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Bulldog, The Mighty Claw, Pin Head, Pancho, Jersey Lee – some of the nicknames of the dozen or so men who gather every Friday night and Saturday in the library of a Salvation Army in downtown Brooklyn to play checkers. They sit at oversized green and white checkerboards spread out over two tables. The game is “pool checkers”, a more involved and fast paced version of what many think of as checkers (The players call that game “straight checkers”). At one table, Clarence “Tijuana” Hall (a.ka. the Clown Prince of Checkers) slams his pieces up and down the board in the match with a man they call the “Mighty Claw.” While at the next table Brooklyn Elite president Jim “Step” Searles and his vice president, Charlie “Ghost” Free, are locked in a quieter but no less intense checker duel.

The game engenders an uncommon devotion from its players. Case in point: the Brooklyn Elites. The club started in the early 1970s to give pool checkers aficionados who had long congregated in parks, barbershops, and alleys a home base at which to play. A group of men, led by Jim Searles, rented a storefront on Fulton Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant and drafted their constitution:

Article II: Objectives

1: To promote the art and science of checkers

2: To encourage those who play, study, teach, or write about checkers; all for the progress of checkers throughout the world.

3; To improve the image of the game, and to elevate checkers to a level of respect equal to or greater than that of any other national or international pastime.

With that, the Brooklyn Elite Checker Club was born. The past three decades have dealt the Brooklyn Elites their fair share of ups and downs. Yes, there have been countless action-packed checker marathons stretching from one night to the next (and sometimes longer). But there have also been setbacks, most notably, that fateful day in August 1986 when a construction crew accidentally demolished the Brooklyn Elites Bedford Stuyvesant headquarters. They’ve been playing at the Salvation Army ever since, and dreams of one day establishing another permanent home for the club.

I first met the Brooklyn Elite’s president and founder, Jim Searles, In May 1990. Jim’s lived a most remarkable life. While working as a bellhop and longshoreman, Jim’s passion for politics and the law seemed to land him in the middle of historic events. He was at the Audubon Ballroom the night Malcolm X was murdered. He’s sat in on just about every important East-Coast trial of the past sixty years – from Bruno Hauptman’s Lindbergh kidnapping case straight through the Larry Davis cop-killing trial. “I always dreamed of being a lawyer but I never had money enough to go to school and learn it,” he told me. “So all my life I always went to court cases, and I’d make my own notes and learn for myself. “Politics, the law, and checkers, Jim is one of the wisest men I have ever known.

I started playing pool checkers during the Depression, way back in the thirties. At that time, they called it “Spanish pool checkers.” It was a good pastime with nowhere to go to work. I finally remember the first time I played the game was in a park in Philadelphia—that’s where I grew up. Naturally, I lost the first time and I got beat so bad that I just couldn’t give it up. But I got better as I went along, and when I got on the WPA, I just kept playing all the time – shovel some dirt, and then move some checkers.

After that I worked as a bellhop at the Douglas Hotel in Philadelphia. We had a checkerboard in the lobby, and boy, I played a lot of people. I played against most everybody in Duke Ellington’s band – they were all crazy about checkers. They loved the game, but none of them could beat me. I got a kick out of playing Moms Mabley – that was Jackie Mabley. I played her, and I did learn how to beat her, even though she said I took too long to move. I played some games with Count Basie – we had a lot of fun. Only one I could not beat was Jo Jones that played the drum for Count Basie’s Orchestra. He could play.

We play pool checkers. It’s a game that’s played on sixty-four squares, twelve men on each side, black and white pieces - just the same as straight checkers, except for the method of jumping. In straight checkers you can only jump backwards with a king, you can’t jump backwards with a single piece. In pool checkers you can jump forward and backwards with the single piece. Also, a king in pool checkers can go diagonally from one side of the board all the way to the other, as long as there’s empty spaces to jump to. In straight checkers a king can only jump one square at a time. Those are the differences.

The history of the game has been a mystery to a lot of us. Some of the historians among us have found that the African-Americans played it during slavery times down in Louisiana. They were playing the same rules that we play – we found that out. The oddity of it was the whites down there played straight checkers. I’m wondering why the blacks didn’t adapt themselves to the so-called masters – I think they wanted to be different. So still today in America you find the whites playing straight checkers and the blacks, at least ninety-five percent, playing pool checkers. And then when you to traveling, like if you’re a soldier, you find that they play the same as we play in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and also in Holland. Checkers in Holland is like baseball here!

