This is an opinion column.

Condoleeza Rice once played at Rickwood Field. More specifically, she played the glockenspiel.

“I was, like, seven,” Rice is remembering, “and it was as big as I was.”

The rail-thin second grader was performing with the school band at the famed ballpark on Thanksgiving Day at halftime of a football game between two Black high schools.

“When I was a kid, they weren’t playing baseball there,” Rice says.

Birmingham’s Black high schools at that time played football games at Rickwood, the iron-and-steel forged baseball cathedral in the city’s West End neighborhood; white high schools played at Legion Field not too far away. Not geographically, at least.

Such were the realities of the era when racial segregation in the South was as thick and pervasive as summer heat, an undeniable thread in the complex tapestry of our past—including the “wonderful history”, Rice says, of Rickwood Field.

“It’s just wonderful to see it being recognized,” she adds.

Next week, the spruced-up 104-year-old ballpark hosts a long-awaited Major League Baseball game between the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals at Rickwood, an encounter touted by MLB as a salute to the Negro Leagues. An opportunity to honor the men (and four women) who played in leagues necessitated by segregation yet were as major as those where the ball and all else were white.

The Titusville native, former Secretary of State, long-time avid and learned sports fan isn’t able to return to her hometown for the event. Yet, she sees it as another opportunity to recognize the city’s past and begin restoring what’s been lost in West End and other nearby neighborhoods.

“I hope it really brings back some pride about how the west side weathered a lot of storms and still is there and people are still there working hard,” she is saying over a Zoom call this week. “I hope it gives the rest of Birmingham a chance to come over to the west side and see what needs to be done.

“I also hope that kids who might not even remember that there was a Negro League, let alone a Rickwood Field and the Birmingham Black Barons, that they’ll have a chance to see that history,” she adds. and I just think it’s going to be nice to have the country focused on Birmingham in this positive way.”

Rice, like a lot of locals, has a Willie Mays story. Her mother taught the future Hall of Famer at Fairfield Industrial High School. During a recent panel discussion at the Giants’ Oracle Park on African American Heritage Night (Negro Leagues Baseball Museum President Bob Kendrick, former Giants outfielder Randy Winn and Steph Curry also participated), Rice shared this:

“I asked Willie at one point, ‘Do you remember my mother, her name would have been Miss Ray?’ ” He said, ‘Oh, I remember Miss Ray.’ She said, ‘Son, you’re going to be a ballplayer. If you need to get out of here a little early, you go.’ And I thought, ‘That doesn’t sound exactly like my mother.’”

On our call, Rice added, “If that’s the way he remembers my mom, that’s great, but he did say she also really encouraged him to graduate. I think that sounds like her because she really cared about her students. So that was a nice, nice touch.”

Mays graduated from Fairfield Industrial in 1950.

Rice’s immediate family moved to Denver, Colorado when she was 12 but many of her relatives remain in Birmingham, so she visits regularly, usually for holidays, especially Christmas. She remains ingrained in the state, too, as a supporter of Innovate Alabama, which emerged from her appointment to the Alabama Innovation Commission by Gov. Kay Ivey in 2020. Stanford University’s Hoover Institute scholars helped create the Hoover-Alabama Initiative report outlining “pragmatic, actionable policy recommendations to guide Alabama’s leaders as they work to realize their state’s full economic potential.”

She also keeps Birmingham in her sights, through alliances with the Boys & Girls Club and the Woodlawn community on the city’s east side.

“I have lots of friends in Birmingham, so I’m quite aware of what’s going on there, the effort to bring more technologically forward-facing companies to the city,” she says. “I know about the startups—Shipt and others—that have come out of Birmingham. I know the James Beard award-winning restaurants, which I visit when I come to Birmingham.

“Birmingham is really a kind of hidden secret,” she continues. “It’s a wonderful place for families to live. The cost of living is not that low, but it’s better than California. I also know there’s hard work to do so that it isn’t two Birminghams—the Birmingham of good schools in certain communities. Birmingham looks like that nowadays, like a lot of big cities, so there’s a lot of work to do.

“I feel it’s a good community that has a really good sense of its future. Now the question is to be able to bring all Birminghamians together they can share that experience.”

Unlike the era when that slim second grader played the glockenspiel on sacred—though segregated—ground.

Roy S. Johnson is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame, Edward R. Murrow Award winner, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary. My column appears on AL.com, as well as the Lede. Tell him what you think at [email protected], and follow him at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj.