There are many paths leading to Sunday’s Civil Rights game at Turner Field.
James “Red” Moore’s path started in the streets of Northwest Atlanta, before taking him to the Atlanta Black Crackers, the city’s Negro Leagues team, to Yankee Stadium and finally to this weekend’s game between the Braves and Phillies.
Greg White’s path started with a Topps baseball card and continued in libraries in Durham, N.C., before taking him to a meeting at Browns Mill Park near Lithonia and finally to this weekend’s events, which will honor the pioneers who helped fight for equality.
Moore, 94, will be one of the honorees before Saturday’s game. He is, as White says, walking history, someone who experienced one of the worst chapters in this country’s history, but isn’t bitter about the chances denied to him.
The beginning
Moore reaches out his hand. It is huge, so large it’s amazing that he ever needed a glove.
His brushed-back hair is white with streaks of dark gray. His toothy smile is wide and sincere as his wife, Mary, moves around the house, dropping funny one-liners about Moore’s past and present. His voice is soft as he closes his eyes from time to time, searching for details to questions and leads dropped by the Whites about his past.
Then he opens them. They sparkle as he tells his story in a tone one uses when talking about things they love.
Moore grew up in the Bush Mountain area of Oakland City in Atlanta, near Booker T. Washington High School.
He loved baseball, playing it in the streets and open areas near his home. The bounces on those “fields” weren’t always true, which is how he developed fielding abilities so complete that the legendary Buck O’Neil said Moore could “pick it.” He practiced trick plays, catching balls behind his back and between his legs that he would later use to entertain crowds before games.
His first glove was one used by a right-hander that Moore, a lefty, turned inside out and somehow rigged to fit over his thick, strong right hand.
He started with Chattanooga before quickly joining the Black Crackers in 1935. He played so well that he was able to play for Newark’s “million-dollar infield” in 1936 and ’37, where he tried to get a hit off Pittsburgh’s Satchel Paige, laughing as he tells the tale of being told by catcher Josh Gibson not to dig in against the great Paige unless he wanted to be plunked.
“The best I ever tried to hit,” he said. “He had some steam on it.”
The hard times
Moore seems to love baseball so much that it takes some prodding to get him to remember the hard times, before the civil-rights movement began to change the country.
He remembers being denied use of restrooms at stadiums. He remembers having to wear the same uniform in doubleheaders and even tripleheaders because no one would give them a place to change. He lived with “Whites Only” and “Colored Only” signs.
One memory in particular stands out. It represents why this weekend is important.
The Black Crackers traveled to Mississippi to play and they were playing well, too well actually.
The sheriff, a white man, told the Crackers that if they beat the team, a black team, one more time he had better not catch any of them in the city.
Everyone on the Black Crackers knew what that meant, but they couldn’t just quit. So they started making errors, lots of errors. The umpire implored the infielders to let the balls keep rolling. Even Moore let a few roll under his glove so that the Black Crackers could play another day.
It wasn’t a common occurrence, but it wasn’t uncommon, either. It was the United States before the civil-rights movement and before Jackie Robinson became the first African-American since the late 1800s to play in Major League Baseball when he joined the Dodgers in 1947.
Moore doesn’t regret not getting a chance like Robinson. A contact hitter who liked fastballs, he felt he could have held his own against the white players.
“We were born a little bit too early,” he said, laughing.
Moore is living history, with a head full of memories and a house full of mementos representing his life and the importance of baseball in the civil-rights movement. He wants to make sure that both are remembered. “It let us know we had a place in society,” he said.
The search
White was born in 1961, 14 years after Robinson made history. By then, there were many blacks in the majors.
White’s mother managed library branches in Durham. He grew up reading Sports Illustrated and lots of sports books.
While reading some baseball cards in 1975, one of the players, he can’t remember which one, mentioned Paige and the Negro Leagues.
Negro Leagues. What was that? Despite the vast resources of books, he couldn’t find anything.
White grew up and moved to Atlanta to work for the City of Decatur. He was attending an opening day for Little League baseball at Browns Mill Park in 1992. There stood Moore. White couldn’t believe it. They began talking. Moore began sharing his story. Hitting an inside-the-park home run at Yankee Stadium, rejoining the Black Crackers in 1938 and helping them win the second-half pennant, story after story were shared.
A friendship was born. White began doing more than listening. He began to document and do more research. He started a website to keep Moore’s memory alive, jamesredmoore.com. White has lost count of the number of times he has visited the Moores at their home. He calls Mary, “Mom.” He has dozens of articles and photos from his adventures with the Moores at ceremonies honoring Negro Leagues players that have been held all over the country.
It’s part of his mission to keep the history alive. This is about more than baseball for him. This is about baseball’s role in his heritage, which is why he will join Moore on Saturday.
“It represents what the civil-rights path was all about,” White said. “The sacrifices, what society said about the players, especially on the field. ... They were determined to still enjoy the game and overcome that. That’s part of what civil rights was about: To not be quitters. Mr. Moore is a great example of a fighter.”
