fourth. they signed the same day. they went to the st. louis browns. willard brown was one of them. the other was hank thompson later played with the giants. they signed third and fourth african-american players and willard brown goes out and hits a home run on august 13th against newsome, hits a home run and he becomes the first black player to hit a home run in the major leagues. not jackie, not larry dobie, willard brown. willard brown is coming back to the monarchs and never gets back to the engage leagues. he played minor league baseball and had 400 home runs playing with the negro league teams. i think he had another couple of home runs playing in the minor league ball in the texas league, and he also holds the current record for the most home runs hit in the puerto rican winter league, 27 in the puerto rican winter league. this was a good ball player. they come to town with four

negro leaguers. to show you how much ability was in the negro leagues they lost. they had all those hall of famers and they lost. i might also mention bibs. most african-americans at that time went to black colleges. bibs went to indiana state. he was out of terra haute, indiana. so bibs was there and because of his great play at the college and some of the work that i was able to do to bring recognition to him and people started to pay attention to him, today he's in the indiana sports hall of fame and also the indiana state hall of fame as well. i thought you might want to take at that look at a few of these guys. there's turkey stearns. they called him turkey because of the way he looked when he ran.

back then they used to pick really good nicknames. nowadays if you listen to the games they just shorten up the names. back then they watched the player, watched how far you act. bell, people remember his name, he got his nickname. he becomes cool papa bell. turkey got his name because of the way he ran. there's bell with his son playing for the monarchs. the player in the background has an alphabet not a number. that was one of wilkinson's innovations that did not work. of course, this gentleman here, you probably heard his name, buck o'neal. 1938 he was playing his first season with the kansas city monarchs. another interesting thing about this pitcher, baseball players

go through certain phases. right now in the major leagues we're in the beard phase. a lot of guys have beards, facial hair. this guy had no facial hair. that was the phase that they were in at that particular time, the clean cut kind of look. this is very young buck o'neal, by the way. and the first african-american to come in the major leagues or had been playing with a mustache was satchel paige. you find pitchers of satchel paige you'll find he has a mustache in the 1930s which was kind of rare. once again satchel paige was rare himself. so, you know, in going around and giving talks on the negro leagues and trying to go back to as many cities as i can, and talk about various games and that they played in those cities, you know, occasionally, you know, you hear something that really summarizes the

experience. i was listening to a song. i hard it. that's a great song. you know what? i'm halfway decent poet let me change it. so i kind of adapted it and so i would like to say it four here today and i'll close with that. it goes something like this. my name is bullet rogan. my name is turkey stearns. my name is buck o'neal. but my age is way beyond. i spread my prime in baseball shoes but my sporting days are gone. i'm just one more forgotten face among the black face teams an old dark horse that came the course they called the negro leagues. i worked the fields in tennessee but i dreamed of better days. so i threat plow, the picking bag to join the home stay grace and all summer long we played the states and then headed south for fall through rain and dust we load the bus so we can play baseball. we played philosopher and pride and could have made much more.

the roads where crowds don't roar. the alling night rides with is seedy life i chose but we made do and came through because damn it we were pros. we played in the shadow of babe and lou gehrig and the rest and stood behind the big league fence while they were called the best. we played them well and gave them hell with every hidden pitch and stayed behind that colored line and watch those guys get rich. did they see josh gibson swing or see satchel throw his stuff or you know how bad it feels when your best is not good enough. when clouds roll in across the sky to hide the brightest moon you'll find some stars don't shine some folks were born too soon. god bless you jackie robinson and willie mays and all you wore our numbers on your backs when you played big league ball and every time you hit one out slid or laid one down you carried us from that old bus to the halls of coopers.

town. my name is drake, my name is newt allen, but you won't remember that. i'm just one more along the score who played with ball and bat. but when you seek out heroes and praise the great pastime, remember those old brown face pros, the stars that did not shine. [ applause ] so with that conclusion what i would like to do is open it up for any questions you might have related to the negro leagues and i want to thank everybody for coming, hitting junction city tomorrow and believe it or not sunday i'm in salisbury, missouri. so i'm jumping across the state and just having a ball talking baseball and talking local baseball that doesn't get talked about very much but having fun bringing the history of the kansas city monarchs and the town ball alive again.

