As a ballplayer, Willie Mays was arguably the best of all time — baseball’s GOAT. However he additionally starred in one other endeavor — as an essential California civil rights pioneer.
Mays by no means wished to be an activist about something off the baseball diamond. However the racism he encountered after shifting to San Francisco stirred others to leap to his trigger and in the end helped encourage town and state governments to outlaw housing discrimination.
His position started when Mays arrived in San Francisco from New York with the Giants baseball workforce in late 1957. Native of us in supposedly enlightened San Francisco welcomed the star outfielder by making an attempt to bar him from a white neighborhood.
Mays downplayed it publicly, however his spouse, Marghuerite Mays, spoke out to reporters: “Down in Alabama the place we come from, you understand your house. However up right here, it’s all numerous camouflage. They grin in your face and deceive you.”
Willie Mays receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama on the White Home in 2015.
(Evan Vucci / Related Press)
By no means thoughts that Mays was en path to the baseball Corridor of Fame because the greatest all-around ballplayer in historical past. Didn’t matter. If a Black man was allowed to purchase a house in a fascinating neighborhood — adjoining tony St. Francis Wooden within the Sundown District — close by property values would tumble. Not less than that’s what white neighbors overtly feared.
“I occur to have a number of items of property within the space, and I stand to lose loads if coloured folks transfer in,” a close-by dwelling builder advised reporters.
Sure, that was San Francisco — in actual fact, nearly all of California — till legal guidelines have been handed within the Sixties to cease such discrimination. The change was aided considerably by Mays’ oblique assist, in line with one other legendary Willie from San Francisco — former mayor and longtime state Meeting Speaker Willie Brown.
I known as Brown, 90, after Mays died this week at age 93. Brown, a uncommon Black lawyer in late Fifties San Francisco, struck up an early friendship with Mays.
“He was a pleasure, frankly. A enjoyable man,” Brown says.
Brown credit the racial bias in opposition to Mays with galvanizing town into adopting an ordinance forbidding housing discrimination.
“It began with Willie Mays,” Brown advised me. “On account of his being rejected, newspapers all of the sudden grew to become conscious of the racism in San Francisco.
“San Francisco wasn’t racist like different components of the nation. Individuals smiled.”
Brown continued: “The truthful housing legislation of San Francisco was handed as a result of Mays received denied the correct of housing. That escalated the necessity to change. He was essentially the most dramatic instance of how discrimination was practiced on folks of shade.”
In 1963, spurred by Gov. Pat Brown and Bay Space lawmakers, the state Legislature handed a invoice outlawing racial discrimination within the sale and rental of housing. It wanted all of the assist it might muster and generated the most important, bitterest political brawl I’ve ever witnessed in Sacramento.
California voters overwhelmingly repealed the legislation the following 12 months. However the repeal was declared unconstitutional by each the state and U.S. supreme courts.
Mays didn’t take part personally in that battle, however Brown actually did.
A transplant from Jim Crow east Texas, Brown grew to become a civil rights activist in San Francisco concerning the time Mays was arriving from New York. In actual fact, Brown was persistently snubbed by actual property brokers when he tried to purchase a home in 1961. He responded by main a sit-in at a Realtor’s workplace.
The Mays incident occurred after he provided the asking worth of $37,500 for a three-bedroom dwelling in an upscale, tree-lined, all-white neighborhood. After he waited a number of days, his provide was turned down. The home remained in the marketplace for a similar worth — however unavailable for the star ballplayer.
The San Francisco Chronicle received wind of the rejection and ran this banner on the high of Web page 1: “WILLIE MAYS IS DENIED S.F. HOUSE–RACE ISSUE.” The headline on the story learn: “Willie Mays is Refused S.F. Home–Negro.”
“I didn’t determine I’d have this a lot bother making an attempt to purchase a spot,” Mays advised a TV reporter. “Once I go on the lookout for a home, I don’t fear about who’s dwelling beside me.”
In contrast to nervous white folks of that period.
Mays will get the three,000th hit of his profession, a single to left, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco in 1970.
(Robert H. Houston / Related Press)
San Francisco Mayor George Christopher — a average Republican, again when such a breed existed — provided to let Mays and his spouse dwell briefly at his dwelling.
In the end, the house owner backed down, regardless of being berated by neighbors. Mays moved in. And nearly instantly somebody threw a brick by way of a window.
Mays saved his thoughts on baseball and finally grew to become the pleasure of San Francisco.
As a bottom-tier sportswriter for United Press Worldwide, I used to be privileged to look at plenty of Giants video games at windy Candlestick Park within the early Sixties.
Mays’ statistics are phenomenal: a .301 profession batting common, 660 dwelling runs, 3,293 hits, 339 stolen bases, 12 Gold Glove awards in middle discipline, 24 All-Star video games.
Within the 1961 All-Star Sport at Candlestick that I helped cowl, Mays doubled dwelling the tying run within the tenth inning after which scored the successful run on a single by Pittsburgh’s Roberto Clemente because the Nationwide League edged the American League, 5-4.
However field scores and stats inform solely a part of the story of Mays’ greatness.
What I keep in mind most about him was his enjoying with elation and enthusiasm — galloping round first base, all the time a risk to stretch a single right into a double and a menace to steal second in any case. Full velocity irrespective of the rating. Cap flying.
In his lengthy post-career, Mays supplied a cushty nostalgic hyperlink again to baseball’s thrilling heyday — earlier than blah analytics and emphasis on astronomical free agent salaries.
America can’t afford to lose such folks. He didn’t hate. He introduced cheer.
And — whereas there’s no stats on it — he assisted in beating housing discrimination.
