Tom Wilson Park

Tom Wilson was a nightclub operator before he was a team owner, and he kept moving the Elite Giants in search of a better market. After the team joined the Negro National League in 1930 he put it in his own four-thousand-seat park in Trimble Bottom. In 1931 he bought Satchel Paige's contract and took the club to Cleveland, then brought it back to Nashville the next year, to Sulphur Dell, where spectators were segregated by race. In 1935, seeking more profit, he left for Columbus, Ohio.

What the plaque says

Tom Wilson Park, 1929-1946 / Thomas T. Wilson 1883-1947 Tom Wilson Park 1929-1946: Formerly located near this site was Tom Wilson Park. It opened in 1929 and was home to the Nashville Elite Giants baseball team of the Southern Negro League. Owned by Thomas T. Wilson, the facility was one of two African-American owned professional ballparks. Wilson Park also hosted spring training sessions for the Nashville Vols. a minor league team of the Southern Association. Spring training games brought such baseball greats as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Roy Campanella to the park. In 1946, Tom Wilson resigned and discontinued all ball activities at Wilson Park. Thomas T. Wilson 1883-1947: Thomas T. Wilson, a businessman, sportsman, and founder of the Nashville Elite Giants, began his baseball association with the Nashville Maroons in 1909. He organized the Nashville Elite Giants in 1921. Besides being an owner, Wilson served as secretary and president of the Negro Southern League and vice chair , treasurer, and president of the Negro National League. After quitting baseball and ceasing ball activities at the park, he opened the Paradise Ballroom on the same site. Entertainers included Lionel Hampton, Cab Calloway and Sarah Vaughn.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Negley — 0.6 mi
  The largest inland stone fort of the Civil War, built in 1862 on St. Cloud Hill by more than 2,700 conscripted Black laborers, hundreds of whom died.
• National Museum of African American Music — 1.3 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.
• Ryman Auditorium — 1.4 mi
  The 1892 brick tabernacle in downtown Nashville that was the Grand Ole Opry's home from 1943 to 1974, now a National Historic Landmark and working concert hall.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 1.5 mi
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.

More markers nearby

• Hubbard House — steps away
• Battle of Nashville: Lafayette Street — 0.3 mi
• William Carroll — 0.3 mi
• Cameron-Trimble & Black Self-Emancipation / Education for Black Empowerment — 0.4 mi