Major League Baseball descended on Rickwood Field this week to honor and celebrate the Negro Leagues and Willie Mays, who died earlier this week. But for one former Hall of Famer, the trip to Birmingham, Ala., brought back painful memories during a time of racial segregation in America.
During Fox Sports’ pregame show that featured Kevin Burkhardt, Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz, Derek Jeter, and Reggie Jackson, the crew dug into the significance of players like Mays, Jackie Robinson, and Jackson paving the way for racial integration in baseball. Rodriguez asked Jackson, “How emotional is it to come back to a place that you played, with one of the greatest teams around?”
Jackson gave a near three-minute anecdotal response, peeling back the layer of the racism and oppression he faced as a member of the Oakland Athletics’ minor-league club, the Birmingham A’s, led by manager John McNamara. A 21-year-old Jackson played 114 games with the club in 1967.
» READ MORE: Willie Mays was so much to so many. His legacy — and humanity — will still be celebrated.
“When people ask me a question like that, coming back here is not easy,” Jackson responded. “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.”
Jackson, 78, went on to describe how when he walked into restaurants, workers would “point at me and tell me that I can’t eat here.” Lodging was also difficult for Jackson and his team, facing similar sentiments that they weren’t allowed to stay at hotels because of his skin color. Even at a welcome home dinner at a country club, employees pointed Jackson out and he says they “called me N-word.”
At one point, Jackson was sleeping on the couch at the apartment of teammate Joe Rudi and his wife, Sharon, for “three or four nights a week, for about a month and a half.” The Rudis received threats that the apartment complex would be burned down if Jackson continued staying there.
Jackson credits his manager, McNamara, for sticking up for him, saying that “if I couldn’t eat in a place, nobody would eat; we’d get food to travel.” He also pointed to his teammates, Rollie Fingers, Dave Duncan, and Lee Meyers for their support, and said without them, he “would have never made it. I was too physically violent … I would have gotten killed here [in Birmingham], because I would’ve beat someone’s [expletive].”
» READ MORE: Scott Bandura returns to Rickwood Field ‘grateful to be included’ in MLB’s Negro Leagues celebration
He played two seasons in the minors before spending the next 21 seasons in the major leagues, playing for the Athletics, New York Yankees, Angels, and Orioles. He led the American League in home runs four times, won the 1973 MVP, and finished his career with 563 home runs, which ranks 14th all-time. For his storied career, Jackson was enshrined in the Hall of Fame in 1993.