>> yes. this has been very interesting. i thank you very much for your presentation. i'm so sorry there aren't more people here to enjoy this and to learn more about the monarchs. i would like to know has there ever been or do you think there ever will be a movie that goes back and delves into the history of the monarchs because they were a great inspiration, a foot hold to all of the black players in the american leagues today, in fact all sports, i think. >> yeah. that's an excellent question. i think, you know, i'm a person who grew up watching baseball movies, and i would say that there's been some attempts to write a few movies. there was one called "the soul of the game" and it wasn't that

great of a movie. even "42," it came out last year, they have one little part in the front that talks about the kansas city monarchs and, you know, you don't see any footage. i think not only the kansas city monarchs, a really good movie could be written about the whole black baseball experience. i think you would need somebody who knew what was going on to write a good movie about it. and i might mention too, when i first started doing research on the negro leagues, going back to the early '80s, i've just seen so many things change. when i first started doing research people said oh, you won't find photographs. and, of course, after i found 600 of them, actually i found close to 1,000, 600 in the book, called the negro baseball league photographic history, people thought you couldn't find

pictures. i killed that myth. i'm also trying to popularize the fact that the monarchs and these teams in the negro leagues played in all these cities. there's so many great stories that could be told. hopefully i would like to see it in my lifetime as well. >> thank you. i had a coach and a teacher when i was in junior high that played early days of pro football. and they got paid, if they got in the game. they had to get themselves to the game and had to buy their uniforms. are you aware of how the players got paid? >> oh, sure. the fortunate thing if you were playing for the kansas city monarchs you were essentially playing for the new york yankees in the negro league. wilkinson always paid his players. now i have run into players over the years who told me that they are still waiting for third check for a game they played in 1928. but that wasn't the case with

wilkinson. and foster as well, kept immaculate records. players made money playing those teams. that's one of the reasons why the monarchs were so successful because they had players, bullet rogan there was from 1920 to 1938 when he retired. newt joseph was there from 1922 to 1937. newt allen was there from 1922 to 1946. the players came and they loved playing for j.l. wilkinson. and they got paid well and so they stayed. they worked for their money but they got paid well and so, but, yeah, these weren't pick up games. if they came to abilene there was a promoter and the promoter knew we would get ex-amount of the gate and i have to pay the monarchs 65% of the gate. it was pretty tough going for some depending on the own but wilkinson paid his players well.

this kind of ties in with that question. when you showed a couple of shots, one of the records where they played it looked like you had maybe eight, maybe nine games in a row where they played days in a row and also you showed the picture of the town team when they are barn storming the town team along with the monarchs and unless i miscounted it looked like ten guys. typically how many traveled on the team and were they that limited on players. >> i know in 1929 they had to cut their roster down and they carried 13 players. so you could play over 100 games with 13 players. you need a guy like bullet rogan who could play the outfield at the same time he could pitch. so he was like two players in one. so they could carry a smaller roster like that and still play. it just depends. sometimes some of the players might not have gotten into the picture but they used to carry about 15 players.

as a matter of fact, that picture was taken right before a fair. i might men's too, when the monarchs were supposed to come here in 1927 some kind of -- it got rained out. i know they played a lot of fairs and events like that which helped to draw people to the fair. a lot of county fairs. >> given the discrimination of the day where they would stay when they would play. would they stay on the bus or could they get accommodation. >> accommodation and eating could be tough. i interviewed one player and asked him what he remembered the best about barn storstorming an you couldn't pull up to a mcdonald's or a restaurant and go in and get your food. they had to go around to the

back of the building to get their food. wilkinson, to his credit, some places wouldn't feed the monarchs so he wouldn't eat there either. so he tried to fight for good treatment for his players. so, it was tough. if they were playing where they could come and play the game and get back to kansas city the same day that's what they did. if they are out and say they are not able to stay there, there were a number of rooming houses -- as a matter of fact there was lady i know she was from south dakota, african-american lady and later moved to kansas city and she said that the only black people that she saw from outside her community were musician, circus people and baseball players because those were the only ones that came in and room with her. she knew lots of circus and musicians and athletes but didn't know anybody else. boardinghouses would take up the slack and some places they would have, you know, some of the larger cities they would have black owned hotels. but out in this part of the

