Baseball legend Reggie Jackson on the racism he faced in Alabama

Major League Baseball legend and National Baseball Hall of Fame member Reggie Jackson openly recalled the racism he faced during his time as a player at Alabama, saying, “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

The 78-year-old was one of several black baseball stars at Rickwood Field in Birmingham on Thursday for a Negro League tribute game between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals.

Returning to the field was “not easy,” said Jackson, who recalled being called racist names and denied entry to restaurants and hotels because of the color of his skin.

“I never want to do that again. I would go to restaurants and they would point at me and say n—– can’t eat here,” he explained during Fox Sports pre-match coverage.

“We went to a welcome dinner at (Kansas City A’s owner) Charlie Finley’s country club, and they called me the N-word: ‘He’s not allowed in here.’ Finley marched the whole team out. Finally, they let me in. He said, ‘We’re going to go to the diner and have hamburgers. We’re going where we’re wanted,'” Jackson said.

Luckily, he had the support of his manager and teammates.

“Luckily, I had a manager, Johnny McNamara. If I couldn’t eat somewhere, nobody was eating. We got food for the trip. If I couldn’t stay in a hotel, they would drive to the next hotel and find a place for me to stay,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for Rollie Fingers, Johnny McNamara, Dave Duncan, Joe and Sharon Rudi, I would have slept on their couch three or four nights a week for about a month and a half. Eventually they threatened to burn down our apartment complex if I didn’t get out.”

Jackson began his career in the minor leagues in 1967 with the Birmingham A’s (then the Double-A affiliate of the Kansas City A’s), playing home games at Rickwood Field. He then had a 21-year MLB career with the Kansas City A’s – later renamed the Oakland A’s – and also played with the Baltimore Orioles, New York Yankees and Los Angeles Angels.

But his time in Birmingham was marked by racism and the terror of the Ku Klux Klan.

“The year I came here, Bull Connor was sheriff the year before, and they got minor league baseball out of here because the Klan murdered four black girls in 1963 … in a church here,” Jackson said.

This was the bombing of the Baptist Street Church in Birmingham, in which Klan members detonated a dynamite bomb in a black church. Four girls were killed and over 20 were injured. The FBI described the attack as a “clear act of racist hatred.”

“I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. At the same time, I would never have made it if it weren’t for my white friends, if it weren’t for a white manager, and if it weren’t for Rudi, Fingers, Duncan and Lee Meyers,” Jackson said.

“I was too physically violent. I was ready to fight with someone. I would have been killed here for kicking someone’s ass and I would have been seen in an oak tree somewhere,” he added.

Thursday marked the first Major League Baseball game at the field, once home to the Negro Leagues’ Birmingham Black Barons. Thursday’s game also honored Hall of Famer Willie Mays, who began his career with the Black Barons and died Tuesday at the age of 93.

The game honored 60 Negro Leagues players. According to MLB, it was the largest official gathering of Negro Leagues players in nearly 30 years.