Major League Baseball descends on Birmingham and Rickwood Field

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Six decades ago, within the walls of the low-slung brick facade of the A.G. Gaston Motel, one of the greatest threats ever seen to regular American life was brewing. Serving as base camp for many civil rights groups, the mere idea of giving Black people their dignity in public spaces was ready to turn society on its head.

In April 1963, Martin Luther King Jr., who had been jailed for “parading without a permit” during a march protesting segregation in Birmingham, was put in solitary confinement. From there, he penned the now famous “Letter From A Birmingham Jail.” Less than a month later, that very hotel was bombed after white business leaders in town agreed to integrate lunch counters and hire Black folks. Less than a week later, former Brooklyn Dodgers player Jack Roosevelt Robinson showed up and spent the night there.

“I don’t think you realize out here in Birmingham, what you mean to us up there in New York. And I don’t think that white Americans understand what Birmingham means to all of us throughout this country,” Robinson told a crowd of a couple thousand at the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church. “I think the conscience of America is beginning to awaken. I think the first steps that were made here by the Birmingham business and Dr. King and the other leaders down here is an indication that perhaps the conscience of Birmingham is beginning to awaken. The only thing that we’re demanding is that we’d be allowed to move ahead just like any other American city.”

The newsreels and pictures that brought living, breathing footage to the place not so kindly nicknamed “Bombingham” were enough to bring the man who broke MLB’s color line to town. Robinson wasn’t alone in his efforts by any means, but his presence meant that the eyes of the baseball world nationally had reason to train their eyes on the South.

There were riots, children were put behind bars and there are troves of scholarship and entire academic disciplines obviously dedicated to that time in America, specifically in that place. It’s a stench that many natives have tried hard to get rid of, but with much difficulty. 

“Birmingham has great people and great opportunities. I had a successful career of almost 38 years in corporate America here in Birmingham,” Bobbie Knight, president of historically Black Miles College, said of her hometown. “I ended up in higher education as a second career. But the first career was amazing. Now I’m not gonna tell you it was not without some issues — and some racial tension at times. But for the most part, Birmingham has been great to me. You’re looking at Birmingham when you look at me and you look at my success story. I did it all in the city of Birmingham.”

Miles College will play its home games at Rickwood Field next season. But the overlap of racial tension didn’t just embody itself in one city or even one ballpark in Alabama. In Magic City, it was caught up in one man: arguably the most famous white supremacist of his time — Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor.

Once a broadcaster of the Birmingham “white” Barons, his bigoted reign as Birmingham commissioner of public safety and president of the Alabama Public Service Commission, with his résumé of brutal opposition to integration, would make him first-ballot unanimous vote into the Racism Hall of Fame. The first time the city got a real close-up?

It was Connor who turned on the water hoses and sicced dogs on people. It was he who worked in concert with the Ku Klux Klan to let them beat the Freedom Riders, who were touring the South to protest segregation, before police intervened, when they came to town. In American terms: He was your favorite racist’s favorite racist.

A decade before, when Robinson had showed up in support of the Children’s Crusade, he had planned an All-Star game that featured both Black and white players at Rickwood Field. Ten days before it was to happen, Connor called it off, citing a city ordinance that forbade mixed athletic events. Robinson benched all of his white teammates and carried on with the game. This time, Birmingham is far more prepared to be in the spotlight. And with MLB honoring the Negro Leagues on the very field he once segregated himself, Connor would be rolling in his grave.

The Birmingham Barons now play at Regions Field, where the Southern Negro League Museum is located just a few blocks away. It’s an interesting existence, what with the history of the franchise, overall. Michael’s Restaurant, which is owned and operated by a sista named Bernadine Birdsong, is next to the museum.

As the official steakhouse of the UAB Blazers, they get a lot of people through there, unrelated to hardball entirely. Birdsong is from the city and just young enough to have learned about most of the concerns people still have through generational knowledge, to an extent. It doesn’t form who she is, but certainly has informed her world for some time.

“My mom, she knew a lot about [the Negro Leagues], because a lot of those people she knew, like they went to high school together, you know, lived in the neighborhood,” she explained. “I was like, oh, my God, I can’t believe this like happened right here, you know?”

It’ll be fascinating to see what corners of the place known as Magic City that MLB can bring out. This isn’t just one baseball game coming to town, it’s a week full of experiences and events that will bring more attention to this place than it’s seen since Connor was beating up Negroes like hotcakes, to quote an old line by comedian Dave Chappelle. You ask folks around town and their interest ranges somewhere between laser focus and bemusement.

MLB is coming here? To play in a century-old park? What on earth for?

That kind of honesty from real people is a stark reminder that Alabama is still Alabama. The days of segregationist Gov. George Wallace and the National Guard are not ancient history by any means.

“I think it has evolved. I think when people come to Birmingham, and they experience it, they’re pleasantly surprised. It’s not what you think,” Birdsong pointed out on a hot summer day in which the Barons were on the road. “I used to travel a lot for work. And I was in Australia. And there was like this big thing on the news about Birmingham, halfway around the world. And they were having this big talk discussion about the golf course, there was a private golf course here that wouldn’t let Blacks in. I mean, this was in 2000. And they were having this big discussion about it in Australia, and I’m there. And they say how do you live in that place. I was like, ‘you know, you just live there and you don’t even really think much of it.’ So it’s not like blatant in your face until something like that happens.”

It wasn’t just ballparks that were segregated. We’re talking pools, golf courses, everything. Nowadays we often think of segregation as sort of a soft process, or a more socialized norm, rather than a hard fast law that separates people by the color of their skin. But it’s an effect that takes generations to change. MLB is not about to fix the generational trauma of segregation, not by a mile.

“It’s still very prevalent. And you can see it, like when I received an incentive to move my restaurant here from where I was, I used to be inside, to a loft hotel in Homewood, which is not very far from here,” Birdsong said. “So, I was the very first Black restaurant to receive any kind of assistance to move a restaurant [from the city]. Four, five years ago, that was very controversial. There were people who were like fighting against it, didn’t want me to have it. ‘Why did she get it? Why didn’t somebody else get it?’ It was like a big controversy that was a little bit embarrassing because we’ve had Black mayors since the ’70s. But like business ownership, less than 1%. We’re 72% Black [in population], but very few Black-owned businesses.”

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Al Holt had a unique relationship with the Black Barons. His uncle was the manager for years. Sort of like in the film The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings, he was responsible for the strong box. That is, he held the money, as a young man, until he was old enough to play. His recall about the basics of segregation is clear.

“Well, you know, there’s certain things that you could do and certain things you couldn’t do. And, when you wanted to go see the white barons, you pay your money at the gate, go around and come up on the right-field side,” Holt explained while showing me around the museum. “I had an opportunity to see those people without going through all that.”

By the time he got to play for the Black Barons, it was everything he thought and more. His picture still hangs in the museum, along with a newspaper story about a great game of his. He uses a wheelchair now, but his pride still stands strong.

“Baseball was the main thing. They look at you different, they treat you different, you a celebrity,” he said with a smile. “In other words, you was just like the major league ballplayer. You know, you come home and folks flock to y’all.”

With a flock of outsiders coming to town to watch the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants play exactly one baseball game, the memories of this town will exist in more ways than just glory.