You can expect to see people playing pool checkers in barbershops, pubs, and street corners. This game helped keep our people together through adversity wherever it's played.
Pool checkers is believed to have originated during slavery when French and Spanish colonizers sent enslaved people to the U.S. Although colonizers thought pool checkers was just a game, we created this tradition to keep our community together under slavery and for generations afterward.
The Mason-Dixon Line is infamously known for dividing states that practiced slavery from those that didn’t. In pool checkers the Mason-Dixon Line is the center diagonal line on the board. In this sense, pool checkers teaches its players about history.
“On any given afternoon, you’d find the local reverends, postal workers, and police officers, as well as coaches and educators, packed into a single-room home.” Black people from all walks of life played checkers to escape their everyday problems while building a unique bond with each other.
Throughout Black history, pool checkers has been a way to strengthen Black communities. How can we continue to build unity through unique and creative ways?