This story of today starts in 1934. The American Legion Post 21 Championship baseball team has been invited to play in a national tournament in Gastonia, North Carolina. When the team gets off the train, the band stops playing. A bus pulls away from the curb. At the hotel, there’s no bed for the only black player, Bunny Taliaferro. He has to sleep on a cot and be registered as the coach’s valet.
More than two thousand Gastonians show up for the team’s first practice. If the players insist on taking the field with Bunny, they’ll never see another baseball glove. The Ku Klux Klan will kidnap them in the middle of the night, and they’ll never see their families or friends again.
Bunny responds by hitting the first six pitches thrown to him out of the ball park. The people retaliate by filling the air with empty Coke bottles and half-eaten hot dogs.
Meanwhile, the teams from Florida and Maryland announce they will not take any field where Bunny has taken a position. The hotel manager tells the Post 21 coach that his team cannot attend the evening’s welcoming banquet as long as Bunny is on the roster.
Coach calls a meeting. The players are given a choice: they can play without Bunny or head home. Captain Tony King is the first to speak: “If Bunny doesn’t play, I’m not playing either.” The team votes unanimously and without debate to withdraw from the tournament.
A heroes’ welcome awaits the players back in Springfield. Thirteen years before anyone ever heard of Jackie Robinson, a group of 15- and 16-year-olds from Massachusetts stood up for their friend, made a statement against racism, and hit a home run for progressive-thinking people everywhere.
Post 21 protested tolerance of racial discrimination at the national headquarters, which retaliated by striking the team from its record books. The local chapter then disbanded baseball until the Legion leadership reconsidered its position. The team never got back together.
In 2003, a monument honoring the team’s heroic action was erected in Springfield’s Forest Park. In 2010, Post 21 reinstated baseball. Gov. Deval Patrick gave championship rings to the team’s two surviving members: Danny Keyes and Tony King. My illustrated children’s version of the story, A Home Run for Bunny, was published in 2013 and, in 2014, Springfield College named the Post 21 team the recipient of its first annual Humanics Achievement Award.
That summer, I sent a copy of my book to Mayor John Bridgeman of Gastonia, who wrote a letter of apology to the people of Springfield and Mayor Sarno. The two mayors agreed to establish a home-and-away series to heal old wounds and build a different kind of relationship between the two cities. The first game of the series, scheduled for Forest Park on Father’s Day in 2015, was rained out. Now the Post 21 team is scheduled to play on June 26 in North Carolina — it’s the game that wasn’t played 80 years ago.
What would today’s kids do if given that choice in 1934? What if they’re given a choice on June 26?
In North Carolina last March, the state legislature passed a law requiring people to use public restrooms that correspond to the genders listed on their birth certificates. The response was swift and sure: PayPal canceled plans to build an office in the state capital, Bruce Springsteen cancelled a concert, and the governors of Vermont, Connecticut, and New York placed restrictions on employees conducting state business in North Carolina. Even corporate criminal Bank of America complained that the law would weaken their efforts to recruit employees.
Then there was the response to the response: 11 states sued the federal government for violating the Constitution; Republicans in the House of Representatives defeated a bill prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT Americans; and the governors of Texas and Mississippi ordered their state schools to ignore President Obama’s directive to accommodate transgender people. Even U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) got into the act, claiming that allowing a man to enter a woman’s restroom because he feels like a woman invites sexual predators.
What Ted Cruz and Co. forgot, or perhaps chose not to remember, is that during the time when Post 21 players were in Gastonia, all-gender bathrooms were legal for black people. White people had their separate public restrooms, but black people shared theirs.
At the ceremony before the game that ended Post 21’s protest against the American Legion for racial discrimination, Judge Danny Keyes appeared with a grandson he’d flown in from Florida. When one of the reporters asked the boy what he would do if he was given the choice of not playing in North Carolina in 1934, the 12-year-old replied, “I’d play.” A collective gasp sounded from all within earshot, and the face of the former player turned beet red.
What has happened since the time when Danny was a kid? How did the players on his team know that trust, loyalty, friendship, standing up to bullies, and protesting against racism were more important than winning a baseball championship? What would happen if today’s Post 21 players were given a similar choice?
There may or may not be a transgender person on the current Post 21 team, but does there have to be for today’s kids to play a knowing role in America’s history of discrimination?
What if they, like the players in 1934, decided to state their presence through an absence? Do we have the courage to allow them to make this decision for themselves?
Richard Andersen is an author living in Montague. Contact him at richardandersen@verizon.net.
