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"I walked into restaurants and they would point
at me and say, 'The nigger can't eat here.' I would go to a
hotel and they would say, 'The nigger can't stay here," Jackson,
78, said on a live Fox Sports telecast ahead of a game between
the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals at
Birmingham's historic Rickwood Field.
"I wouldn't wish it on anyone," Jackson said.
Baseball was honoring Black players in a game one day after the
Juneteenth holiday marking the end of slavery, and the game was
played with the sport still mourning the death on Tuesday of
Willie Mays, 93, who played for the Birmingham team in the Negro
Leagues, which thrived before baseball was integrated in 1947.
Jackson, speaking on a panel that including recently retired
greats Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz and Derek Jeter, said it was
painful to return to Birmingham, where he played as a minor
leaguer in 1967 before his Major League career with the Oakland
A's and New York Yankees.
Jackson, a Hall of Famer celebrated as "Mr. October" for his
World Series dramatics with the Yankees, praised white teammates
including Manager John McNamara, Rollie Fingers, Joe Rudi, Dave
Duncan and Lee Meyers for refusing to let the team patronize
segregated hotels and restaurants and for restraining him when
he was ready to fight back against racists.
"I'd have got killed here because I'd have beat somebody's ass,
and you'd have saw me in an oak tree somewhere," Jackson said,
referring to the history of lynching in the South.
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Christian Schmollinger) [© 2024 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
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