Located in the heart of East Tampa, The Cyrus Greene Community Center and Belmont Heights Little League are full of history.
The fields at Belmont Heights are where stars like Dwight Gooden, Gary Sheffield and Carl Everett played.
The league started in the 60s after some civil disturbances in Tampa.
"For a number of players, this was a safe outlet where they could come. They were supervised by the Black men and women who were their coaches. They won several Little League championships. People all over the world knew the name Belmont Heights because of the Belmont Heights Little League. So just a tremendous opportunity for these young people," explained Fred Hearns.
The community center is named for Cyrus Greene, who was the Executive Director of the Tampa Urban League in the 1930s.
Greene helped create opportunities for youth in sports in East Tampa.
ABC Action News talked to Fred Hearns, curator of Black history at the Tampa History Center, who also grew up in East Tampa.
"I can remember coming out here after school pretty much every evening when the lights would be on and we played basketball and then the pool opened. A lot of us learned to swim here at the Cyrus Greene pool. One of the few pools in the community in Tampa Bay where Blacks could go and we actually had a swimming team that Abraham Brown coached. One of the outstanding swimmers we produced here at the pool was Lloyd Mumford, who won several championships as a swimmer and then went on to play football in the NFL and was on the undefeated Miami Dolphins 1972 team and Lloyd grew up right here in the College Hill Public Housing and played here at the Cyrus Greene pool. So a lot of rich history here in East Tampa," explained Hearns.
Middleton High School was established in East Tampa for Black students in this community in 1934 and remained an all-Black school for nearly 40 years. The original building is now Farrell Middle school.
"But there have always been those challenges of trying to level the playing field for students who grew up here, for adults who worked here, trying to bring major industries into this area is a challenge. We just have a lot of things that, you know, people who grew up in East Tampa would like to see. We talked about economic development all the time. But what does that really mean? It's got to be more than a program or project. It's got to be a culture of connecting East Tampa to the growth and to the prosperity that we see in other parts of the city without replacing the longtime residents. Gentrification is a real fear," explained Hearns.
