In 1964, when slugger Hank Aaron heard that the Braves planned to move to Atlanta, he told a reporter, “I have lived in the South, and I don’t want to live there again.”[1]
Aaron was born and raised in the racially segregated city of Mobile, Alabama. After making it to the pros, he had a nice home in Milwaukee and two kids in an integrated school system. He did not want to trade the life of respect he had grown accustomed to in Milwaukee as a Black superstar for the indignity of the south he grew up in. For Black and white leadership in Atlanta however, the promise that professional baseball had for the city outweighed Aaron’s worries.
Baseball was supposed to save the South from its Jim Crow past and help Atlanta rise into its integrated future.
But fifty-five years after the Braves first played in Atlanta, Jim Crow has been resurrected. With the recent passage of Georgia’s draconian voter laws meant to restrict the voting rights of African Americans, Atlanta needs baseball to once again throw out Jim Crow.
The story of the Braves moving from Milwaukee to Atlanta is a story of white city leaders using America’s game to recast the image of a southern city. In short, Atlanta wanted to be a big-time America city, and so-called progressive city leaders knew this could only be done with a major league makeover.
To bring a professional ball club to Atlanta, however, the city needed two key elements- a new stadium and an end to Jim Crow.
In an era of relocation, convincing a professional baseball team to move down south seemed feasible. After all, Georgia had been on baseball’s mind. Branch Rickey, famed for integrating baseball, once called Atlanta “the greatest untapped sports territory in America.”[2] Led by Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr., in 1963, Atlanta businessmen and politicians secured the funds, $18 million dollars in total, to build a brand new stadium in downtown Atlanta. Believing in the potential goodwill baseball brought the state, Georgia also chipped in a million dollars.
This was done despite not having the guarantee of even acquiring a professional team. Yet by 1965, the NFL agreed to start a franchise there and the Milwaukee Braves agreed to relocate. As businessman Arthur Montgomery put it, “You can’t buy the publicity we got just by stealing the Braves from Milwaukee. Or the publicity generated by the NFL and AFL fighting to see who could play here.”[3]
But all that publicity meant nothing if prejudice persisted.
Atlanta was still in the South. During the Civil Rights Movement that southern reality conjured up images of racist beatings, not baseball. There would be no Braves and baseball if Atlanta did not deal with its bigotry and hatred.
Simultaneously, while they built a new stadium, city and business leaders teamed with civil rights organizations to help abolish legal Jim Crow. This was mandatory if they wanted a franchise as, in the 1960s, Major League Baseball was not willing to move down south unless cities hit back against Jim Crow.
In Houston, for example, city leaders had to promise to rid the city of segregation, and they did just that. In 1962, in came the Colt 45s (later the Astros) and out went legal Jim Crow in public accommodations.[4] Atlanta had to make the same strides if they wanted to be a major league city. Miraculously, by 1965, the same city that had arrested Martin Luther King Jr. for participating in the 1960 sit-in campaigns had ridden itself of Jim Crow laws.
No white leader in Atlanta was more important to this new image of a new South than mayor Ivan Allen Jr. In his words, we can clearly see how baseball and defeating Jim Crow went hand-in-hand. In a story about the new south and sports, he told Look Magazine, “Major league sports here is a byproduct of equal rights. The Negro feels the stadium belongs to him. It’s the first new municipal building erected since the Negro has had full citizenship and some served on the committee that built the stadium.” He continued, “The Negro’s full citizenship was one reason we were looked on with favor, and the Negro population swells our potential.”[5]
In April 1965, when the Braves came to play their first exhibition game in their new $18 million dollar stadium (they did not play their first full season until 1966), Atlanta’s mayor welcomed the integrated Braves in what he called “the happiest occasion for Atlanta since General Sherman in 1864 decided to head south for Savanah.”[6]
During the Brave’s first team parade celebrating their arrival to the city, fans showed up in droves to welcome their new heroes. There they witnessed the most striking image of the parade, one which demonstrated the full potential of professional baseball. As the integrated team made its way through the city streets in convertibles cars, the most popular car in the procession held Henry Aaron and Eddie Mathews. Black and white. Side-by-side.
That was supposed to be the “New South”.
A New South?
That image of Aaron and Mathews together was equally important to the Black leadership of Atlanta. They truly believed baseball could defeat bigotry. When Aaron showed his initial reluctance to move to Atlanta, local Black leaders worked extra innings to win him over. The local president of the NAACP, C. Miles Smith, wrote to Aaron begging him to change his mind. As civil rights leader Whitney Young said when Aaron stated he wanted to avoid the south’s segregation, it “dashed the hopes of Atlanta’s Negro leaders who have worked tirelessly to bring professional baseball and football clubs to Georgia’s first city.”
Young pointed out that Black leaders “labored in the conviction that integrated pro teams would dramatically demonstrate what citizenship of color can accomplish given equal opportunities.” The slugger’s mere presence, they believed, would go a long way to crushing old racist notions. “It is their hope,” Young wrote, “that Aaron’s big bat and superstar popularity will help knock Jim Crow out of town.”[7] Baseball was America’s game, and since the days of Jackie Robinson, many believed that the sport had the power to defeat racism.
Fifty-five years ago, when the Braves played their first full season in Atlanta, the city and the state of Georgia used professional baseball to help save themselves from their segregated past.
Today, with new Jim Crow voting legislation forcibly passed by a Republican-led government, Georgia needs baseball to step up to the plate once again.
Bringing baseball to Atlanta helped build a new South.
Threatening to remove it would have an equally powerful impact.
As long as there are Jim Crow laws on the books, Major League Baseball and the Atlanta Braves should not play in Georgia. The very first step, and the easiest, is to pull the 2021 All-Star Game out of the city.
Baseball needs to follow in the footsteps of the NBA. In 2017, the league moved their All-Star Game out of Charlotte after the passage of the discriminatory HB2, issuing the following statement:
“We have been guided in these discussions by the long-standing core values of our league. These include not only diversity, inclusion, fairness and respect for others but also the willingness to listen and consider opposing points of view.”
“While we recognize that the NBA cannot choose the law in every city, state, and country in which we do business, we do not believe we can successfully host our All-Star festivities in Charlotte in the climate created by HB2.”
The NBA unapologetically pulled their biggest weekend from the hands of their biggest star ever, Michael Jordan.
Major League Baseball has the opportunity to do the same. Remove the game from the city whose team used to play at 755 Hank Aaron Drive, a street named after one of their greatest, most famous, and most important players in the history of the game.
Presented with another opportunity to fight Jim Crow, baseball has to hit back.
And hit with power.
[1] “Milwaukee OK with Braves’ Tan Stars,” Michigan Chronicle, October 31, 1964.
[2] “Will Jim Crow be a Problem for Pro Athletics Down in Atlanta, Georgia,” Los Angeles Sentinel, August 20 1964.
[3] “Mayor, Bottler, Banker Bring Atlanta $18 Million All-Purpose Stadium,” Cincinnati Enquirer, December 18, 1965.
[4] Louis Moore, We Will Win the Day: The Civil Rights Movement, the Black Athlete and the Quest for Equality, 103-104.
[5] Quoted in “Improved Racial Climate Had Big Role in Getting Braves to Atlanta,” Philadelphia Tribune, April 26, 1966.
[6] “Tommy Aaron Starts Fireworks with Homer,” Birmingham World, April 14, 1965.
[7] Whitney Young, “To Be Equal,” Michigan Chronicle, November 21, 1964.