For many years, the Mecca of checkers was a place called Mount Morris Park in Harlem – it’s now known as Garvey Park. Our greatest player was Clyde “King Row” Black, and players from all over the country would come to New York to play “King Row” in Mount Morris Park, and they played all night. The great Carl “Buster” Smith – who was the American champion for many years – undefeated-he’d come every summer to play. It was a great attraction. Another Mecca for checkers was the barbershop. And if it was too hot in the barbershop or if the barbershop was closed, then they would play outside under the light. They play that way all night! You must understand, people got hooked on the checkers – they just play and play and play.

Well I wasn’t so happy with that kind of a life. I used to tell the guys, “You guys should be ashamed that we don’t have a place to play.” So in September of 1972, I organized the club. I went around and found a man who would rent a place for one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month, and it was such a novelty that people joined right away – fifteen dollars to join and only five dollars a month. Man, before I knew it, I had one hundred and twenty-five dollars. We got the place.

The first club was on Fulton Street. We must have had twenty-five or thirty guys. It was just a storefront, and we played there for a couple of years until the rent went up so high we couldn’t stay. Then we found another place right down the street. We decided to buy the building. They let us have it for five thousand dollars.

The guys kept it clean. It was comfortable. To tell the truth, we put in more time at the club than we did at home. That was our home. We didn’t do nothing but play checkers. Most of the guys don’t smoke and they are not drinking people, so we just talk and play and talk. And like I tell the wives when they call and say, “Is so and so there?” I say, “No, he just went out to the store.” “She says, man I am getting sick and tired of him putting all this time at the club. All he do is play.” I say, “Look, Miss so-and-so, if you got a husband playing checkers you got nothing to worry about – he ain’t running around with no other women. He ain’t messing around with no liquor, he’s just playing checkers.” {Laughs} I know some fellas whose wives get so mad they wind up throwing out the checker books (we all have checker books so we can study). I know one man who quit his wife because she threw out his checker books. My wife got used to it man. Do you know that I missed my honeymoon because of checkers? [Laughs] Man, I am telling you, it’s a good thing my wife puts up with me. Nobody would believe it! One time we even had undercover cops come in the club, I guess to make sure we ain’t got no drugs and no whiskey. After a while, one of the guys showed me his badge. They couldn’t understand what we were doing, going in and out at three, four o’clock in the morning. But they found out we wasn’t doing nothing but playing checkers! They even shook our hands and said “Man you clean.” Checkers gets in your system – that’s all you want to do!

The pitiful thing about it, there was a building next to us that was unlivable. Well the city paid to demolish it and the demolition people made the error of demolishing our building! That was five of six years ago, and we were very hurt because we had no place to go. The guys said, “What are we gonna do?” We could go to the park but not in the wintertime. We tried to go to each other’s house, but that didn’t work out. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves. So then one night I had this dream that a couple of the guys told me to talk to the people at the Salvation Army about playing there. I woke up that morning and said, “Listen here – I’m gonna see about this. “They are always helping people, so why not help us.” Well I went to the Salvation Army and talked to the man, caption (I often wondered why they all had military names like “captain,” “lieutenant”, and “major.” But they religious people and seem to be living good). Well the captain gave me the library where we could play – and it didn’t cost any money. The guys were tickled to death when I found the place. Excellent place it is, and glad to have us here!

Checker players is really a brotherhood – like family. If there’s a sickness in one of the guy’s family, we raise money. If a guy gets unemployed, another guy will pay his dues. We look out for each other. I don’t know no other group of people who do that. Other games you see people get up and fight each other in disagreement. The only way we fight is on that board. Our motto is, “Win like a champion; lose like a gentleman.” We insist on that. Sometimes the guys get a little disturbed when they lose, but they only mad at themselves for making a foolish mistake. And if a new guy get’s out of line, we always remind him of the motto. That’s something that we all must live up to.

It’s a thinking man’s game, see. A lot of people take it for a toy, like you buy a checkerboard in Woolworth’s, in the toy department, but it’s not a toy. It is very complicated and involves a lot of concentration. It keeps me thinking. I don’t think I will ever become senile as long as I play checkers. None of the checker player, even those older than me are senile. There minds are sharp. Like Jessie Calloway – he’s ninety-four, and he’s not senile at all. Only thing is, he has that arthritis and can’t get around, but his mind is good. That’s all checkers.

Last year, when I went to see Calloway when he was in the hospital, I carried a board, cause he wanted to play. He sit on the side of the bed in Harlem Hospital, and I play him five or six games of checkers. Why you think he don’t quit? ‘Cause he loves the game.’ A man don’t quit what he love. Love is a great thing!