Re-enactors, Theatrical Performances, Radio Programs

“Pride and Passion: The African American Baseball Experience” Online Site Support Notebook

www.mikewileyproductions.com/aboutus.asp?id=281939&page=1 external link
Mike Wiley Productions offers the one-man play, “Jackie Robinson: A Game Apart,” in which Wiley plays Robinson. The play is about Robinson and other African American athletes who pushed the color barrier to its breaking point, about a bygone era of separate unequal locker rooms, of whites only hotels, and restaurants with only a back door for black athletes to enter.

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In “Jackie: Cross the Line,” Actor Gregory Gibson Kenney portrays Jackie Robinson’s life, from Pasadena, Calif., where he grew up, to his being the first baseball player to open doors for African Americans in America’s game.

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Byron Motley’s father was an umpire in the Negro leagues. Motley is an actor and speaker who performs and gives lectures on various topics related to the Negro leagues. Among programs he has offered in the past are “Hitmakers, Heroes & Homeruns: A Musical Celebration of Jazz & Negro League Baseball” and “Black Baseball: A History of the Negro Leagues.”

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Negro League Baseball on the Radio! Unfortunately, no Negro league games were broadcast, but Pitch Black Baseball has meticulously researched some of the greatest games ever played and recreated them, batter for batter, to give audiences the chance to feel what Negro League baseball was all about. Pitch Black Baseball offers CDs priced from $10 and up, with sounds of some of the World’s greatest Negro Leaguers making diving catches, stealing bases, blasting homers, throwing heat and making history.

Fences, a play by August Wilson. Preview and purchase information at: http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=1AnZxhgeogAC&dq=fences+august+wilson&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=jH3W521PqD&sig=AswzE-514SBT_kLSpWycQs7DM3o&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result#PPA12,M1 external link
Wilson’s play is about a former Negro leaguer, the patriarch of a black family (played by James Earl Jones on Broadway), who was never asked to join the major leagues. As a result of that experience, he discourages his son from pursuing a dream to play football. “Fences” explores the way race, class, gender and space intersect with one another in American society, and how new boundaries often take the place of older ones that have been broken.