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Good story.

It’s not every day the U.S. Postal Service finds a personal connection to the thousands of celebrities, artists, musicians, plants, flowers and historic events emblazoned across postage stamps. But Thursday, the agency will honor one of its own — and thousands of others — as it unveils two stamps commemorating Negro leagues baseball.

Cleophus Brown, 76, of Birmingham, Ala., clocks in every morning at 3:30 and drives a USPS tractor-trailer full of mail from the airport to postal stations. But long before he joined the ranks of mail truck drivers, Brown was a first baseman and left-handed pitcher with the all-black Birmingham Black Barons and Louisville Clippers.

From the mid 1870s and through the next eighty years, the Negro league was where black professional ballplayers did their thing.  The inaugural game of the fully organized Negro National League was played in 1920.  With Jackie Robinson’s entry into the Major Leagues in 1947, breaking the color barrier, there was no longer a need for the black league and it disbanded in 1951. It is important to note that Robinson and the players that followed him helped influence the civil-rights revolution and without the Negro league, there might have been no ‘Jackie Robinson’ at that time.

Anecdote. Racial tensions in the Brooklyn Dodgers clubhouse were high in 1947.  A number of white players refused to play alongside Robinson and stated they would rather sit out than play with a black man.  Manager Leo Durocher ended the nonsense with these eloquent words of wisdom:

“I do not care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a fuckin’ zebra. I’m the manager of this team, and I say he plays. What’s more, I say he can make us all rich. And if any of you cannot use the money, I will see that you are all traded.”

The bitching ended which leads me to think that if someone could find a way for all bigots to make money off African Americans, immigrants, gays, lesbians or any other minority group which offends them, then they might come around…or, failing that, trade the bigots to some country which is in short supply of racists, homophobes and scumbags.

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