Source: Stacy Revere / Getty
Baseball legend Reggie Jackson recalled the shocking instances of racism that he endured in Alabama during an interview.
On Thursday (June 20), Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson was being interviewed by the Fox Sports broadcast crew covering the game between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals at the historic Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama honoring Negro League Baseball. Alex Rodriguez, the former New York Yankees star player, asked Jackson what it was like being back there. Jackson, who’d go on to greatness as a power-hitting fielder for the Oakland Athletics and New York Yankees, started with the minor-league Birmingham A’s who played at Rickwood in 1967.
“Alex, when people ask me a question like that, it’s like, coming back here is not easy,” Jackson replied. “The racism that I played here, 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.” The crew went quiet
as Jackson continued: “People said to me today — I spoke and they said, ‘You think you’re a better person, 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 say, the n—– can’t stay here,” the legend known as “Mr. October” said, the emotions from that time vivid in his face. “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 say, the n—– can’t stay here. We went to 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.” Reggie Jackson would go on to thank his Birmingham A’s manager, Johnny McNamara, and teammates Rollie Fingers, Dave Duncan, and Joe Rudi who with his wife Sharon gave Jackson a place to stay – until racists threatened to “burn our apartment complex down unless I got out.”
