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Cheers to Reggie Jackson for Calling Out the Racist Shit He Faced in Birmingham, Alabama

From a Reader

Reggie Jackson is a Hall of Fame baseball player who played for 21 seasons from 1967 to 1987. During a pregame television show at an event honoring the Negro Baseball Leagues and Willie Mays1 at the Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, Jackson told some powerful truth. He recounted some of the ugly racism he faced when playing for the Birmingham A’s in 1967. He said, “Coming back here is not easy. The racism when I played here, the difficulty of going through different places where we traveled.” He recounted the bombing of the church in Birmingham by the KKK that killed four Black girls. He talked about being called nigger, and being turned away at restaurants and hotels. He told this history with powerful feeling and clear anger.

He also gave props to the white players on his team who had his back when these incidents occurred. He said that if these white players had not intervened on his behalf, he most likely would have been lynched because he would not have backed down from those racists.

Reggie is known as Mr. October due to his phenomenal play during several World Series, which are played in the month of October. He hit three home runs in one of those games. Mr. October hit another one Thursday night, not with his bat but with his words.

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FOOTNOTES:

1. Willie Mays passed away two days prior to the game at Rickwood. Mays played in the Negro Leagues before playing for the New York and San Francisco Giants. I have a deep personal relation with Mays, who was my favorite ball player. Although I never met him in person, I was at the ballpark to see him play over 100 times. Mays also faced a lot of racism. When the Giants moved from New York to San Francisco in 1958, Mays attempted to move into a house in the exclusive St. Francis Wood area in the city. The people in that neighborhood would not let him live there, forcing him to find a residence in a more moderate income area. I had a friend who told me that Willie moved into his neighborhood and that he and all the kids in the neighborhood ran over to the house that Willie just moved into and welcomed him to the neighborhood. Willie had a special relationship with kids. When in New York, he would go out in the street and play stickball with them and then buy all of them ice cream cones. [back]

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