ATLANTA – Next year’s civil rights baseball game weekend will honor activists who have fought for equal rights, educate young people about sports trailblazers and help attract more young black athletes to America’s pastime, organizers and activists say.

games Speaking at a news conference, baseball officials and rights activists said the Civil Rights Games Weekend is designed to celebrate the contributions of longtime civil rights icons and embrace baseball’s history of African American players.

“The Civil Rights Game Weekend has become one of the premier celebrations on the Major League Baseball calendar,” said Baseball Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig. “We are pleased to have the Atlanta Braves and the City of Atlanta as hosts for this important event remembering a significant era in America’s history.”
Baseball icon Hank Aaron, former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King III joined baseball officials at the news conference to lend their support to the initiative and express their enthusiasm for its mission.

Aaron said the civil rights weekend – which will include educational forums and other charity events – will help teach young people about their history.

“We have so many of our children whose schools don’t teach them the history,” the former home run king said.
“When we start talking about civil rights icons like Dr. King, Andy Young and all of the rest, our kids need to be reminded that no matter what successes they have had in life – regardless of whether they are an actor, actress, baseball player, football, basketball – that they didn’t get there on their own,” he added. “They got there simply because of family and because of these civil rights icons who paved the way for them to get there.”

Young said it is fitting that Major League Baseball sponsor the Civil Rights Games because professional baseball played a pivotal role in providing opportunities for Blacks in the 1940s and beyond.
“Baseball is the sport that helped to desegregate the South, even before Rosa Parks, and before the Army (was integrated), and before our marching. Baseball took the lead,” Young said.

“Jackie Robinson was recruited in 1947; that is the year I went to college,” he added. “We have the headquarters of the Civil Rights Movement here in Atlanta, and its appropriate that this game be played here,” he said.

King agreed, calling it “notable” for Atlanta to have been selected as the host city for the games because of the storied history of civil rights in Atlanta.

King also said the initiative will “engage and get young people” more interested in playing professional baseball.

“The challenge for baseball, unlike football and basketball, is the number of African-American youngsters who are interested in baseball seems to have diminished,” he said. “I am disturbed there is such a small number of African Americans who are now in Major League Baseball.
“I think the league itself is trying to do more,” he added, “so again, coming to Atlanta is so appropriate.”

The weekend could generate as much as $20 million in revenue for area businesses, officials say.
The Civil Rights Game began in 2007 and was conceived to honor the nation’s history of civil rights. It later became a regular season game. This year’s game was played in Cincinnati. Next year, it will be part of a regularly scheduled three-game series, officials said. The dates will be announced later.

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