Southern Association

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The Southern Association was a higher-level minor league in American organized baseball from 1902 through 1961. From 1936 - as an A1 and then a Class AA league - the Southern Association was two steps below the major leagues. The current AA Southern League is not descended from the Southern Association; the SL came into existence in 1964 as the successor to the original South Atlantic League.

A stable, eight-team loop, the Association's member teams typically included the Atlanta Crackers, Birmingham Barons, Chattanooga Lookouts, Little Rock Travelers, Memphis Chicks, Nashville Vols, and New Orleans Pelicans. Either the Knoxville Smokies, Mobile Bears, or Shreveport Sports typically comprised the eighth club.

After Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1946 with the Montreal Royals of the International League, the Southern Association held true to the Jim Crow segregation laws of the time and never permitted an African-American to play in the circuit.

A boycott led by civil rights leaders and the encroachment of television contributed to the Association's demise in 1961. The Atlanta club moved up to the AAA International League in 1962, with Little Rock following suit (as the renamed Arkansas Travelers) in 1963. After a one-year hiatus, Nashville and Chattanooga joined the Sally League in 1963; Birmingham and Mobile would field teams in the Southern League, and Memphis would enter the Texas League (and Arkansas/Little Rock would settle there), later during the 1960s.