country if they played in, you know, if they played in, say, sioux falls, south dakota or omaha and they could get back the same day they came back the same day. one thing i may mention they played almost every single day. so they were on that bus all the time. one last thing i'll mention there was a lady she was married to a ball player who played for the memphis red sox, his name was larry brown and this was his wife and i interviewed her. she married him and then went with the team on the trip. and she was on the bus with the team and she said we were gone for a month and we stayed in a hotel two times. >> thank you. most of us know that the first black player that went to the major leagues was not 100% chosen on talent alone. in your research, and what you look at, would that same person be chosen by you or would

somebody else have been chosen, just in retrospect? >> here is the reason why i say that. jackie robinson was chosen during world war ii. the best african-american baseball players were in the war. they weren't even here. maybe he was one of the better players. i can't deny one thing. he was an excellent choice when you look back on it. i mean, you couldn't get a better choice. i know he needed someone comfortable with playing with white players. jackie had that. funny thing is, willy brown becomes the third player. he was left the browns and caner came back. his wife said, did he pretty much what he always did.

one of the things, he complained. when he got to the st. louis browns, he complained because he used 40 hours at bat and their players were playing with 32. he said i don't have bats. how do you play with 32-ounce bat sis? that didn't make him too popular. he hit a home run with a 32. the other thing when he got to the hotel, he would go out at night. he liked to take a drink every now and then. his wife said, they are watching you. he couldn't be anybody but himself. even though he was a great ballplayer, he probably wasn't the best pick and the best fit. i could think of some other people -- there were a lot of great young players who ended up coming up later. doby. irvin as a possibility coming up. they wanted older players. there were great older players around. roy campanella who came up with

the dodgers, he would have been an excellent choice. later on he was. i might mention one thing that -- i could probably name a half a dozen who would have been good players who came up later. interesting thing about jackie robinson, the brooklyn dodgers actually stole jackie robinson from the monarchs. they never compensated them. wilkinson who owned the team and a man who had part ownership, they could not say anything, because they would be looked upon as holding the black player back if they were to argue this debate about why didn't you compensate us for this player. this is a business. so they didn't say anything. quiet quietly, they had their own boycott. no kansas city monarch plays for the dodgers again. that's the way they boycotted.

brooklyn dodgers. >> do you have any record of anthony kansas in the monarchs? >> sure. >> my dad played for anthony about 90 years ago. if there's some way you could -- i would appreciate it. it's been a long time since i even knew -- my dad has been gone 50 years. >> i tell you what. they did play anthony kansas. as i was coming down the freeway today, i'm driving past all these places that i know the monarchs appeared. i know they played at fort riley, at junction city, they

were at manhattan, clay center. i can go out west. practically any city that was a city had a baseball team, and they had a kansas league that they would play in. they played all the those cities of not one year, different years. i would do research. i will get your name. i will be happy to supply that information. >> about 1959, satchel spent the summer and pitched for salina blue jays. unfortunately, we still, as a team, suffered under the discrimination scenarios. they didn't spent many nights overnight. but they traveled by bus. of course, after the game liked to eat somewhere. there were many times -- the time i remember was in mcpherson

they told satchel that he would come in the back door. the whole team got up and left. i commend the manager and sponsor for that. i was fortunate enough to be the bat boy. i got to see a lot of satchel and the other players. as late as 1959, the black ballplayers were still suffering under that discrimination. >> that's an incident. i appreciate that comment. i was in nevada last sunday, and there was a ballplayer who played for that team who played against satchel. he was actually on the team with him as well. he mentioned the 1959 as well. he had great stories. satchel page, you know -- let me put it this way. kansas had its own unique form of racism. i know a little bit about boxing. boxing was considered a contact sport.

so until 1938, i think it was 1938 was the first year that they would let black amateur boxers fight white amateur boxers in kansas. they could go in missouri. but kansas black fighters couldn't fight the white fighters in kansas to qualify. they had to fight other black players -- black fighters in kansas. in certain sports, they had high school rules. they considered basketball a contact sport. so many black schools couldn't play against white schools in basketball because those were some of the rules. slowly, those rules have disappeared. but it was pretty tough times. there was a gentleman by the name of -- actually, he has -- there's two players. he has a couple of grandsons. i will recall his name. he played for the colorado springs sky sox. he told me the story of -- his name was sam harriston.

