Broadcast: June 30, 2024 at 4:00 p.m.
Episode #2, from the four-part series: "The Road to Rickwood"
Listen to this episode: Click here
The 1940s are the heyday for Black baseball in Alabama, the peak of the Negro Leagues – starring a high schooler named Willie Mays. But when the Major Leagues integrate, Black teams everywhere start to fold.
On this episode, host Roy Wood Jr. speaks with surviving players from the Birmingham Black Barons about the soaring highs and painful lows of Negro League baseball in Alabama. Roy also explores the struggle for equality and human rights in Birmingham that served as the backdrop of this era. We see how these communities and stories overlap, and how the effort to uphold segregation leads to the temporary end of professional baseball in Birmingham.
This episode was written and produced by Jonah Buchanan and hosted by Roy Wood Jr.
In "The Road to Rickwood", host Roy Wood Jr. speaks with historians, civic leaders, former Negro League players and more, to learn how Birmingham’s civil rights story played out at America’s oldest ballpark.