The Awful N Word

A few friends were discussing the N word with me a day or so ago. It was an awful, disjointed and unproductive conversation, but it left me thinking and trying to put something constructive together about the subject.
by Charlie Leck

The conversation started this way. I was sitting around with a few guys I consider sensitive, thoughtful and kind. We had been chatting about the movie 42. I told them the little narrative that a white lady-friend of mine from Georgia – a high school classmate -- had told me only a few days before.

“Charlie,” she said, “it was so embarrassing. I went to the theater in Cairo with a black neighbor-friend of mine. We both wanted to see 42, the story about Jackie Robinson. Well, we lived so near it, why not go to a theater in the town where he was born to see it. Oh, my, it was so embarrassing.”

My friend actually turned bright red as she told me the story. She shook her head and laughed nervously about it. I sat patiently, not wanting to break her train of thought, and waited for her to continue.

“Well, that Philadelphia manager,” she said, “was so terrible and he stood outside the dugout there and kept shouting out that word. I felt so awful about that and I was so embarrassed that I wanted to disappear down through the floor. Well, my friend sat with me, you know, and there were other black people throughout the theater. In fact, most of the people were black and I felt so terrible that I just wanted to get out of there.”

I’d seen the movie – a couple of times. I knew what she was talking about, but I wanted to broaden our discussion and wanted to hear her say it. Don’t ask me why! I just thought it would be important – you know, cleansing and more honest.

“You know what I’m talking about,” she said. “You know! The N word. He just kept shouting it and it was so embarrassing.”

I remember hearing the word as a child. There were times that my old man used it. He didn’t seem mean-spirited about it. It was just a common vocabulary word that he, from time to time, used – and that was almost always when a black man wasn’t present to hear the word spoken.

“A nigger stopped in yesterday afternoon,” my old man would say (or something like it), “and wanted to buy a copy of the New York Times. They were all gone by that time of the day – like they always are – and he looked so damned disappointed. Imagine! The New York Times.”

My old man had words for all kinds of people – wops, kikes and spics. He never seemed to use the word pejoratively, you know. It was just the way he was brought up talking. I remember occasionally seeing a bit of a flinch in the eyes of some of the people to whom he was speaking when he used this terminology.

Yet, even then – at ten or eleven years old – I knew there was something wrong with the words and that it just wasn’t right or proper to use them. I wished quietly that my old man wouldn’t let them slip off his tongue so easily. I remember my brother angrily chasing a guy down who had called his friend, Oliver Brown, a nigger – and with a really bad intonation on the word. My brother caught the guy and gave him a number of painful raps and smacks.

When I’d grown a bit, at the age of 23, I was sitting in a colored waiting-room at a railroad station in Mississippi. A white sheriff’s deputy came into the room and looked at me and the three other white gentlemen with whom I traveled.

“You don’t belong in here,” the deputy said and I could hear the exclamation point in his voice! “This here room is for our niggers.”

Now, there is was and it was used differently than I’d ever heard it – with that possessive article attached to it – our niggers. Frankly, that made it sound far meaner and uglier than I’d ever heard the word. It shook me to my core that day and I remember trembling as I looked over at the angry and red-faced deputy. He grew angrier when the kind and brilliant older man with whom I was traveling told him that we had no intentions or desire to leave the waiting room – that “we prefer it here to the waiting room for white folks.”

It was as if one of us had spat upon him. He was shocked at our lack of decorum and manners – at our total disrespect for the customs of his community. He told us we were entering upon dangerous territory and we were doing so with a terrible attitude. Why, I got the idea that he was regarding us as the least mannerly people he had ever met. Yankees!

He threw a warning out to us – one to which we should give serious consideration.

It was then – at that moment – that I first heard of the disappearance of James Chaney and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.

“You don’t want to end up like those boys, you know – those civil rights workers what apparently disappeared in the dark of the night last evening. Why, they’ve sent us alerts about them bein’ gone – missin’ – and it don’t sound right good about them. If I was you fellas, I’d not only get out of this waitin’ room but I’d go in there to the station master and buy yourselves tickets for the next train travelin’ north through here. Our niggers don’t need your help. They’re doin’ just fine here on their very ownselves.”

It was nearly fifty years ago that I stood there, in that waiting-room, trembling, so I don’t know the exact way he warned us – word for word; but I do remember it was a very close to the way I’ve described it above.

It was the Philadelphia Phillies (baseball) manager, Ben Chapman (played quite well by Alan Tudyk) who delivers the shocking and hateful attack on Jackie Robinson that was depicted in the marvelous movie we’re talking about here.