he said he had to go in the back. he would go in the back of the restaurant and where the cooks were. the cooks were black. so he would go back there and the players would go in the front. they are out in the restaurant. they pay $5. they get their meal, whatever it was. probably didn't cost $5 back then. he was in the back. so he was eating twice as much food. when he would leave, they would give him a to-go sack. so he would leave, and he would tell me stories about that night, his teammate, what did your people put in the sack for you? they were hungry again. he was the only one with a sack. you make the best out of a bad situation. that's what some of the players did. sam, of course, has his -- he had two sons that played in the big leagues and now he has two grandsons that play in the big leagues. i guess he did pretty good.

>> was the barnstorming something all the negro team leagues did or just the monarchs, what they wanted to do? >> all the teams tried. i will put it that way. you could see it was a very l lucrative in the money. had you to build a tradition. two of the greatest were the homestead grays and the kansas city monarchs. the monarchs for the most part, they tied up kansas, nebraska, parts of colorado, arkansas. they pretty much dominated that area. that was the team. and then there was one great white barnstorming team which the house of david. what's interesting, the house of david was booked by tom baird. they also booked the kansas city monarchs. they had a nice little scheme going. they would bring the house of david would come in and play the

local team and pretty much beat them. they had great players as well. then the monarchs would come through. they would play the local team. the same people are booking them. they would beat the local team. so now the people realize, the house of david and the monarchs are good teams. look what they did to our local team. then they would turn around and book a came, the monarchs against the house of david and get three dates out of the same city. they did this all over the country. barnstorming was -- it was intelligent move from the money side. the teams who barnstormed the best survived the longest. >> if we don't have any additional questions, phil will be available to sign his books. we want to thank phil for coming out. thank you, phil. >> thank you. [ applause ]

former pro athletes bill russell and jim brown tell their stories. a look at when walking was the nation's most popular spectator sport. now the history of racial equality in professional sports. former basketball player bill russell and former football player jim brown talk about their struggles. they discuss the role of african-americans in college and professional sports today. this panel from the lyndon johnson's presidential summary civil rights summit is about an hour m. >> good afternoon.por my name is mike cramer. i'm the director of the texas we program and sports and media e here at the university of texast we are pleased to partner againe with the lbj library.

this is our fifth event we haveo partnered with them. this is on sports in society cgr that was founded by one of the distinguished alumnis. ha we are police e pleased to part on many occasions. we also have an interesting war, timing w of this today. yesterday, one of our participants, dr. harry edwardsv moment, we formally announced that we have established a permanent lecture at the on university of texas called the dr. harry edwards lecture on sports in society. [ applause ]ts we couldn't possibly find a wars better person in the history ofn sports and civil rights than dre

harry edwards. he was gracious enough to lend his name to that lecture. we expect we will have several presentations under that name in the coming years.d civi today is -- we have a conversation that's going to occur on the area of sports and yea civil rights. i've been a part of many panelsn and many presentations over the years. normally, you try and find the best panelists and the best people to make that presentation.people rarely do you have the people, the top people who are presenting. ind other words, if had you to pick one, two and three, rarely do you get one, two and three. today we are fortunate that we k

in the last 50 years. w we aree ecstatic, pleased, prou that we can present them and have a conversation with them with you today. let me say that again.0 we have here probably the top ] three people in this area in the last 50 years. [ applause ] so let me get on with the program. it's them you are here to see.l. i'd like to introduce to you dr. harry edwards, mr. bill russell, mr. jim brown. [ applause ]h.

