Reggie Jackson’s Brutal Honesty About Playing Baseball in Alabama in the 60s
As part of the effort to incorporate the Negro Leagues into MLB history, MLB held a pair of games at Birmingham, Alabama’s Rickwood Field, “the oldest professional ballpark in the United States and former home of the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues”. During the pregame show Fox Sports invited Reggie Jackson, who played on a minor league team at the ballpark, to offer his perspective on the event. (Content note: Jackson says the n-word twice during his remarks.)
About halfway through this clip (the 4:35 mark), Alex Rodriguez asks him a softball question designed to elicit some fond memories about baseball and some gauzy reflections on the impact of the Negro Leagues:
How emotional is it for you to come back to a [place] that you played with one of the greatest teams around?
Jackson, as he did so many times during his career, knocked it out of the park with the brutal truth about what it was like to play baseball in the South as a Black man in the 60s (transcript):
Coming back here is not easy. The racism when I played here, the difficulty of going through different places where we traveled. Fortunately, I had a manager and I had players on the team that helped me get through it. But I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. People said to me today, I spoke and they said, ‘Do you think you’re a better person, do you think you won when you played here and conquered?’ I said ‘You know, I would never want to do it again.’
“I walked into restaurants and they would point at me and say, ‘The n***** can’t eat here.’ I would go to a hotel and they would say, ‘The n***** can’t stay here.’ We went to [Oakland Athletics owner] Charlie Finley’s country club for a welcome home dinner and they pointed me out with the n-word, ‘He can’t come in here.’ Finley marched the whole team out. Finally, they let me in there. He said ‘We’re going to go the diner and eat hamburgers. We’ll go where we’re wanted.’”
“Fortunately, I had a manager in Johnny McNamara that, if I couldn’t eat in the place, nobody would eat. We’d get food to travel. If I couldn’t stay in a hotel, they’d drive to the next hotel and find a place where I could stay. Joe and Sharon Rudi, I slept on their couch three, four nights a week for a month and a half. Finally, they were threatened that they would burn our apartment complex down unless I got out.
The year I came here, Bull Connor was the sheriff the year before, and they took minor league baseball out of here because in 1963, the Klan murdered four Black girls - children 11, 12, 14 years old - at a church here and never got indicted. The Klan, Life Magazine did a story on them like they were being honored.
“I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. At the same time, had it not been for my white friends, had it not been for a white manager, and Rudi, Fingers and Duncan, and Lee Meyers, I would never have made it. I was too physically violent. I was ready to physically fight some - I would have got killed here because I would have beat someone’s ass and you would have saw me in an oak tree somewhere.”
Discussion 5 comments
Sincere question (coming from a white guy in Canada): Whose sensibilities are we protecting by bleeping the n-bombs in Reggie's comments (which was just such an AWESOME answer to A.Rod's "make us all feel nostalgic" question)? And similarly, why the content warning from Jason?
A Black man reliving and recounting the horrendous treatment he received....why can't that be expressed as he experienced it? Isn't shielding the language softening the impact and vileness of the racists?
It's not about protecting sensibilities. What I have heard and read from some Black people is that they do not want to hear or read that word. Like, ever. No matter who uses it in any context. It is triggering and reminds them, e.g., of times they or a loved one have been called that. So, I want to let people know what they're getting into if that applies to them.
Thanks for the enlightenment, Jason. I appreciate it.
I did not grow up in the States. When I emigrated to the US in 2000, I thought of racism and the KKK as something that happened in the late 1800 - early 1900. I was shocked to learn that the Civil Rights Act was signed in 1964. I am grateful to Reggie Jackson for sharing his experience and to Fox Sports for airing the interview.
As a society, we need to remember and be reminded as new generations grow up, least we risk sliding backwards.
To prevent a repeat of the struggles of our past, it is important that young Americans are exposed to the struggles of our past.
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