Aaron needed convincing, but arrival of Braves signaled changing South
Atlanta Pro Sports and Integration
by Howard Bryant | ESPN.com
In 1963, the year of Martin Luther King Jr. and the March on Washington, Henry Aaron exploded for one of his finest seasons: He hit .319 and led the league in runs (121), RBIs (130), home runs (44), slugging (.586), OPS (.977 -- not that anyone articulated the importance of that statistic at the time) and total bases (370). It was also the year his Milwaukee Braves teammate Joe Torre noticed a significant alteration in Aaron's swing, a change that traded his natural right-center alley power for pulling the ball to left. It was the beginning, Torre believed, of Henry's move away from his once-stated goal of breaking Stan Musial's all-time National League record of 3,630 hits and toward a direct assault on Babe Ruth's all-time home run record of 714 home runs.
The year also signified a political awakening for Aaron; once considered reserved, he became drawn to the positions of writer James Baldwin and, like many African-Americans, taken by the civil rights positions of both King and Malcolm X. These were not airy, theoretical considerations; they contained real-life implications for a man navigating the best path for achieving equality for African-Americans. In interviews, Aaron rejected ballplayer clichés and began to speak with a sharper political tone. A year earlier, the Milwaukee Braves had been sold to Chicago businessman Bill Bartholomay. Almost immediately, rumors circulated that the team would soon relocate to Atlanta -- and Aaron had no interest in ever returning to the Deep South, where he was born.
1963 represented the convergence of Henry's athletic skill and political awareness, but it also represented a pivotal moment in the history of the American South, one that significant political leaders from Andrew Young to Bill Clinton to Jimmy Carter believe has never been properly regarded in the evolution of the civil rights movement.
"People always talk about the marches and the protests, but what they don't talk about is how big a part sports played in the economic part of the movement, in changing the perception of what the South was," Young told me recently. "We had no professional sports teams, and the mayor, Ivan Allen, believed attracting pro sports and big pro events would be critical to proving to business leaders around the country that we did believe in a 'new South.'
"In Atlanta, we could've gone either way. We had a choice to make: Did we want to be Birmingham, or did we want to be something different? In places like Little Rock, they tried to desegregate from the bottom up, starting with the schools. In Atlanta, we took a top-down approach. It was the business leaders, Coca-Cola especially, that decided that it would have been to our political and economic disadvantage to fight civil rights with fire hoses and dogs and more segregation, the way they did in Birmingham. Birmingham had the infrastructure to remain the region's economic powerhouse, but instead it became isolated. It was the symbol for our business community of what not to be. And it was the business and political leaders who believed that the one way to be a world-class city was to have sports teams."
Read the Full Essay @ ESPN.com
Atlanta Pro Sports and Integration
by Howard Bryant | ESPN.com
In 1963, the year of Martin Luther King Jr. and the March on Washington, Henry Aaron exploded for one of his finest seasons: He hit .319 and led the league in runs (121), RBIs (130), home runs (44), slugging (.586), OPS (.977 -- not that anyone articulated the importance of that statistic at the time) and total bases (370). It was also the year his Milwaukee Braves teammate Joe Torre noticed a significant alteration in Aaron's swing, a change that traded his natural right-center alley power for pulling the ball to left. It was the beginning, Torre believed, of Henry's move away from his once-stated goal of breaking Stan Musial's all-time National League record of 3,630 hits and toward a direct assault on Babe Ruth's all-time home run record of 714 home runs.
The year also signified a political awakening for Aaron; once considered reserved, he became drawn to the positions of writer James Baldwin and, like many African-Americans, taken by the civil rights positions of both King and Malcolm X. These were not airy, theoretical considerations; they contained real-life implications for a man navigating the best path for achieving equality for African-Americans. In interviews, Aaron rejected ballplayer clichés and began to speak with a sharper political tone. A year earlier, the Milwaukee Braves had been sold to Chicago businessman Bill Bartholomay. Almost immediately, rumors circulated that the team would soon relocate to Atlanta -- and Aaron had no interest in ever returning to the Deep South, where he was born.
1963 represented the convergence of Henry's athletic skill and political awareness, but it also represented a pivotal moment in the history of the American South, one that significant political leaders from Andrew Young to Bill Clinton to Jimmy Carter believe has never been properly regarded in the evolution of the civil rights movement.
"People always talk about the marches and the protests, but what they don't talk about is how big a part sports played in the economic part of the movement, in changing the perception of what the South was," Young told me recently. "We had no professional sports teams, and the mayor, Ivan Allen, believed attracting pro sports and big pro events would be critical to proving to business leaders around the country that we did believe in a 'new South.'
"In Atlanta, we could've gone either way. We had a choice to make: Did we want to be Birmingham, or did we want to be something different? In places like Little Rock, they tried to desegregate from the bottom up, starting with the schools. In Atlanta, we took a top-down approach. It was the business leaders, Coca-Cola especially, that decided that it would have been to our political and economic disadvantage to fight civil rights with fire hoses and dogs and more segregation, the way they did in Birmingham. Birmingham had the infrastructure to remain the region's economic powerhouse, but instead it became isolated. It was the symbol for our business community of what not to be. And it was the business and political leaders who believed that the one way to be a world-class city was to have sports teams."
Read the Full Essay @ ESPN.com
***
Howard Bryant is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He is the author of "The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron," "Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston" and "Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball." He can be reached at Howard.Bryant@espn.com.
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