$2,000 reward offered for Birmingham Black Barons player’s suitcase lost in tornado that destroyed home
Updated Mar 11, 2021;
Posted Mar 10, 2021
Robert Vickers, one of the last living Birmingham Black Barons baseball players, is trying to find a metal suitcase containing his first contract and uniform that was lost in the Jan. 25, 2021 tornado.
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(Editor’s note: Updated at 3:20 p.m. to correct factual errors and clarify Vickers’ playing career.)
A reward is now being offered in the search for a missing vintage suitcase belonging to a man who says he played for the Birmingham Black Barons during the team’s final years.
Mar 8, 2021
The 90-year-old sportswriter wants to make a point about Joe Frazier, almost 50 years after the boxer’s most famous fight. “Did you know that Joe’s hook came from a deformed arm?” Jerry Izenberg asks, in the way that only Jerry Izenberg can. He’s backed by seven decades of firsthand sports history, thousands of championship fights and Super Bowls and the moments that came before them. His insight remains the kind gleaned only by those who saw these careers unfold up close.
So, about Joe Frazier and that arm: the young boxer worked on a farm back in South Carolina, and one of his jobs was to chase the family’s prized hogs back into their pens. One day, he fell while giving chase, breaking his left arm. Frazier never regained his full range of motion with that limb, in part because his father asked him to put off surgery, which only made his left hook more compact and thus ultimately more dangerous. Many of his 27 career knockouts resulted from the damage infl
Birmingham Black Barons player seeking uniform, 1956 contract lost in tornado that destroyed home
Updated Mar 05, 2021;
Posted Mar 05, 2021
Robert Vickers, one of the last living Birmingham Black Barons baseball players, is trying to find a metal suitcase containing his first contract and uniform that was lost in the Jan. 25, 2021 tornado.
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Robert Vickers lost everything he owned when a tornado wreaked havoc through parts of northern Jefferson County more than a month ago.
The force of the EF-3 storm ripped the roof off his New Castle home and carried off 80 years of worth of Vickers’ hard work and memories. He knows there’s little chance of ever getting most of it back, and he is OK with that.
He Honors Black New Yorkers. Not All Black Activists Are Thrilled.
Jacob Morris is the one-man force behind renaming nearly 40 streets in New York City.
Jacob Morris is on a mission to increase Black representation in New York City’s public spaces.Credit.Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York Times
By Margot Boyer-Dry
Published March 5, 2021Updated March 8, 2021
Last March, a crowd gathered in Downtown Brooklyn to celebrate a new name for Gold Street: Ida B. Wells Place. Jacob Morris, the tireless activist behind the renaming effort, addressed the group.
“I’m almost speechless,” he said.
“Yeah, almost,” someone in the audience commented, laughing.