Baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson played for 21 seasons in the major leagues, starting with the Kansas City Athletics in 1967 and retiring as a Los Angeles Angel in 1987.
But it was the year he spent playing minor league ball in Alabama that he opened up about in a Fox Sports pregame show at Rockwood Field in Birmingham. Jackson had played 114 games with the Birmingham Athletics before being called up to the majors, and when Alex Rodriguez asked him how it felt to be back in that place, he said bluntly that it was “not easy.”
As a Black player in 1967, Jackson faced virulent racism when the team traveled throughout the South, from restaurants to hotels to fancy venues the team was invited to. He shared examples of being called the n-word and not being allowed into various establishments. He said he’d never want to go through that experience again and wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
He also shared how his managers, coaches and teammates had his back during such incidents. They refused to eat where he couldn’t eat or sleep where he couldn’t sleep. He said they helped him refrain from responding to racist attacks when he was “ready to physically fight.”
Watch him tell his story:
Here are his remarks in full:
“Coming back here is not easy. 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. People said to me today, I spoke, and they said, ‘Do you think you’re a better person, do 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 would 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 to the diner and eat hamburgers. We’ll go where we’re wanted.’
“Fortunately, I had a manager in Johnny McNamara that, if I couldn’t eat in the place, nobody would eat. We’d get food to travel. If I couldn’t stay in a hotel, they’d drive to the next hotel and find a place where I could stay. Had it not been for Rollie Fingers, Johnny McNamara, Dave Duncan, Joe and Sharon Rudi, I slept on their couch three, four nights a week for about a month and a half. Finally, they were threatened that they would burn our apartment complex down unless I got out. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
“The year I came here, Bull Connor was the sheriff the year before, and they took minor league baseball out of here because in 1963, the Klan murdered four Black girls—children 11, 12, 14 years old—at a church here and never got indicted. The Klan—Life Magazine did a story on them like they were being honored.
“I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. At the same time, had it not been for my white friends, had it not been for a white manager, and Rudi, Fingers and Duncan, and Lee Meyers, I would never have made it. I was too physically violent. I was ready to physically fight some — I would have got killed here because I would have beat someone’s ass, and you would have saw me in an oak tree somewhere.”
People praised the commentators and show producers for letting Jackson say what he wanted to say without interrupting or cutting him off. Some shared that it’s vital to hear this part of our history from first-hand sources, as there are Americans who forget or deny that such incidents were commonplace within current adult lifetimes. Even knowing that Black players had a lot to overcome as segregation waned, it hits differently when you hear specific details.
Jackson’s story is a difficult but important reminder that Civil Right Act of 1965 changed the laws but didn’t magically flip the racist beliefs that made it necessary in the first place. But it’s also a good reminder that individual Americans rejecting those beliefs and standing up for racial justice is a part of our national history as well.