– From UCF Athletics –

Before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier, threats of violence kept him from playing in Central Florida.

Robinson also starred in one of Orlando’s biggest games ever – a 1949 exhibition that attracted a standing-room-only crowd at Carter Street Park, the home of the city’s Negro Leagues team.

Two generations later, Robinson’s historic achievements and struggles are chronicled in an upcoming exhibit at the University of Central Florida’s main library. The exhibit also features photographs and memorabilia from the Orlando All-Stars, which competed in the Negro Leagues throughout the 1940s and 1950s.

“Pride & Passion: The African American Baseball Experience” tells the story of African-American baseball players in the United States from the Civil War through the present, and it relates their experiences to the struggle for civil rights.

The exhibit will open Friday, March 5, and run through Thursday, April 15. Admission to the exhibit and several related lectures and discussions will be free.

“We had to have a certain amount of self-discipline to survive while traveling around to different cities under the ill winds of racism,” recalled Bob “Peach Head” Mitchell, one of four former Negro Leagues players who will visit UCF on March 19. “It’s very important for kids today to hear those stories.”

The UCF Libraries were selected as one of 50 nationwide sites for the “Pride & Passion” exhibit, which was organized by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and the American Library Association and funded through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The traveling exhibit is based on a permanent exhibit at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. A portion of the exhibit is funded through a grant from the UCF Office of Diversity Initiatives.

To tell the story of Central Florida’s rich but often forgotten baseball history, UCF will display collections from partners such as the Sanford Museum, the Wells’Built Museum of African-American History and Orlando resident Carol Mundy.

The Central Florida connections include:

– Before Robinson played his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers, threats of violence forced the cancellation of a spring game in Sanford. A day game in DeLand was called off due to “malfunctioning lights.” Robinson was able to take the field in Daytona Beach, the spring home of the Dodgers, and the stadium there was renamed “Jackie Robinson Ballpark” in 1990.

– Sunday afternoon Negro League games were major social gatherings for African-Americans. Fans dressed up for the games, and players drove through the streets to promote the games. The Orlando All-Stars played at Carter Street Park because Tinker Field was reserved for whites.

For more information and a full schedule of events, visit UCF Library.