Chapter OneBENT BUT NOT BROKEN
“The situation in Alabama and Mississippi which is spectacular and surprises the country is nationwide … Because until today, all the Negroes in this country in one way or another, in different fashions, North and South, are kept in what is, in effect, prison. In the North, one lives in ghettos and in the South, the situation is so intolerable as to become sinister not only for Mississippi or Alabama or Florida but for the whole future of this country.”
—James Baldwin1
“I am in Birmingham because injustice is here … Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known.”
—Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
WEST JEFFERSON HIGH SCHOOL, MAY 1974
They may beat you now and then,” Ray’s mom used to tell him, “but that don’t mean they have to break you. You don’t change who you are and how you was raised for anyone. And I didn’t raise no child to have a tantrum in the middle of a baseball field or anywhere.”
So even though the May Alabama sun felt like it was burning a hole in his helmet, even though Ray knew this pitcher was a sore loser who would throw his glove, his hat, even kick the fence in the kind of display of poor sportsmanship that Ray couldn’t even let himself think of—even though this guy had just thrown an out-of-control curveball that just barely landed into the catcher’s glove far outside of the plate, and the umpire had had the nerve to call it a strike, his laughter daring Ray to lose his cool … even with all of that, Ray just stared the pitcher down and let the catcher’s and umpire’s snide whispers roll off his back.
Because Ray was more afraid to let his mom down than he was of these white boys, or the sea of white faces in the stands. He was no stranger to hostile stares and hearing the n-word muttered in disgust when he walked by. After four years of being bused to a white school, he knew his mom’s words by heart. “You study. You keep your head down. You keep your eyes down. And when the teachers talk to you, be polite and follow the rules. You go to school, and then you get home. Fast.”
It was more than just advice. It felt like a matter of life and death, and in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1974, it was. When you played sports after school, there was no bus to take you home. And if you were a Black child, you didn’t risk walking home alone. Ray’s best friend, Lester, would wait for him, somewhere out of sight so that he wouldn’t attract attention, and they’d make the long trip home together—they were like brothers, and stuck together like glue even though Ray was older by two years. It hadn’t always been that way. When Ray was six, he didn’t think he’d have much use for a four-year-old best friend. But one day Ray got in trouble with his mom, and as punishment, he had to sit in a chair, inside, for hours, while it seemed like the whole world was outside playing and enjoying a beautiful day. And then little Lester came and sat beside him. They didn’t talk (they couldn’t risk it, not during a punishment); Ray just sat, enduring his consequences, and Lester sat right there beside him. And sat, and sat. Lester stayed with Ray for hours, until the last shouts of joyful play rang out, until it was time for everyone to go inside. That was the day Ray realized he had a friend for life. The kind of friend who’d skip fun in the sunshine to stay by his side for as long as Ray needed him, no matter what.
Now in high school, they still stuck together, and the stakes were even higher. Ray and Lester were always ready to defend themselves or take cover on the long walk home from these baseball games. It wasn’t a leisurely walk, or a playful one. This was about getting home alive. Sometimes it seemed like a horror movie, or a war zone. That was Ray’s real life, now that integration was the law of the land.
But the game wasn’t over yet. Ray stared straight ahead and waited for the next pitch. He’d be ready, whatever it was. Rumor had it that there were scouts at this game. He was a power hitter, and he dreamed of winning a baseball scholarship that took him far, far away from Birmingham. His nine older siblings had escaped; “Bombingham” was a place of horrors for Black people like him, including Martin Luther King, Jr., and the thousands of children who’d been thrown in jail for the crime of asking to be recognized as human; the people who were reminded every time they sat at a lunch counter for a burger and a milkshake that they were not at all welcome, and only being served because it was the law; the four little girls who had been killed in a church bombing when they were doing nothing but living in their brown skin. 1974 Birmingham didn’t feel that different from 1964, or 1954.
Even so, in his all-Black community, Ray felt safe. The people looked out for each other. If someone got in trouble three streets away, their mom would know about it before they could even get home to tell her. They were poor, and segregated, but there was love. Everyone was family.
Then Ray left the safety of his all-Black school for the integrated West Jefferson High, where he got another kind of traumatic education every day, one filled with as much hate and racist injustice as it was filled with math and English.
Once during basketball season, Ray scored thirty points in the first half of a game—an away game at that. Thirty points! It was a record for his school. He walked off the court to the sound of the crowd chanting his name. “Hin-ton! Hin-ton! Hin-ton!” Even the fans of the opposing team were doing it. Ray was so proud. But none of Ray’s teammates were smiling or high-fiving him, and Ray couldn’t understand why.
Then his coach went to center court and started yelling at the crowd, trying to shut them up.
“What are they saying?” Ray asked one of his teammates, who just shook his head. “What are they saying?”
Then his teammate told him. They weren’t chanting his name. They were shouting the n-word, over and over. Even when they didn’t beat you, they tried to break you.
But Ray wasn’t having it. He had the best batting average in Birmingham, maybe even in the whole state of Alabama, so he dreamed of miracles. Hank Aaron was from Alabama. So was Willie Mays. Maybe one day a little boy would dream of hitting home runs like him, Anthony Ray Hinton. Maybe one day he would be someone’s hero.
The pitcher spit and did his windup dance. Curveball, fastball, knuckleball—it didn’t matter what was coming because Ray was ready for it. He’d been playing street ball with an old broom handle and a homemade ball for as long as he could remember. In street ball, you swung at the pitch you were given, and you made the best of it. He planted his feet, and …
“That’s my baby!” Ray heard his mom’s proud shout and turned to see her standing by the chain link fence next to the bleachers. She didn’t have a car; the money she made cleaning houses was barely enough to keep a roof over their heads ever since an accident in the coal mine had put Ray’s father in an institution. How had she gotten all the way to his game?
She waved a white handkerchief and yelled again.
“Go, baby! That’s my baby!” Ray weighed 230 pounds and towered over her, but he was her baby, no matter what.
And Ray was going to make her proud.
He watched the ball come closer and closer, like it was in slow motion, like it was just him and the ball—no cheating ump or sneering catcher, no angry white faces in the stands.
He dropped the bat and hit the ground hard. WHOOSH! The pitcher had aimed right at his head! Would the ump call this a strike too?
“Ball!” called the ump. The pitcher, watching Ray wince with pain as he picked up the bat and got ready again, smirked. Ray didn’t care. This guy was going to hit Ray, or Ray was going to hit the ball—nothing was going to stop Ray from getting on base.
The next pitch zoomed out of the pitcher’s glove—a change- up, the kind of pitch that sent a lot of players swinging into a complete circle, looking silly and dazed. Ray watched the ball fly toward him, he watched and waited and waited and watched—and then he swung. He swung for his team, for his mama, and for Lester. He swung for every kid in his neighborhood who was going to be called a nasty, hate-filled name that day.
And when Ray’s bat met that ball, he heard the sweet and sharp sound, like thunder on a hot day in August, of the ball hitting the bat exactly where you want it.
He dropped the bat and ran.
“That’s my baby! That’s my baby!”
He rounded first, and out of the corner of his eye, Ray saw his mom waving her arms in the air. On his way to second, he looked up as the ball soared up, up, and out over the center-field fence. Then he knew he didn’t need to run anymore. He heard the shortstop mutter something as he rounded to third, but whatever it was, Ray didn’t care. He kept going, enjoying every moment of his home run.
Copyright © 2022 by Anthony Ray Hinton and Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