take it away. >> thank you very much. it's a real pleasure to be here with two men that i have known t forouc about the last 45 or 50 years. if you hear a touch of respect and affection in t my voice during the course of o this conversation, you have me correctly. i want t to begin by stating thc there have been four athletes over the last half of the 20th o century who have been utterly transformative. of course, is the s immortal jackie robinson.ble m [ applause ] mr. bill russell. [ applause ]an the third is the incomparable mr. jim brown. [ applause ]

and the fourth is the absolutele unconcurable, miss billy jean r i want to focus on the struggle at the intereface of race and f sports. i went back and read jim and f bill's first two books. jim brown's "off my chest and out of bounds" and bill russell's "goal for glory and second win."day bec for athletes because they say where we have come from and the for them to be g where they are today.as the things that stuck with me about those books and reading

them was, first, how well the f philosophies, the perspectives, the ethical arguments and so forth of jim and bill have stood up over the last 50 years. the second thing is that they u were super starrap agthletes whr they stood up. they were super t starrage athletes when they stood up. they never were willing to exchange white racism for blackm orthodox. they were all about the people. i their argument was, and that i as a man am part of the people and i insist on being respectedb as such throughout that -- theis books. and then the fourth thing that s really blew me away and that i find amazing to this day is how young they were. we are talking about 22, 23, 24 years old. ent what we call today a young sando

adult.x aware of consigning an entire a4 generation of y people to sand o citizenship. they were speaking out at 24 years old when this happened. so i would like, first of all, to go back to that time and i'm going to exercise my prerogat e prerogatives as the only 72-year-old up here and call you young men by your first names. and ask about what took you to , that place? how did you end up at that place? why don't we start, jim, with terms of this. how do you end up in that placet at 23, 24 years old? >> i was very fortunate to havea a great mother, no father. went to high school with a great coach. a great mentor, kenny malloy and they were impeccable from the ,l standpointf of advocating

education, self-determination. and i had an example of the us people that were really good. w there was tremendous ld discrimination in this country at the time. it was told to me that i could be loved and popular if i would bow down and do a little dance.l i don't know if you know what but i said, i don't really dance.er t [ laughter ] pay i just prefer to be a man. an american citizen.m, and i pay my taxes.justic i want my rights. so freedom, equality and justice is what i pursued it at all coso because nothing else would substitute for that., no trophy, no form of popularity. because i was helped as a youngo man, i knew that my life's work would be to help others. w so that's what you have here.ok?

[ applause ] >> bill, what took you down that path that you took? be i was reading "gore for glory" and you stated, i have never r been one to pursue being liked. from day one, i was about being respe respected. what took you down that path att 23, 24 years old?my >> well, i guess it started wheu i was born. my mother and father, the first thing i knew about life was my mother and father loved me. and my mother -- i was born in > 1930s in louisiana. my mother -- our first any conversation, she said to me, there's nobody on this planet any better than you.

also, there's nobody on this planet that you are better than them. so and so i grew with confidence that i was okay.ather and my mother and father always treated each other with respect. and so what i went out into the world, that's the way i thoughtw it was supposed to be. >> dokay. yo and did everything you couldu t change it to make that way when wasn't? >> huh? mother >> did everything to make it is that way when it wasn't? >> my mother told me what i was young, she says to me one day, m you cane. play in the front yar for the first time. she had kept me in the backyard

all the time. she said, the reason i want you to play in the front yard is y h peoplein will walk by and they will say things to you, good ori bad, butv it has nothing to do with you. it has to do with them and their perspective. so you play and have fun. don't worry about that. >> okay. >> so when i grew up, i . encountered things. i knew i was okay.a f but moving ahead, a few years ago i met nelson mandela.

we had a brief conversation. and i asked him how he could be such a good person of all the f things that he had encountered.w and he said, if i had reacted the way they predicted that i would act, then they were righti but he said, i am a mandela andi that's wherelo i get my philosoy from is that the opposite of love is not hate. the opposite of love is indifference. and so the only way that humans- can evolve is they have to care

about each other. >> that was evident throughout a number of your chapters in your book. leartti me ask you -- ask you t. jim, in particular, i was looking at a book entitled "the 100 most important people in t american sports" and quite fittingly billy jean king is on the cover. there was a statement that you made early on in one of your earliest books where you stated had never been a time when you h were not conscious of the civild rights movement. i was veryee conscious of the civil rights movement and very active in what i called the s movement for dignity equality o and justice. it superseded my interest in

