Southern Association

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.

A stable, eight-team loop, its member teams typically included the Atlanta Crackers, Birmingham Barons, Chattanooga Lookouts, Little Rock Travelers, Memphis Chicks, Nashville Vols, and New Orleans Pelicans. Either Knoxville, Mobile, or Shreveport 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 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.