Baseball Was Political Long Before Bruce Maxwell Knelt

Source: http://ift.tt/IsN8HP --- Monday, September 25, 2017
“There I was, the black grandson of a slave, the son of a black sharecropper, part of a historic occasion, a symbolic hero to my people. The air was sparkling. The sunlight was warm. The band struck up the national anthem. The flag billowed in the wind. It should have been a glorious moment for me as the stirring words of the national anthem poured from the stands. Perhaps, it was, but then again, perhaps, the anthem could be called the theme song for a drama called The Noble Experiment. Today, as I look back on that opening game of my first world series, I must tell you that it was Mr. Rickey’s drama and that I was only a principal actor. As I write this twenty years later, I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag ; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.” ---Jackie Robinson, in his autobiography I Never Had It Made ( emphasis mine ) By kneeling during the National Anthem on Saturday night , Bruce Maxwell became the first MLB player to join the growing protest against police brutality and institutionalized racism in the United States. His action, specifically, was born in response to comments made by President Trump, who called football players who kneel during the National Anthem “sons of bitches” and called for NFL team owners to “fire” players who were protesting. Many people supported Maxwell and his decision, and expressed it ...

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