This week, Hall of Famer and baseball star Reggie Jackson made a return visit to Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, where he related the horrifying experiences of racist abuse he had to undergo while playing in the major leagues.
At the height of brutal racial strife in the American South, Jackson, now 78, was barely 21 years old when he signed on with the Birmingham A’s minor league team. He was one of the few Black players on the squad.
“I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, but fortunately I had a manager and players on the team that helped me get through it,” Jackson stated on the Fox Sports panel on Thursday during the Negro Leagues tribute game.
Birmingham was in the news for openly abusing Black Americans when Jackson moved to Alabama in the 1960s.
Under the leadership of Bull Connor, the infamous Birmingham city commissioner, racial tensions reached a breaking point in 1963 when the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed, killing four young Black girls.
“When I went inside restaurants, people would yell, ‘The n***** can’t dine here,’ pointing at me. “The hotel would tell me, ‘The n***** can’t stay here,'” Jackson recalled.
“During the welcome-home meal at Charlie Finley’s country club, they made fun of me by calling me names. “He’s not allowed in here.” Jackson remembered that Charles Finley, a Major League Baseball player and native of Alabama, “marched the whole team out.”
Jackson acknowledged that, in the intensely segregated era, he had white friends and allies who would have stood up for him and prevented him from doing anything that would have endangered his life or career.
“I never would have succeeded. I was too aggressive with my physicality. I would have been killed here, so I was prepared to fight,” he declared.
Jackson played in the major leagues for 21 seasons and won five World Series. He was known as “Mr. October” because of his tendency to perform better in the postseason.
After the 1987 season, he announced his retirement, and in 1993, the Hall of Fame inducted him.
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