Freedom of speech? Well yes and no! The Supreme Court explained that we really couldn’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater when there was no fire.

Yet, my friend had to sit there, next to her African-American companion, and hear it shouted at her (as well as at Jackie Robinson) over and over and over again.

For you baseball buffs, remember that it would be ten more years after that day playing the Phillies before the team that played in the City of Brotherly Love would put a black man on its roster – 1957. And, by that time, Jackie Robinson would already have retired from the game.

Ben Chapman wore on Jackie Robinson that day in Brooklyn; and the pain he inflicted by shouting the word out, over and over again, was worse than a physical beating. He wasn’t screaming out the N word. My lordsy, no! He was shouting out nigger, nigger, nigger!

Of course, the word ought to disappear from our vocabulary, but we must never let it disappear from history; for it is a reminder of the fear, the hatred and the meanness that can lurk in each one of us.

It is a word that negates personhood and personalness. It objectifies and depersonalizes! It defines one as an object that can be possessed, abused and misused at one’s pleasure. It is one of the cruelest, vilest words ever spoken in America and it shall forever be a part of our history.

I remember sitting in the theater that afternoon, watching the extraordinary film, when Tudyk began shouting the word out. Again and again he intoned it with such vile hatred and dislike. It made me so edgy that I wanted to mute the theater’s sound system.

As a boy, I regarded Jackie Robinson as one of my heroes. My dad and my grandpa took me to the remarkable old ball park in Brooklyn to see him play. He’d been playing a few years when I first saw him and, by that time, he’d become a hero in the eyes of all kids in general (white or black) and he was regarded as a man of extreme stature and talent. And, he was his own man. He belonged to no one. He had bright sparkling eyes and a chin that he proudly held high.

And you could call him anything you wanted cause it wouldn’t matter; for whatever you called him, he and we kids who loved him knew he was just good-old Jackie. He had done something no other ballplayer in history had. He faced down hatred, bigotry and racism and kicked them in the ass.

My favorite scene in the movie (and I don’t have any idea if it is fact or fiction) took place in Cincinnati and shows Pee Wee Reese, the Dodger shortstop and local hero, walking all the way over to first base to stand with Jackie when the Cincinnati fans had begun to boo and scream at Major League Baseball’s first black player. Peewee put his arm around Robinson and just stood there until the fans began to quiet down. Before going back to his position, he turned to Jackie and said: “I think all of us on the team ought to wear number 42 and then they wouldn’t know which one of us was you.” It was an extraordinary comment and it left me thinking.

Now, on one day each year, every Major League player in baseball wears number 42 in honor of the game’s first black big league player. There were so many black men before Jackie who should have been allowed to play because they were clearly good enough. It will forever be one of the great, shameful facts that the sport must carry upon its shoulder.

When you hear someone talking about the N word, let the real word reverberate inside you, so you can feel and sense and taste its awfulness – so that you can fully understand how awful and negative and hurtful the word was and is.

The news in the last few days about Riley Cooper’s drunken expressions at a Kenny Chesney concert is a good example of how the world is changing and how the N word has become one of the most embarrassing and shocking expletives that can come out of the human mouth when used as a pejorative. Cooper, himself a modest celebrity as a wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles football team, got far too intoxicated at the concert and began a boastful rag that was caught by someone’s ever present cell phone video recorder. Cooper embarrassed himself and his employer and now must suffer the consequences as he tries to rebuild his relationship with his football team, which includes many black players.

Yet,
I’m pleased when I hear black folks use the word among themselves. It’s a grand and pleasing term when used properly and positively by them. Few whites have earned the right to use the word in such a way, but African Americans can use it in a distinctly different and friendly manner among themselves. Their usage of the word actually mocks the term’s terrible history, by rendering it incredibly endearing and flattering.

It was good thing that four white guys sat around trying to understand the power of the N word and its history. The movie about Jackie Robinson was a perfect sub-topic for the conversation.

I told my friends how shocked I was to be sitting at a dinner-dance at my high school reunion, only a few days before, when from across the table I heard one of my classmates use this awful word in reference to our President. Using the word in such a way went beyond political disagreement or difference. It showed incredibly bad taste and it smacked of hatred of more than just the President, but of a race of a people who are good and loyal Americans. I felt more than embarrassment. A momentary sickness swept over me and I suggested to my wife that I had to leave. She calmed me and I remained, but I withdrew as a conversationalist for the rest of the evening – far too shaken to make any contributions.

Barack Obama’s presidency shows we’ve come a long, long way in dealing with racism in this nation; however, incidents like the one involving the Philadelphia Eagle’s football player and the comment at my evening dinner party show that that we have a long, long way yet to go.

