10/22/2023 0 Comments Curt flood made free agency possibleFlood knew that bigotry wasn’t confined to the South, but he was shocked by his experience trying to move into an all-white neighborhood in the Oakland suburb of Alamo. Confronting racism as a Black ballplayerĭuring his playing days, Flood, like other Black ballplayers, faced racist taunts from fans and ostracism from some teammates. He told the crowd of 3,800 that he felt a personal responsibility to fight racial injustice. In February 1962, at Robinson’s invitation, then 24-year-old Flood traveled to Jackson, Mississippi to speak at a rally organized by NAACP leader Medgar Evers. “One of my first and most enduring memories is of a large, loud cracker who installed himself and his four little boys in a front-row box and started yelling ‘Black bastard’ at me,” Flood recalled in his autobiography, The Way It Is. Many Southern fans were not happy with Flood’s presence on the diamonds. He couldn’t use the bathrooms when the team bus stopped at gas stations. When Flood played for a minor league team in Thomasville, North Carolina in 1956, he was prohibited from staying in the same hotels or eating in the same restaurants as his white teammates. “For Curt, players’ rights and civil rights were part of the same idea.” He was particularly interested in the fact that SAG members had their own agents and lawyers, could negotiate with film studios over salaries and could move to different studios-all things prohibited in Major League Baseball at the time.įlood, whose first season in the majors was a year after the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, was one of the first ballplayers to get involved with the civil rights movement. “Jackie Robinson was his hero,” Pace Flood told me in an interview. “On our first date, over dinner in 1964, he quizzed me about the Screen Actors Guild,” recalled his widow, Judy Pace Flood, a well-known actress during the 1960s and 70s. Even before the Major League Baseball Players’ Association (MLBPA) had any influence, Flood was an eager trade unionist. But, Flood belongs in baseball’s Hall of Fame.įlood was deeply influenced by both the civil rights and labor movements. Instead, the baseball establishment has blacklisted Flood and kept him out of the Cooperstown shrine. (Credit: Society for American Baseball Research-Rucker Archive) Louis Cardinals following the 1957 season. Every professional athlete owes Flood a debt of gratitude.Ĭurt Flood became a star after he was traded from the Cincinnati Reds to the St. One way it can make progress is to elect Curt Flood into the Hall of Fame.įlood, a Black center fielder who died in 1997 at age 56, sacrificed his career by suing major league baseball over the reserve clause, baseball’s version of indentured servitude. The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Dave Roberts and the Houston Astros’ Dusty Baker are the only Blacks among this year’s 30 Major League managers.īaseball still has a long way to go to live up to the promise of racial justice. The proportion of Black players on Major League rosters declined from 19% in 1995 to 7% last year. What’s typically not mentioned is that most of baseball’s owners at the time opposed integrating their teams and that it took until 1959-12 years later-before all 16 MLB teams had their first Black player. Each April 15-the anniversary of Robinson’s first game-every player wears his uniform number, 42. In 1947, trailblazer Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers. This year, like every year, Major League Baseball will go all out to remind Americans that the sport was on the forefront of civil rights. Though they may be mission-aligned, contributors’ personal views or perspectives are not endorsed by AfroLA.īaseball’s Opening Day is March 30. Both picture and audio elements were reassembled at the intermediate (ProRes 4444) before the mp4 access file was created.AfroLA solicits and accepts contributions for publication from community members, professional writers and folks who just have a compelling story to share. The original 16mm film and ¼” audio elements were transferred to create 2K DPX and WAV files respectively.National Historical Publications & Records Commission (NHPRC) provided generous funding for this project.Miles Educational Film Productions, Inc.Discrimination in sport-United States-History-20th century.Sports-United States-History-20th century.Interview with Curt Flood conducted for Black Champions.
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