On Thursday when the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants play at Rickwood Field, sounds of curve balls hitting bats and a roaring crowd may bring back fond memories to some Birmingham residents.

For decades, baseball was a neighborhood sport for children and adults, Black and white alike. And for decades, Rickwood hosted legendary Black and white baseball players – but Black players and fans were treated like second-class citizens.

Those memories are bitter for some local civil rights activists and foot soldiers, who fought to tear down the segregation that crowded them into one corner of the park.

John Alexander grew up on the west side of Birmingham, near Rickwood Field. He remembers setting up a folding chair in a friend’s backyard so he could listen to broadcasts of the game.

“We couldn’t go to Rickwood on the days when we wanted to go, but we did get a chance to experience it,” he said.

The game at Rickwood, the oldest professional baseball stadium in the United States, will be the first in-season Major League Baseball game to be played in Alabama, although MLB recently integrated Negro League games into its history. It is billed as a tribute to the Negro Leagues. While the city’s civil rights community continues seeking recognition in their fight for equality, other activists hope the Rickwood game will inspire a new legacy for the field.

“Of course there is room for improvement,” Takia Hudson, a social justice activist, said. “But I see unity in our communities because of sports. As they honor the Negro League, they honor humanity…The purpose of the game is to show the advancements that we as human beings have made. We also embrace the hardship that was required for this to be accomplished.”

The city’s response

“Since it was announced that the MLB would be coming to Birmingham, the Negro Southern League Museum has received an unprecedented amount of interest from national media, documentarians and visitors who all want to know more about these men and women and their contribution to baseball. This has regenerated newfound interest in the League and breathed new life into their stories,” Marie Sutton, the City of Birmingham public information officer said.

“The City of Birmingham’s celebration of these individuals is year-round. Each year, the Negro Southern League Museum hosts an annual luncheon in their honor, celebrates a community-wide Jackie Robinson Day and many other activities to highlight the contributions of these athletes who broke records in baseball and in the civil rights movement.”

The Negro Southern League Museum partners with the city of Birmingham to bring the stories of the Negro League to Birmingham residents.

“I don’t know that we’ve had much conversation with civil rights communities, I think in the future we’d like to include as much of the community in these conversations as possible,” Anthony Williams, interim director of the Negro Southern League Museum, said.

Williams said that while the museum features a tribute to Rickwood Field, including a home base and uniform from the field’s early days, he hopes to work with the civil rights community to include stories of activists and how baseball played a role in social justice movement.

“The museum’s role is important as far as when all of this is over, people will still have a place to come and learn about all the things that have been the focus of national attention in these recent days,” Williams said. “From history we can carve out a new path that is unifying and that includes each citizen equally. I think the city’s investment in this museum and in Rickwood is a way of reclaiming the story of Birmingham.”

Major League Baseball representatives said the game is an investment in local community as A.G. Gaston Construction, a local Black owned company, is the primary contractor for the field’s $5 million refurbishment; more than 200 part-time employment opportunities for all Rickwood events were given to local residents; and a financial program to support Negro Leagues players was expanded.

Community members are highlighting the efforts of civil rights activists in the lead-up to the game. Efforts include a podcast hosted by Roy Wood Jr. featuring Negro League veterans and the legacy of Black baseball on the city’s social justice movement; the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute displaying a 24-foot Willie Mays baseball card outside the museum; and a Negro Leagues Family Alliance Bruncheon and Reception hosted at the Negro Southern League Museum.

Activists say it’s important for Major League Baseball, and fans watching the June 20 game, to recognize the work it took to get to this moment.

Memories of Rickwood Field: ‘The good, the bad and the ugly’

For decades, baseball weaved its way into every aspect of Birmingham city life. It was a part of children’s dreams, Birmingham’s path to industrialization and even local civil rights history.

And Rickwood was the center of that history.

William Merriweather III, a 72-year-old foot soldier in the civil rights movement, said his first experience at a game at Rickwood, 60 years ago, kept him from ever wanting to return.

“We had a hard time trying to go to the baseball game because it was really for whites. Being a child, you asked your daddy, ‘Can we go to a baseball game,’ and daddy would say, ‘There might be repercussions because of the color of your skin,’” Merriweather said.

When his father finally gave in and took his family out to a Rickwood game, Merriweather said he remembers being questioned by white patrons and having to sit in the Blacks-only section of the stadium. Rickwood desegregated in 1964.

“I always wanted to go see Willie Mays and the Black Barons but couldn’t because of the color of my skin,” Merriweather said. “It didn’t sit right with me as a child.”

Merriweather said he hopes the city can right these wrongs by giving free Rickwood tickets to local community members and foot soldiers.

Terry Collins, another foot soldier, said baseball was all around him when he was growing up.

At the time, the Birmingham Housing Authority created baseball teams for every neighborhood, for all ages.

As a child, Collins looked up to Willie Young, a one-handed American Negro League pitcher for the Birmingham Black Barons. Collins also remembers his father selling bags of peanuts to raise money for a youth baseball team.

“Rickwood Field played a major role in African American baseball,” Collins said. “Baseball was a major component in the Black community.”

Collins said he wished the city had done more to include the civil rights community, foot soldiers and activists, to highlight the efforts to bring the historic game to a place so tied to the human rights movement.

“The importance of baseball, the significance of it, is changed because of integration,” Collins said.

For John Alexander and his friends, learning about the success of the Black Barons inspired them despite the discrimination they knew the players faced.

“Baseball was a way out for our Black youth,” Alexander said.

At 18, Alexander began coaching youth baseball teams with the Birmingham Housing Authority, which he did for more than 20 years. Alexander said some of his teachers even played for the Black Barons, including Freddy Shepard and Wiley Griggs.

Birmingham has had ample opportunities to invest in youth sports, such as the plan for Major League Baseball to build a $10 million baseball facility that was abandoned because of “Birmingham politics,” various foot soldiers said.

Alexander said he wishes the city would invest more money and effort into youth sports like it once had.

“They always said baseball was a white man’s game, but that just wasn’t so because we had baseball when we didn’t have anything else,” Alexander said.

The activist Takia Hudson grew up two blocks away from Rickwood Field. The last baseball game Hudson ever played was at Rickwood, as a pitcher for Jackson-Olin High School.

His aunt worked at Rickwood and caught the foul balls to give to her nephew. He remembers how his mother used to sneak the neighborhood kids in through the back gate at Rickwood.

“Those are the sorts of things that made Rickwood what it was, the good, the bad and the ugly,” Hudson said.

“It takes us back down memory lane for the community that embraced baseball,” Hudson said. “For MLB to come, it’s just another level of excitement because that’s the best of the best of baseball around the world in our neighborhood. It lets us know that the efforts of the foot soldiers and the efforts of civil rights leaders have not been totally in vain.”