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Jackie Robinson and the Georgia town that forgot him!

Jackie Robinson was born in the little Georgia town of Cairo, but you’d barely know it.
by Charlie Leck

Calling all who can remember the great Jackie Robinson
Yes, this is a call to arms! You’ll probably need to be 65 years of age or more, but I’m still calling you to rise up and proclaim your memories of Jackie Robinson and wonder with my why the small town in which he was born hasn’t paid him the kind of honors it should. Then, let’s join together to call on Cairo to create some kind of major institution in its town to rightfully honor this historic member of the Major League baseball fraternity.

What’s behind all of this? Well here’s what happened on a visit I paid to the little town in Georgia last year!

Let me pin-point Cairo on a map for you! It’s very nearby Thomasville, Georgia, which, in turn, is very nearby Tallahassee, Florida. Cairo is less than forty miles almost due north of Tallahassee (about 20 miles north of Florida’s northern border). It’s nice country and it has beautiful roads that virtually glide through the beautiful Georgia pines, inviting you to push your car quite handily along.

Last March, I was due to visit a friend in Thomasville – an old (if I may use the word about a lady) high school friend. I was running earlier for my appointed time of arrival, so, knowing that a boyhood hero of mine, Jackie Robinson, was from nearby Cairo, I thought I’d take a drive to find, perhaps, the Jackie Robinson Museum or the Jackie Robinson Community Center, or the Jackie Robinson Sports Center. Certainly, I’d find the Jackie Robinson Memorabilia and Gift Shop.

No such luck. I found none of the above! I drove slowly around the community, up and down the little streets and avenues. Main Street was not named after Jackie. Neither was the local high school. The community center bore some insignificant name. I did find a small sign on the high school baseball field, proclaiming it to be Jackie Robinson Field. I’ve only recently found out there is also a small bronze marker behind home plate on that field that outlines Jackie’s illustrious baseball career.

After driving around quite awhile, I headed out on a road that was called, on one sign I saw, Jackie Robinson Memorial Highway. Out there I found a small piece of property where a bronze highway marker proclaims the site to be the birthplace of Jackie Robinson. A chimney still stood there. It was all that remains of the little house where Jackie was born.

Well, here’s what I thought as I climbed back in my car and drove over toward my friend’s house in Thomasville: “What a bunch of dumb bunnies they must have in this town! No Jackie Robinson museum? No Jackie Robinson center? No Jackie Robinson gift store?”

Over lunch that day, in Cairo, I told my friend how disappointed I was and how I thought the little town was missing out on the wonderful possibility of honoring Jackie and bringing lots of visitors to Cairo. They certainly ought to appeal to Major League Baseball to help them open up a Jackie Robinson Center there in their small town.

Well, what do you know?
Just a few days ago, a little note and a newspaper clipping came from my Thomasville friend. “Spotted this,” she wrote, “as I was skimming through the local Cairo paper the other day. Thought you might be interested to know that maybe someone will honor our local hero!!”

The news story was headlined: “Dr. Walden honored for service!”

I read about a local, Cairo doctor who received the 2012 community service award from the Georgia Academy of Family Physicians.” What the story also told me was that this doctor was also a die-hard Jackie Robinson fan. Her name is Linda I. Walden, MD, and she wonders, too, why Cairo has so little honored good-old Jackie. Hooray!

I also found a 2011 story about Doctor Walden in the Jacksonville Times. It points out that she is responsible for most of the historic indicators that stand today, pointing out that Cairo is the home of Jackie Robinson – the marker out at his birth site, the highway named after him and the sign at the high school baseball field. The doctor wants more. Over the years she’s faced plenty of opposition to her efforts and she hasn’t been afraid to label a lot of it what it was – racism! If Jackie Robinson had been a white man there would be no stopping the announcement of it in a town like this. Robinson may be one of the dozen most prominent names in Major League baseball history, for heaven’s sake! The doctor talks of personal threats on her. She’s certain that they were racially oriented.

The doctor has suggested the town put up statue honoring the great ballplayer in front of the county courthouse or the downtown library. The same commission that turned that idea down later approved a memorial for the Sons of the Confederacy.

Doctor Walden argues that the town and county would get an economic boost if it were better known as Robinson’s hometown.

Robinson did return to Cairo in 1949. He brought teammates Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe with him and they participated in a parade. The newspaper adds that the event was mostly attended by blacks.