sports. sports gave me an opportunity to help the cause. and that is what i dedicated myself to doing. theights m now, i know that you supported c the civil rights movement. but you were ahead of the civil rights movement in terms of youd focus on economic development. what led you to move beyond blk simple desegregation to economic development, to starting the ees black economic union, setting ua these offices all over the country, traveling through the k deep south in a bus with other professional athletes talking to small -- black small business ah people in georgia, alabama, tennessee? what led i you to that sense th that was the direction things had to go into? >> well, it was understanding that people had to get off of their butts. regardless of what the to condition, use intelligence and labor as they could to deliver a

themselves. we couldn'tny depend on a government or corporate america or anyone else. so i was always a person that ib advocated economic development because america is a capitalist society. it's based on economics. if you don't use economics in your community, your community will never grow. the jewish community in this country and the world has proven s minority and apply the right principals and emancipate yourself. i thought the african-american d community had to apply itself, have the greatest community, the safest communities and probablyn most of all understand economic development. sp and i attracted the top young mba's in the country.

and i got the top black athletes in the country.ndati and i put them together. and we got a grant of over $1 million at the time.entrep we hadre a fund that any young t blackhe entrepreneur could come and make that loan and get the benefit of the knowledge of our natural business planning team. so that was the way i felt we could gain equality quicker than doing anything else. >> you know, i want people to really understand. we're talking about -- think of. a 26, 25, 27-year-old athlete s today that would have that kindt of insight and vision. that's how far ahead you were in terms of that situation. it astounds me t even now. bill, you, too, had a sense of e the necessity of economic nd

development, not only did you have your own business here, but long before globalization came p into the language, had you w already set up relationships inw west africa and were talking about how we needed to connect with african countries and have mutual economic development and so forth. you also went into the south.ow i mean, two months after the assassination, i know you went down to mississippi. it was a frightening time and hs held integrated basketball clinics in mississippi two months after the death. of course, your sell ti celtic h said, just keep a low profile.6t but you wental down and held the clinics. while you were down there, you talked to young people about thh

necessity of completing school, becoming economically viable and so forth. >> well, most of the people, as i could see, were economically deprived. i felt that as one of the places where you can purchase equality a charity, you could make it a force. i know i was in boston. and there was a great many questions about why i would go to africa.ople th

people told me, africans don't like you. well, the people that were telling me that didn't like me. [ laughter ] so i wanted to go and see for e myself.s, okay? some guy came to me and he says, what do you know about africa? you don't know anything about them. they are not like you.aid you got no business doing that. so i said, you know, i have this family that are friends of mine. they have been accused of supporting the irish revolution. the family was the kennedys. i knew all of them. in fact, i'm old enough that i

remember meeting and sitting ans talking with rose kennedy. g and i said, well, if it's already for them to go back where their ancestors came from, why isn't that all right for met to go back where i think my ancestors came from? about so it was all about -- see, i never, ever considered myself as a leader or anything like that. all i did was -- one thing i wanted to make sure that i never did anything that my father would be ashamed of. so the things i did, for boston example, i coached the boston " celtics. coach of the ayer boston celtics.

so they said, you are the firstk black coach in the nba. in fact, you are the first black coach manager in baseball, football and basketball in the major leagues. what about that? and i said to them, if red had ever said to me, this is a great social experience -- experiment, i would have nothing to do with it. o the only reason i would do it, because i'm convinced that i'm the best person for the job. [ applause ] so where i considered trying to do everything in my life based on merit. and i expected all of the people

i surround myself -- >> to do the same? coll >> jim and i have known each other since college. and he used to tell me all the time that he was a better basketball player than i was anyway. aid, >> averaged 38 points a game. >> and i said, jim, no. [ laughter ] said to him one time, i said, you know, i think you n are one of the greatest athletes, if not the greatest athlete of the 20th century. but leave basketball alone. [ laughter ]pporte

jim saw andd i support ed, if y don't have any wherewithal to exercise influence, then you will never succeed. and i tried to live a life thaty would exercise influence. i personally am not interested d in that.- i'm just interested in -- i and ike always let them know th i love them. i think one of the key things about raising kids.ow.

