlier, more natural time, and Native Americans seemed emblematic of that.
Both the Cricket Club and the church were largely the creations of the same man, Philadelphia railroad executive and property developer Henry H. Houston, once the city’s largest land owner, The Inquirer reported.
Houston gave a low-cost, long-term lease to the then-homeless Cricket Club, offering permanent grounds in the city’s Chestnut Hill section in 1884. Five years later, Contosta told The Inquirer, he commissioned and paid for the construction of St. Martin’s Church.
Another possible explanation for the logo, Contosta said, might stem from how Houston’s daughter, Gertrude Woodward, held a particular fascination for Indians, and gave large amounts of money to Native missions in South Dakota, Contosta said. Among her prized possessions was an authentic birch-bark canoe.
She told people, “I must be part Indian.” She wasn’t.
But she persuaded her developer father to name the local streets after tribes, which is why the city’s Chestnut Hill section has routes called Seminole, Navajo, Pocono, and Shawnee.
The Inquirer’s report included a quote from one Cricket Club member who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “A lot of Cricket Club members feel the Black Lives Matter movement has awakened us all to the insensitivity of the logo,” the member said. “But then there’s a lot of people who feel tradition is important, and since the logo was originally meant as an homage, it can still be viewed that way.”
The club’s leadership, which had been resistant, now seems open to considering change, the member added.
The Inquirer also reported that a petition now circulating inside the club declares that more and more members find the logo “ethically and professionally problematic, for ourselves, as well as for our diverse staff, who are required to wear racist imagery. We want to be proud of a place that we love.”
Keeping the logo “serves as a regressive and inflammatory choice,” the petition stated. Given the speed of revisions among pro sports teams in places like Washington, D.C. (with the National Football League’s Redskins) and Cleveland (with Major League Baseball’s Indians), it added, it’s “just a matter of time before the [Cricket Club] comes under public pressure to make the same change.”
The club recently joined a community statement affirming belief in racial justice and equality, the petition noted, and retiring the logo now would offer a chance to educate members, their children and grandchildren on racism, symbols, history and change.
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