The doctor is a third cousin of Jackie Robinson and it’s a mission for her to keep the memory of Jackie and all his wonderful accomplishment alive in the history of Cairo. She wants him to be known as more than a great ballplayer. She thinks Jackie was also a civil rights hero. He had to endure a lot as the first black player in a white man’s game. People threatened to boycott the game. The famous owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers stood tall and said: “Let ‘em boycott!” Jackie’s life was threatened many times. And when he finished playing the game, he still stood tall for civil rights and his willingness to stand up for the rights of black people was important because of the power his name carried.

Doctor Walden reminds us that Robinson, a commissioned Army officer was discharged from the service for once refusing to move to the back of a bus – and that was two decades before Rosa Parks took her famous seat on the front of the bus and refused to move. When he retired from baseball, he became as special assistant to New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Jackie also opened and managed the first black owned bank in the United States.

For the record, Jackie Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, to sharecroppers on a plantation in Cairo. His grandparents were former slaves.

Well, I sat right down and penned a note to Doctor Walden. “Hey doc,” I said, “I agree with you and let’s get something going!” Or, at least, I wrote something to that effect. If I get a reply, I'll tell you about it.

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Desegregating the Minnesota Twins (1964)

Kwame McDonald died last week and I have respectful, kind memories of him!
by Charlie Leck

“If you love yourself, you will never let you down!”

Kwame McDonald thought you had to have self-love and self-confidence. “If you love yourself,” he said, “you will never let you down.” He tried to teach this to children who had every reason to lack self-confidence.

Mr. McDonald died last week at the age of 80. I met the man only briefly in 1964, but I have read plenty about him and I heard him chattering about sports and kids in sports a number of times on the radio. I grew to like him and looked forward to the day when, perhaps, I’d get to spend some time with him and talk about some of the things we had in common. It never happened. I just didn’t try hard enough to make it happen. So, it was my own damned fault.

Here’s where I’ll begin in telling you about Mr. McDonald. When the Minnesota Twins came into existence up here – moving from Washington, D.C. and changing their name from the Washington Senators – Mr. McDonald worked for the Urban League here in Minnesota. He also dabbled in writing about sports for the local newspaper that served mainly the black, minority community. He heard the Twins kept segregated housing facilities for their players at the spring training facility in Florida. It didn’t sit well with him and he didn’t think it was right morally or even as a “team-building” strategy. So, in 1963, he led a small campaign to convince the team to change its policy. After several years of dragging their feet, the Twins ownership and management staff, including their Travel Secretary, with whom I was well acquainted, didn’t hesitate after the Urban League and the NAACP got involved. They saw the sense that Mr. McDonald was making and the change came swiftly and completely after that.

That year – 1964 – was the same year that I went down to Mississippi to make a contribution, as a civil rights worker – to the Mississippi Voter Registration Project. So, I felt a kinship with Mr. McDonald when I read about him in the newspaper. In the autumn of ’64 he was invited to lecture at the graduate school I attended. The entire school gathered to hear him. He didn’t want to talk about the small movement he led to integrate all of the Twins’ facilities. He wanted to talk to us about our own attitudes and how strong we needed to be on matters of racial justice. He always pointed to the children and he pleaded that they needed a break. They needed to grow up in a world of justice and equality. Kwame McDonald loved children.

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Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball in 1946, but life wasn’t easy for him. It took some years before white players would treat him with respect. There were always nagging problems for him at hotels and restaurants during spring training in Florida and when the team was on the road during the season. Jackie Robinson was an extraordinary ball player, but he had to be tough in ways that white players didn’t and he put up with insults and general injustices and always seemed to keep smiling.

This past spring, I visited a high school classmate of mine who lives down in southern Georgia. She had a big surprise for me. Knowing how much baseball is a part of my soul, she took me out for a little drive to the little town of Cairo. On a quiet, country road, she stopped the car in front of a small piece of property where there stood a lonely chimney and, on a pole, some sort of notification sign.

“Come on,” she said, “this will interest you.”

I climbed from the car and up the little bank that led up to the property. I turned and looked at the sign. “Birthplace of Jackie Robinson, the first African-American in Major League Baseball.”

It did affect me. A tear swelled up in my eye and a lump grew in my throat. How I remember the blurring speed of Jackie Robinson as he tore around first place and headed for second after stroking a line drive into one of the outfield gaps. I hated the Brooklyn Dodgers just as my old man did, but I loved Jackie Robinson and my heart was always pulling for him and cheering for him in every Dodger game I saw.

