Reggie Jackson Reminds Us of the "Fierce Urgency of Now"
Hearing the pain of our elders should motivate immediate action. `
I heard Reggie Jackson speak, and I had to respond. These articles, for me, are not just messages, they are a mission. Will you support my mission to promote racial justice today?
Hall of Fame baseball player, Reggie Jackson, was an honored guest at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama for a special Negro Leagues game and tribute.
When a commentator asked how it felt to be back at the field where he played baseball in the 1960s, he offered a poignant lesson about how the past is still very present.
“Coming back here is not easy. The racism when I played here. The difficulty of going through different places where we traveled. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”
It was remarkable to me how even decades later, Jackson could instantly recall the emotion of those moments.
He didn’t pause for a second. Those memories were not only still clear, he could still feel the pain of the racism he endured.
Jackson survived his encounters with racial prejudice, but he didn’t valorize those experiences.
When someone asked him if he thought he was a better person for having persevered, he said, “I would never do it again.”
He described the sting of segregation as he attempted to travel with his baseball team.
“I walked into restaurants and they would point at me and say, ‘The n*gger can’t eat here.’ I would go to a hotel and they would say ‘The n*gger can’t stay here.’”
He slept on the couch of a white couple he knew for a month and a half, and even his white allies were threatened.
“Finally they threatened that they would burn our apartment complex down unless I got out.”
Even in the face of such humiliation and danger, Jackson, like many Black people, knew how to distinguish between racist white people and those who allied with him in the struggle against injustice.
He explained, “At the same time, had it not been for my white friends. Had it not been for a white manager, and Rudy, Fingers, and Duncan, and Lee Meyers, I would have never made it.
Jackson was an athlete, a competitor, and a fighter.
These are all traits that are celebrated in white men, but when applied to Black men, displaying such characteristics could be fatal.
If left on his own, he may have gotten into serious trouble with white supremacists.
“I was too physically violent. I was ready to physically fight somebody. I’dve gotten killed here ‘cus I woulda beat someone’s ass and you woulda saw me in an oak tree somewhere.”
The grainy black and white pictures of the Civil Rights movement deceive us into thinking this era of racism was in the distant past. But Reggie Jackson’s firsthand recollections demonstrate that it is still part of the living memory of many people today.
Jackson’s comments contrast with Byron Donald’s recent remarks expressing nostalgia for the Jim Crow era and the state of Black families under segregation.
Donalds, a Republican Congress member representing Florida and potential running mate for Trump, stated at a campaign event,
“You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative — Black people have always been conservative-minded — but more Black people voted conservatively.”
Byron Donalds needs to listen to Reggie Jackson’s recollections of racism on repeat.
People like Reggie Jackson are why I advocate for racial justice today.
Listening to the pain of my elders—not just legendary baseball players but my own relatives, too—evokes anger and action.
My education also lends to the immediacy of action.
I remember reading book-after-book in graduate school and learning, in detail, just how cruelly many white people in the US had treated Black people.
It shortened my endurance for the foolishness of racism and compelled me to take positive steps for progress.
When we center the pain of the victims of racism, we have much less patience for racism’s perpetrators.
This is what Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the fierce urgency of now.”
Right now, people are receiving the blows of racism and the trauma is creating agonizing memories that will last decades into the future.
Reggie Jackson’s fiery trials on and off the baseball field should motivate us to immediate antiracist action. The time is now and long past to confront the racism that still harms people today.
When you listen to Reggie Jackson’s remarks, what thoughts and feelings do they evoke?
P.S. Check out this new article from a publication to which I contribute “The Convocation.” This week it includes a roundup of my Juneteenth articles and more from Diana Butler Bass, Kristin Du Mez, and Robert P. Jones.
Truthfully, I needed to hear this, but for a different reason. Growing up loving baseball but missing the era he was referencing (I was born exactly a year after MLK was shot), I *loathed* Reggie. His "Magnitude of Me" still echos in my head to this day, contributing to my continued antipathy to him and the Yankees.
I wish I had heard *him* say this far earlier, as it would have contributed to having a different perception of him, "contextualizing" some of the comments of his I heard back then. I'm glad I listened to this clip, and have listened to his remarks on repeat several times to etch *THAT* impression of Reggie permanently in my mind. Having become a student of the Negro Leagues after watching Ken Burns' "Baseball", putting him in *that* conversation changes the way I hear his remarks.
Thank you for pointing me to these remarks. As a side note, I'm thrilled that Negro League stats have been incorporated into MLB statistics. I am SO wanting to get to the Negro Leagues Museum, before or after its expansion-- I could've listened to Bob Kendrick (as I could've Buck O'Neill) on that broadcast for hours! But I need to hear Reggie's comments echo at the same time.
I saw this clip of Reggie Jackson last night and I am thankful that he was able to share these obviously painful memories and that the network did not cut away but allowed his voice to be heard.
I hope this reverberates and makes people uncomfortable to hear what it was like for him as a Black man and respected baseball player, and for all of us to remember that this happened within our lifetime or for younger folk, not so far in the past.
My wish is that no one should ever have to experience something like this and yet even today, in 2024, racism still exists and many non-white people experience this kind of hate and threat to their lives. We, all of us, need to do the work to heal and abolish racism within ourselves to stop perpetuating it in future generations.