For over seven decades , Garry Brown covered sports for The Republican newspaper.
Brown passed away recently, and in this digital extra Republican Executive Editor Cynthia Simison reflects on a story that was near and dear to Brown’s heart: that of baseball player and Springfield native Ernest “Bunny” Taliaferro.
In 1934, Taliaferro was told that he could not play in a game in the south because of the color of his skin, and his teammates refused to play without him. Brown worked tirelessly to make sure that the story of Bunny and the Post 21 team is never forgotten.
Watch our full remembrance of Brown and his impact on sports in western Mass.
Read the full transcript:
Cynthia Simison, The Springfield Republican: Think about it in the 1930s, when a — a group of little boys from Springfield, Massachusetts, get on a train and go into the Jim Crow South and say, “We’re not playing, we’re not staying in this hotel, if you won’t let our teammate go there.”
That was Garry really, who wrote and worked for years to ensure that Post 21 story didn’t just fade away and be forgotten, and that team and the friendships he built with Judge Keys, who is now gone, and Tony King, who’s now gone, were very, very special to him.
It’s pretty revolutionary when you when you think about it, in the history of civil rights in this country, that kids from Springfield, Massachusetts, took a stand against racism. And the goodwill it built between this city and its counterpart in the South is a very special legacy he leaves us.
