Andy Hartung

Blog Post 2

                The source I am looking at came from a search on credo reference website, the specific article I am looking at came from a book called, “Freedom Facts and Firsts: 400 Years of the African American Civil Rights Experience,” written by, Jessie Carney Smith and Linda T. Wynn, however this specific excerpt from this book was written by, Cheryl Jones Hamberg. I chose to select this source because throughout my research I learned that Hank Aaron had to go through dealing with racism a lot in his early career and even while playing for the Eau Claire Bears. This excerpt from this book will help to answer my research question because it gives me a bit of information about what it was like for Hank Aaron in his early baseball days.

                This book was published in 2009 and wrote about many different civil rights experiences including sports. Hamberg has written many different pieces on African-American civil rights which shows the audience she is compassionate about this topic and that helps to invent her ethos. Hank Aaron was passed by Barry Bonds in 2007 as the all-time homerun leader; we see Hamberg’s kairotic thinking by publishing this two years after this event had happened and there was a lot of talk circulating about Hank Aaron again.

                The source starts off talking about where Hank Aaron was born and talks a little bit about his early child hood, it then progresses into his minor league baseball days, where he first started off playing for the Indianapolis Clowns the Negro Leagues.  Aaron’s contract was then bought out by the Boston Braves who proceeded to send him to their minor league team in Eau Claire Wisconsin. The article than talks about the racism he faced, it was really bad when he was the first African-American playing in the Sally League where he played for the Jacksonville Suns. Aaron then faced strong racism again when he began to near Babe Ruth’s previous home run record.

                I believe in many of the points the author is trying to portray its well-known that at this time period racism was still very much so a problem. My article doesn’t really look at other perspectives so it’s hard to bring up “against the grain points.”

This source does a good job helping me to answer part of my research question. I learned a lot about what Hank Aaron’s life was like when he began his baseball career. However, I still would like to strengthen my focus on what his life was like specifically when he was in Eau Claire. Was the racism just as strong here or was it better for him here? I would like to research further into his one summer that he spent in Eau Claire by  looking for other secondary sources, I know there was a book published about his summer here and that is something that I will definitely have to look into.