Bob Kendrick, Negro Leagues Baseball Museum are needed now, perhaps more than ever
In the strictest sense of the term, anyway, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum isn’t a civil rights museum.
To be sure, it’s not quite like the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute or the National Civil Rights Museum At The Lorraine Motel, the site where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.
Unlike those essential studies of a piercing history, the NLBM seeks to commemorate and convey something beyond that anguish that we still are left to reconcile.
“You need to see the pain that (African-Americans) have experienced, but you also need to see their successes,” NLBM president Bob Kendrick said in his office Wednesday, offering accordingly the example of the Negro Leagues’ “glorious history in the midst of an inglorious time in American history.”
So it is that the museum that has been going to bat for social justice in its own way for 30 years is embracing the moment in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd beneath the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
The act was “so vivid and so vile and so disgusting and so dehumanizing that it struck us all to our core,” Kendrick said.
Enough so that he considers this a watershed moment in American history, one that illuminates the words he recently heard from Royals general manager Dayton Moore.
This isn’t about black vs. white.
It’s about good vs evil.
“And somehow or another,” Kendrick said, “the good has to win out.”
Toward that end, Kendrick reckons it’s a good time for the NLBM to be on the verge of re-opening (with limited visitation guidelines) on June 16 after being shut down since mid-March amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The museum is a place from where conversations about race and sports should emanate, Kendrick believes. A place that can continue to motivate and educate and stimulate thought and prime meaningful conversations.
Yes, that includes the historical parallels between society and the Negro Leagues. But he believes what the museum offers can lead to more significant talk yet under what could be trying circumstances for families to address.
“We are inevitably uncomfortable talking about race,” he said. “And we have to be uncomfortable. We just have to accept being uncomfortable. Because we can no longer believe that if we don’t talk about it then it’s not happening.
“That’s what silence does. It kind of lulls you into this false sense of these things are not happening.”
To wit: Kendrick recently moderated a town hall video forum with baseball players including former Royals outfielder Lorenzo Cain. He was particularly struck by a thought of Pittsburgh’s Josh Bell, whom he recalled saying hoped that these sorts of conversations won’t be necessary 100 years from now.
He might have thought the same 50 years ago, he said, “and here we still are.”
As a child then in Crawfordville, Georgia, Kendrick didn’t quite know why he didn’t go to the same school as the white kids in a place that wasn’t segregated but … was segregated.
Or why he always went in through the back door of Bonner’s Cafe.
Or why when the family drove to Atlanta on old Highway 78 his mother made a great meal to be eaten in the car.
Or why exactly he was singing “We Shall Overcome” in marches organized by his brother Fred.
But Kendrick, born in 1962, understood something momentous had happened upon witnessing his father shed tears for the first time when King was assassinated. And in the years to come, he came to understand those circumstances of his childhood.
And understand that even after great changes and much progress, much remained to be done and too much remained the same.
“All of these stories are kind of embedded and all kind of come cascading back when we now face the issues that we’re facing still years later,” he said.
He’s not anti-police or policing, he’s quick to say, adding that it’s a very difficult job that requires good people to be done properly.
“But you can not have those who have racial biases be in positions of authority where they will abuse their power,” he said. “We can no longer allow that to happen.”
None of us are born to hate, he believes, but society will always have to contend with those who try to breed bigotry.
“People’s hearts are their hearts,” he said. “They’ll have to deal with that as they look themselves in the mirror.”
But corrupt systems prone to enabling abuse with “little or no repercussions,” well, they can be changed with enough will and enlightenment.
Which is why he hopes the passion doesn’t soon dissipate.
“Protesting and activism is hard work; it wears you out,” he said. “But we can’t be tired. Not this time. We can not be tired.”
By “we,” Kendrick also means the athletes and sports figures who are making their voices heard in a forum that has a history of uniting.
He understands that some may be reluctant to speak for a variety of reasons, and thus thinks that no one should feel compelled to if it’s not in their hearts.
But what a powerful opportunity for those who feel called, including white athletes and citizens in general.
“That to me is where the real impact occurs,” said Kendrick, noting the “beautiful” column major-leaguer Joey Votto recently wrote for the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Now the NLBM wants to continue to make its impact, too, in the ongoing spirit of late founder Buck O’Neil. If Buck were alive today, Kendrick said, he would have been repulsed by the horrifying death of George Floyd but also would have thought, “We can do better than this. We will be better than this.”
“He just refused to give up on humanity,” Kendrick said.
And that lesson permeates the NLBM to this day, at a time where it’s lessons are as valuable as ever.
“A kind of beacon for hope, a beacon of determination and pride and perseverance,” he said. “Because all of those things are still hallmarks of what we’re going to need for this effort to be successful.”