At MLB’s tribute to the Negro Leagues at historic Rickwood Park in Birmingham, AL Thursday night, FOX Sports interviewed baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson.
When Alex Rodriguez asked Jackson to describe his feelings about returning to Birmingham for the special game, the Fox broadcast team, viewers and the country got the brutal truth they needed to hear, a truth many are fighting hard to conceal, whitewash or eliminate.
“Coming back here is not easy,” said an emotional Jackson. “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 to help me get through it. But I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”
Reggie then let loose.
“I would never want to do it again,” he said. “I walked into restaurants and they would point at me say ‘the ni**er’ can’t eat here.’ I would go to a hotel and they would say ‘the ni**ger can’t stay here.'”
It was an uncomfortable moment that shocked everyone (especially as “ni**er” wasn’t bleeped out in real time) except Black America, as we understood.
Reggie Jackson’s feelings mirrored what many of us have experienced in some way. While racists in the past were more blatantly open and comfortable in using the N-word and taking physical action against Black people, current racists have become more adept and covert at masquerading their racism.
Now they use coded language, the media and biased systemic moves to affect change in law, policies and higher education to revive Jim Crow, minus the N-word and other overt ways of referring to Black and Brown communities.
Yet we’ve all felt the same racism as Jackson, or have been subjected to it in some fashion.
This is the history that leaders in red states like Florida, Texas, South Carolina and Arkansas don’t want you to learn about. This is the brutal truth of America that they seek to hide, whitewash, restrict or eliminate.
When people aren’t aware of this history, they can’t recognize how the decisions and policies of conservatives and MAGA followers are creating the same type of environment that Jackson and every other Black athlete, and person, lived in. They won’t be able to identify how past practices are being revived to impede the changing face of America to revert it to a less diverse, and more homogenous (white and Christian) society that it once was.
That’s why it was so crucial for Jackson to discuss his experiences in raw truth on national television so that everyone could hear it and, most importantly, remember it.
At one point, Birmingham was the most segregated city in the nation.
It was the city where police viciously beat peaceful protesters while firemen used water canons on Black high school and elementary school students who took part in the nonviolent Civil Rights protests. It was the city where Martin Luther King was jailed for “parading without a permit” and placed into solitary confinement, where he penned the famous “Letter From A Birmingham Jail.”
Birmingham is also the city where, on September 15th, 1963, four Black schoolgirls were murdered in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, earning it the nickname “Bombingham.”
Mind you, this didn’t take place in the 1860s. No, this was all in 1963.
That means many who grew up during that time are now in their 60s and 70s and remember what they endured to simply try to live.
Last night’s game was an incredible production, and MLB and Fox Sports both deserve the effort invested to honor the Negro Leagues and the late, great Willie Mays, a native son of Birmingham.
But thanks to Reggie Jackson’s unabashed honesty, it became a crucial history lesson for all to know and remember.
