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Miami Herald
03-06-2025
- General
- Miami Herald
Jackie Robinson mural defaced at Overtown park where Negro League once played
The rain drizzled down as Terrence Cribbs-Lorrant peeled back the plastic bags unveiling a swastika and racist slurs that cover a mural of Jackie Robinson at the historic Dorsey Park in Overtown, hallowed grounds where Negro League players once played ball. The racist epithets — including a swastika and N***** spray-painted onto the concrete walls surrounding the park — were reported to the Miami Police on Monday afternoon in what the community and police are calling a hate crime. The park is located at Northwest 17th Street and Northwest First Avenue. 'We need the community to uncover the hurt and the hatred that is existing,' Cribbs Lorrant, director of Miami's Black Police Precinct and Courthouse Museum, told reporters at a Tuesday morning press conference. The mural's defacing galvanized the Overtown community, with members of the Overtown Business Association, the museum and others calling for more of a police presence around the park, once home to the Negro Leagues' Ethiopian Clowns. 'We're going to increase police patrols,' Miami Police Commander A. Cooper told the small crowd inside Dorsey Memorial Library. 'We're going to make sure we also partner with some of our specialized units to bring more presence, more enforcement in the key hot spots in Overtown.' The murals have been up since 2011 and were spearheaded by URGENT Inc., a youth development organization based in Overtown, along with funding from the Knight Arts Challenge. This is the first time they have been defaced, said Saliha Nelson, the founder and CEO of URGENT. Nelson's brother Kadir Nelson painted some of the murals that adorn the park, including that of Satchel Page, James 'Biz' Mackey and Josh Gibson — all stars of the Negro Leagues, which began in 1920 to counter Major League Baseball excluding Blacks from playing professional ball. Jackie Robinson played for the Negro Leagues' Kansas City Monarchs in 1945, before signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers in the winter of 1945, becoming Major League Baseball's first Black ballplayer. 'I was really floored and appalled that someone would have the audacity to come and deface in such a derogatory, mean-spirited way,' Saliha Nelson told the Miami Herald.
Washington Post
24-04-2025
- Sport
- Washington Post
Former Phillies slugger Ryan Howard makes pitch for Negro Leagues Baseball Museum expansion
PHILADELPHIA — Ryan Howard was a rookie with the Philadelphia Phillies just putting baseball on notice with his moonshot home runs when he met Buck O'Neil , a champion of Black ballplayers during a monumental, eight-decade career on and off the field. Howard was introduced to O'Neil as a modern-day Josh Gibson , one of the Negro Leagues' greatest players, who hit .466 for the 1943 Homestead Grays. Howard, who hit at least 45 homers four times in his career, was too embarrassed to accept the comparison.