Back in the early 60s, the Minnesota Twins had to lease a ball field for their spring training facility from the city of Orlando and then they had to find housing accommodations for all the players they brought to camp. The team leased the Cherry Plaza Hotel. The hotel held firm to their segregationist policy (common all over the southeast) and wouldn’t let black players stay in the hotel. The Twins had a couple of really talented black players and they had to find separate accommodations for them because their hotel wouldn’t take “any Negroes.” The black players had to accept clearly inferior housing conditions. Hank Aaron, who played for the Milwaukee Braves back then, was one of the most outspoken about the unequal treatment of black players.

It appears that the management of the teams that trained in Florida were working hard to cure the problem. Major League baseball was threatening to move all of their teams out of Florida to facilities in the southwest. By 1962, most of the teams had solved their problems with the hotels and boarding houses they used to house players. Sadly, the Minnesota Twins were the last team to solve this housing problem. A law suit was brought against them in 1962; yet it took two more years before the problem was solved.

Walter Mondale was the Minnesota Attorney General back in those days and he was very involved in the issue, as were two Minnesota Governors – Karl Rolvaag and Elmer Anderson. Calvin Griffith was the owner of the ball team back and he was a stubborn cuss.

Governor Anderson showed signs of anger in his correspondence with the Twins’ owner. Mr. Griffith argued for time because he was negotiating with the city of Orlando about building a new grandstand at the Tinker Field ball park. Anderson told Griffith that the time for waiting was over and that the matter was an embarrassment for Minnesota.

The Governor traveled to Florida and booked a room in the Cherry Plaza Hotel. The hotel was unyielding and made it clear to Governor Anderson that it would not bend its policies. Anderson kept nagging both the hotel and the management of the Twins’ organization for a change in the spring housing policy. He grew frustrated that he was getting nowhere.

The State Commission Against Discrimination (SCAD) came to the Governor’s assistance. SCAD was made up of nine commissioners who were all appointed by the Governor. SCAD’s role in life was “to secure compliance with the Minnesota State Act Against Discrimination, which makes it an unlawful act to discriminate against a person in his quest for employment or housing because of his race, creed, color, religion or national origin.”

SCAD brought a suit in the case on behalf of one of the Twins’ players, catcher Earl Battey. Because it required action in a different state (Florida) it got nowhere. SCAD then filed a direct suit against the Minnesota Twins and its ownership. The legal action particularly singled out the organization’s travel secretary, Howard Fox, for not doing enough about the matter. Years later I would get to know Howard Fox well. He became a good friend and frequent golfing partner, but I could imagine him dragging his feet on this issue. Howard died last year.

More and more newspaper stories appeared about the Twins’ stubbornness. Fox and Griffith were on a hot seat and it was getting hotter. Early in 1963 the newspapers learned that the Twins had signed another lease with the Cherry Plaza Hotel. The hotel would not yield to pressure from either the Minnesota Governor’s office (now under Governor Karl Rolvaag) or to the Minnesota press. 1963 would see no changes in the housing question for the Twins. The team was the last in baseball to have segregated housing for its players during spring training.

The issue dragged on and anger started to brew. Earl Battey publically stated that the issue was affecting team morale. Something had to be done. Angrily, the Minnesota Chapter of the NAACP announced it was getting involved. They announced they would picket the Twin’s opening game at Metropolitan Stadium in 1963. This pressure started to have an impact on the owner of the team, if only getting him really boiled into a red hot anger. He tried to take action to stop the demonstration.

Constant pressure on Griffith and Fox from civil rights organizations, the Governor’s office, the Attorney General’s office and, unceasingly, from SCAD, caused the Twins to finally wake up. For the spring of 1964 they signed a contract with the Downtowner Motel in Orlando and abandoned the Cherry Plaza Hotel. Segregated housing was finally over!

Kwame McDonald talked to us in 1964 about the Twins and the battle it took to get the organization’s ownership to do the right thing. He was very involved in setting up the public demonstrations that finally pushed Calvin Griffith to do what he had to do to end his own policy of racial injustice. It was almost 20 years after Jackie Robinson had “broken the color barrier” in Major League baseball. Mr. Griffith was a selfish, stubborn and foolish man. He proved it over and over again during his period of ownership. He fought off state agencies, bad press and powerful state officials, but Kwame McDonald and the NAACP brought Griffith to heal.

I kept my ears open about Kwame McDonald over the years. He settled into covering sports. He sometimes was interviewed on some of the radio sports talk shows.

When I read the obituaries about him, I was reminded of his strength and resolve. Now I learned something new.

Kids loved him. He gave nearly all his time to encouraging children to have confidence in themselves and to learn and to get what they deserved out of life. He went into the schools and kids gravitated to him as if he was a magnet. He talked to them and tried to encourage them to work hard and to learn – and to love themselves!

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