my daughter -- i have to fight off her telling me what to do now. she graduated from harvard law school. the minute she gets i agree from harvard, she knows everything. [ laughter ] where so i just try to see where things are needed, recognize that things are needed and try to put myself in a place where i can make a difference. >> let's jump to the present.ns? where did the train leave the hm track? where are the bille russells? where are the jim browns? i know we don't expect people to do the same way -- do things the same way they were done in the same sense that bill, you and

jim didn't do things the same way that jackie robinson did orw that jesse owens or joe lewis did. how did we comeun to a place whe we have the level of uninvolvement, apathy, a lack of concern about the broader issues that you speak of now? >> you mentioned jackie robinson. i met him a couple times. when he died, i got a call fromw rachel robinson. she said that she wanted me to be a pallbearer at his funeral.d and i said, that's an overwhelming honor. why me? she said, you were one of jackie's favorite athletes.one

and i took that to say jackie as had done a tremendous thing for he was the first black to play baseball, but he was never a pushover. and he took us to a place that opening up this whole world for us. i but i was not going to re-visit that place.nd i wanted to take it to the next step. >> which you most certainly did. >> and so when red asked me -- he said, he's retiring.ch i went back to my coach. he said i'm retiring. i got to find a coach to replace

me. he said, first, do you want the job? i said, hell no. no i said, i watch what you go through. i don't want no part of that. so we agreed, both made out a ten guys that we would approve of. o he said, nobody can get the job unless you approve of it. so i made a list of ten and he made a list of ten. s there were no matches.a and so he said, what do you want to do? i said, i don't know. he said, okay, well -- he decided however on this one s i coach. i and he said, this is what i'm going to hire.i so i said, red, if you hire him, i am going to retire with you.t [ laughter ] i don't even want to be in the same room with that person.nd

i cleaned it up. i said person. and he said, why? i said, no. to i will not be on the team with a him. he said, what do you want to do/ i said, i tell you what. i will take the job as a player, coach. if it doesn't work, if you ask e me to, i will quit or you can fire me. it doesn't make a difference.n." and i will give whoever you replace me with 100% cooperation. t because i didn't want to -- i had grown to love that organizati organization. i wasn't going to do anything to harm it. >> mess it up, yeah. >> i did a pretty good job. >> i think you did. 11 nba championships.

>> what i'm talking about is, ia wasnt player coach with no assistants. i didn't have any assistants. >> nobody could work with you. [ laughter ] i heard that story. >> i can be difficult. >> i know. song >> you know, i had a song written for me. he talked about my father. and the key line to the song t was, i am my father's son. and he taught me how to be a man by being one. and so, i think that i can have friendships with guys that politically we're completely

opposed. but since i, demand respect, i was also given respect.ght so the things i did, i tried to do for the right reasons. never to prove anything to someone i don't know.probably jim is a life-long friend. fr probably after my hofather, the best friend i've ever had. and the whole thing was based on mutual respect. you know what's odd about it to me is, jim and i have known each other since college. that's in the 1950s. and i do not remember -- he sayu

he doesn't remember -- when we met. >> momentous time there. momentous moment. thi >> the foundation is -- of the whole thing is, we live in ameri america, and the better america is for everybody here, the better america will be. m. >> for everybody. [ applause ] be >> i'd like to emphasize what you said, because this is a very diverse audience.sunderst sometimes i'm misunderstood. i think sometimes you're misunderstood. when you talk about jackie robinson -- knew jackie very ak well.

had a lot ofbout admiration for. but i always talked about the man that truly integrated baseball was not jackie. it was branch rickie. jackie called him mr. rickie.he he stepped out and he decided that baseball should be do. integrated. one reason might be because t is the right thing to do. the other reason might be the as box office, the black audience out there that went to baseball games. and he could have chosen satcheh page or josh gibson because thet were great, h great baseball ece players. but he chose jackie because he knew jackie had the ability to a play great baseball yet play the political role that he had to play, even though it was killing him.--o y and so i say to you that i had l and people like him. so if i digress from there, i go

to slavery n and the under grou railroad. you mru take notice of these things to be able to live in properly, i feel.riett the under ground railroad represented harriet tubman.basia she was given tremendous praise for being that pioneer who verlo basically lived her life to free the slaveske. hou what iss also overlooked is thav thosees free houses that those e people put up for the slaves to stay at and to hide them and to get them up to the north and get tl them to canada were regular people, regular people. nothing special. tal but the commonality was that o they were good human beings. when we talk, the three of us -s i want to emphasize this. we always talk about the