AARON, Henry Louis ("Hank")

(b. 5 February 1934 in Mobile, Alabama), baseball legend, executive, and career home-run record holder, who rose to sports celebrity status during the height of the civil rights movement in the Jim Crow South.

Aaron, the third of eight children born to Herbert Aaron, a boilermaker's assistant, and Estella Aaron, a homemaker, began his baseball career playing fast-pitch softball because his schools did not have organized baseball teams. Aaron attended Central High School in Mobile, but transferred during his junior year to the Josephine Allen Institute, which had a baseball program. Baseball became the center of young Aaron's life, and his education decidedly took a backseat to the game, much to his mother's dismay. In 1951 Aaron played shortstop for the semiprofessional Mobile Black Bears. Then in 1952 the Indianapolis Clowns, a professional Negro League team, offered Aaron a contract for $200 a month. Aaron made a deal with his mother to finish school in the off-season, and she agreed to allow him to turn professional.

Major League Baseball (MLB) was actively recruiting African-American players in the early 1950s, and it quickly noticed Aaron. He signed with the Boston Braves on 14 June 1952 and was sent to their minor league team in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where he won Rookie of the Year. Despite the MLB effort to integrate the sport, the South remained strongly segregationist and firmly entrenched by Jim Crow legislation. In 1953 the Braves sent Horace Garner, Felix Mantilla, and Aaron to its South Atlantic (Sally) League Class A farm club in Florida, the Jacksonville Suns, making them reluctant pioneers to integrated baseball in the South. Only nineteen years old, Aaron entered one of the two remaining all-white baseball circuits.

Although Aaron led the Sally League with a .362 batting average and 125 runs batted in (RBI), he also endured racism and discrimination exceeding anything he had experienced in Mobile. Spectators yelled obscenities, sent hate mail, and even threatened violence. Aaron, Garner, and Mantilla often stayed with an African-American family when they traveled and ate on the bus because of "white only" restaurant restrictions. Even when the team won, segregation kept them from attending victory parties. Aaron responded with a quiet stoicism. His 1954 rookie season as a right fielder with the Milwaukee Braves was a success. In 1957 Aaron batted .322 with forty-four home runs, was voted the Major League Most Valuable Player (MVP), and led the Braves to their only World Series title—a seven-game victory over the New York Yankees.

As the 1960s approached, and the civil rights movement gained momentum, Aaron's success and confidence grew, and his patience with racism and discrimination lessened. Although playing baseball kept African-American players from being active participants in the civil rights movement, Aaron, along with fellow player Bill Bruton, supported sympathetic politicians. They even campaigned for John F. Kennedy in 1960. Aaron participated in civil rights causes throughout Atlanta and often involved teammates, but he did so without fanfare. Aaron and Bruton also sought to change things within their own sphere of influence. In 1961 Aaron, along with two teammates, pressured the Braves general manager, John McHale, to have all race signs removed in Brandenton Park, the training camp facility for the Braves near Sarasota, Florida. Jet magazine reported that the Milwaukee Braves were the first to "hit the Jim Crow ball head-on." The next issue Aaron addressed was hotel segregation. The problem was not with the Braves but with the Brandenton hotels. When Aaron pressed the issue, the Braves found a hotel just outside Brandenton that accepted the whole team. Aaron also started reading the works of James Baldwin and Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 1966 the Braves franchise moved to Atlanta. Although Atlanta was a "New South" city with a moderate mayor, Ivan Allen, who supported civil rights, Aaron was apprehensive about moving back to the South. Once again he started receiving hate mail, some of which threatened his family, and was subjected to abusive name-calling. Aaron's stoicism, however, was beginning to erode and he spoke out more often. He began to publicly support and stress in interviews the importance of having African-American managers in the Major Leagues. Then, in 1966 at Wrigley Field, a reporter for Jet caught Aaron at just the right moment. In the resulting article, "Hank Aaron Blasts Racism in Baseball," Aaron gave the writer a litany of ways in which baseball discriminated against African-American players. The Braves also put Aaron in the spotlight. During a 1966 baseball promotion Aaron traveled on a seventeen-day trip to Vietnam that ended with a meeting with President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House.

Along with professional concerns over the relocation to Atlanta, Aaron also had intense personal concerns about moving his family back to the South. Aaron had married Barbara Lucas on 3 October 1953, and they had five children. He now had a family of his own, as well as taking in his brothers and sisters. Aaron bought a house on two acres of land in a segregated neighborhood. Aaron was also concerned for his family's safety at ballgames. Often they endured verbal abuse from fans calling Aaron derogatory names.

Aaron was under constant pressure in Atlanta. He knew the team was playing not only to win ball games, but also to win over the South. Despite the pressures of Atlanta, segregation, and racism, Aaron continued to excel as a ballplayer. He was the first player ever to have his own night in Atlanta-Fulton County stadium after his 500th home run, and he received admiration and accolades from mayor Ivan Allen for his role in helping to end segregation in the South. In 1969 he was still hitting .300 even though he was approaching the traditional retirement age and suffering from back problems. Aaron was also getting closer and closer to Babe Ruth's career record of 714 home runs.

In the early 1970s people began to speculate that Aaron had the potential to beat Ruth's record. Despite the stress of his divorce from Barbara Lucas in 1971, and receiving an estimated 3,000 letters per day, including hate mail, Aaron's performance on the field was solid. The hate mail was so cruel that the Braves hired personal security for Aaron. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) became involved to screen his mail and to trace threatening telephone calls. An FBI investigation also uncovered a plot to kidnap Aaron's daughter, who was then a student at Fisk University. In November 1973 Aaron married Billye Suber; they had one child. On opening day in 1974 Aaron finally hit his 714th home run, and on 8 April 1974 in Atlanta, Aaron became the home-run king, earning the nickname, "Hammerin' Hank." Then at the end of the 1974 season, at the age of forty, Aaron was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers, to the city where his professional career started. He played two more years, mostly as a designated hitter, before retiring in 1976.

Aaron returned to Atlanta as vice president and director of player development under the Braves new owner Ted Turner, making him one of the first African-American executives in Major League Baseball. Aaron was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982 during his first year of eligibility. He was selected for a record twenty-four All-Star teams and won three Gold Gloves awards. He was the first player in baseball history to amass 500 home runs and 3,000 hits in a career. As well as his home-run total of 755, he also holds records for career RBI with 2,297; total bases with 6,856; and games played with 3,298. Aaron is active in charity work with organizations such as Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America, the Boy Scouts of America, the American Cancer Society, the National Easter Seal Society, and the Leukemia Society of America. Amazingly, despite being baseball's home-run king and a goodwill ambassador for the sport, Aaron still receives some hate mail.

Aaron has written several biographies, including Aaron, r.f. (1968), with Furman Bisher, later revised as Aaron (1974); I Had a Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story (1991), with Lonnie Wheeler; and Home Run: My Life in Pictures (1999), with Dick Schaap. Biographies include Al Hirshberg, Henry Aaron: Quiet Superstar (1969); Stan Baldwin and Jerry Jenkins, Bad Henry: In Collaboration with Hank Aaron (1974); Dan Schlossberg, Hammerin' Hank! The Henry Aaron Story (1974); George Plimpton, One for the Record: The Inside Story of Hank Aaron's Chase for the Home-Run Record (1974); and Don Money and Herb Anastor, The Man Who Made Milwaukee Famous: A Salute to Henry Aaron (1976). Two articles of note are "Henry Aaron's Golden Autumn," Time (24 Sept. 1973), and "End of the Glorious Ordeal," Sports Illustrated (15 Apr. 1974).

Lisa A. Ennis