In 1961 during Major League Baseball spring training season, Ralph M. Wimbish, a St. Petersburg, Florida Black American doctor, helped forced city leaders, hotel owners, and league officials to integrate its player housing. This would allow the entire team to live under one roof. Wimbish was born on July 24, 1922, in Cordele, Georgia. Looking for more economic opportunities, the Wimbish family moved to St. Petersburg, Florida. Ralph Wimbish graduated from Gibbs High School in 1940. Then enrolled at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College (FAMU) in Tallahassee. He would met his future wife, Carrie Elizabeth “Bette” Davis.

Wimbish served in the U.S. Army between 1941 – 1945, after his time in the service he was accepted to Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, one of two medical schools in the country open to African Americans at the time. Wimbish and Davis got married and had three children: Barbara (1945), Ralph, Jr. (1952), and Terry (1960-1993). Once Wimbish  graduated from Meharry in 1950, the family later settled in St. Petersburg.

Dr. Wimbish would go on to open a medical office and became heavily involved in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Dr. Wimbish and several like-minded Black American professionals formed a men’s civic organization called the Ambassador Club in 1953. The groups objective was to increase the quality of life for the Black community and in conjunction with the NAACP, challenge the city’s segregation laws. Between 1954-1960, Club members led by Wimbish organized store boycotts, protests at lunch counters, and took legal action when necessary. The members efforts resulted in the integration of restaurants, public beaches, golf courses, and even a citywide annual parade. However, the biggest battle remained.

Although Jackie Robinson desegregated Major League Baseball in 1947, spring training in Florida was not. On January 31, 1961, Dr. Wimbish met with a sports reporter from the St. Petersburg Times and told him that he and other Black homeowners would no longer house non-white players of the New York Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals during the spring training season. Those two teams, both based in St. Petersburg, had been unwilling to challenge the segregation policies imposed by the local hotel their organization used every year.

Dr. Wimbish insisted that the Yankees and Cardinals use their economic power in order to stop the ongoing housing discrimination. The decision would be enforced that spring. With rookies, pitchers, and catchers scheduled to report to Florida in two weeks, it was an schocking turn of events. The story went nationwide, having a rippling effect throughout the league. The Yankees, the Cardinals, and several teams that trained in Florida searched to either to find a new hotel or demand changes to the existing one they used. Some clubs threatened to leave their host cities and one did so, the New York Yankees. Some teams took longer to act, however, by 1964, the Minnesota Twins, who were based in Orlando, became the last team to integrate its Spring Training quarters

On December 2, 1967, Dr. Ralph Melvin Wimbish died in Miami, Florida at the age of 45 from a heart attack.

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