Frank Jordan remembers weekends when he traveled with his father’s baseball team on a bus through the South American, from Georgia to Carolines, en route to the next match.
His father was a launcher for the southern division of the Negro leagues – leagues for black players from the 1920s in the 1940s, when segregation prevented them from playing in the majors.
Motivated by a deep love of the game, the members of his team were only some of the approximately 3,400 players in several black leagues across the country.
“These guys were rock stars,” he recalls his father and teammates on Friday at the San Diego central library, where a popup exhibition on Negro leagues and their contributions to American baseball is now exposed.
The exhibition, “Breaking Barriers”, travels through the history of the leagues, presents jerseys and other memories and presents 17 of the black and Latinos players who continued to integrate the baseball – by Jackie Robinson, who signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, in Elijah Jerry “Pumpsie” Green, which joined the Boston Red in 1959.
There is also a special tribute to Johnny Ritchey, the first black player of the San Diego Padres. Although he did not play in the Negro leagues, Ritchey – A San Diegan for Life – played baseball in high school and San Diego State College.
“Johnny never wanted to be a pioneer,” said Bill Swank, a Baseball historian from San Diego who was good friends with Ritchey, in an email. “He just wanted to play baseball.”
The exhibition, which is part of a traveling exhibition of Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City, MO., marks the culmination of about two years of planning and fundraising with organizations such as the Padres and the San Diego Unified School District.
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A new pop-up exhibition at the Central Library, entitled “Breaking Barriers” of the Baseball Museum of Black Leagues highlights men who have cut the way for people of colored in baseball. (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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A new pop-up exhibition at the Central Library, entitled “Breaking Barriers” of the Baseball Museum of Black Leagues highlights men who have cut the way for people of colored in baseball. (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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For Jordan, the main coordinator of the exhibition is an opportunity for visitors to find out about the Negro leagues and keep history alive, especially since the Trump administration moves to minimize the history of blacks and dismantle diversity initiatives through the federal government.
“This exhibition tells the truth about our story,” says Jordan. “And our history is not so good sometimes, so we must be up to our mistakes.”
In recent months, the Trump administration has taken measures to remove the references to the work and the achievements of black American websites and federal institutions.
Nearly 400 pounds have been removed from the US Naval Academy library, including Maya Angelou’s Memoirs from his difficulties with racism. The administration has deleted a ban on separate installations in federal contracts. And an article on the military service of Jackie Robinson was deleted from the website of the Ministry of Defense, then reinstated.
“You can make a gum on paper,” said Jordan, “but you can’t erase reality.”
The reality was “rough”, added the 78 -year -old man.
As a child, Jordan would label his father’s team like the “Bat Boy” – responsible for collecting bats during a match after the striker struck and sank.
To avoid the racist hostility that came with visit stores and companies on the journey to games, the team would bring spare bus parts and petrol, he recalls. Instead of stopping to use toilets, they stop on the side of the road.
His mother, as well as the wives and friends of the other members of the team, made the lunches of the shoebox, the pre-fabricated meals so that they can dine on the road.
Nor was there much money in the game. During a match, ticket sales collected $ 80, which the 20 players separated evenly, each winning $ 4.
But he has good memories, he said. On Sunday, the whole community would be released in a match after the church. The leagues have also helped promote black businesses and fuel the economies of local communities.
“They played for the love of the game,” said Jordan, adding that the leagues “have given people something to admire.”
And when players like Robinson, Larry Doby and Henry Thompson were signed with teams from the Major League, Jordan said it had filled the pride community – despite the way it accelerated the decline of the Negro leagues, and despite how long a road they were there.
“It was like a feeling of hope,” said Jordan. “Things change.”
The “breakup barriers” will be exhibited on the eighth floor of the central library of San Diego until May 31.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
