Revisiting a ‘graveyard’ on the way to Cooperstown

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Dick Allen never wanted to go back.

When, at last, he was called up to the Phillies from the triple-A Arkansas Travelers at the end of the 1963 season, he immediately sold the car he drove to his home games at Travelers Field. Allen wanted to sever any connection to Little Rock, the place where he’d spent a lonely five months.

Decades after Allen’s playing career ended, his son, Richard Allen Jr., gave him a call. He had an idea about road-tripping to Arkansas together, interested to learn more about the place where his father’s career began.

“That would be like walking through a graveyard,” Allen Sr. said, and he hung up the phone.

Little Rock was one of the most difficult chapters of Allen’s life. He was the first Black player on the Travelers, living and playing in a civil rights battleground. Six years before he arrived, the Little Rock Nine integrated Central High. The Arkansas National Guard blocked Black students from entering the school less than three miles from where Allen played his home games.

Allen’s stories of his days in Little Rock, few and far between as those stories were, seemed almost mythical to his eldest son. It was his last stop before the major leagues. Allen was voted the Travelers’ most valuable player at the end of the season, slugging 33 home runs in 145 games.

» READ MORE: Dick Allen was one of baseball’s most misunderstood players. But in his hometown of Wampum, Pa., everyone ‘knows the truth’

In April, Allen Jr. decided to return to the place his father would not. He wanted to see the places he’d heard about and read about. He wanted to walk the same paths where his father had six decades ago, where he had been an unwitting trailblazer in hostile territory.

Allen died in 2020. His son’s trip south was also part of Allen Jr.’s effort to honor his father’s journey to Cooperstown that finally comes to fruition next week. Allen was elected posthumously to the National Baseball Hall of Fame by the Classic Era committee in December after decades of waiting, and will be inducted on Sunday.

As he prepared for his father’s induction, Allen Jr. toured many of the places that had helped shape Allen’s career. Little Rock was just one of the stops he made, trailed by a documentary crew. The film My Father, Dick Allen chronicles his journey and is set to be released in 2026.

In the back seat of an SUV, Allen Jr. peered out the window, taking in the residential neighborhood. He looked at the old houses as they passed by and wondered if they had been standing there in the ’60s, if his father had once looked at them, too.

Ferguson Jenkins was sitting in the passenger seat, recounting old battles against Allen from when Jenkins pitched for the Cubs.

“Hard and in,” Jenkins said. That was the only way to attack Allen and his 42-ounce bat, which would clobber anything left over the plate. “He hit some balls, they’re still hunting for them.”

His scouting report had been effective: Allen was 12-for-75 against Jenkins in his career, with only one home run. It probably helped that the two had been teammates. Before Jenkins became a Hall of Fame pitcher in Chicago, he’d spent the early years of his career in the Phillies organization.

For Dick Allen, his experience at Little Rock, Arkansas, was his superhero origin story, just like the planet Krypton for Superman.

For a brief time in 1963, Jenkins joined Allen in Little Rock. Together with Marcelino López, who was from Cuba, and Richie Quiroz, who was from Panama, they were the only players of color on the team. Jenkins, inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1991, was Allen Jr.’s link to the time his father spent in Arkansas. He had lived the reality of playing in the Jim Crow South as a Black man.

Driving the car was John Owens, while David Fletcher sat with Allen Jr. in the back seat. Both producers of the film, Owens and Fletcher co-authored Chili Dog MVP: Dick Allen, the ’72 White Sox and A Transforming Chicago, which details the chapter of Allen’s life spent on the South Side of Chicago.

“For Dick Allen,” said Fletcher, “his experience at Little Rock, Arkansas, was his superhero origin story, just like the planet Krypton for Superman.”

The first stop was Central High School.

The campus was quiet on a spring morning as the crew filmed B-roll on the front grounds. Allen Jr. and Jenkins walked together along the reflection pool next to the school’s front steps. It was a normal school day, as classes carried on inside the building.

A gas station across the street with white stucco walls and a red terracotta roof looked straight out of the past, preserved from the days when it had been the de facto headquarters for media covering the frenzy at the secondary school. What is today a sleepy residential street had once been lined with troops, as an angry mob sought to prevent nine Black teenagers from entering the school.

The landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education deemed segregation in public schools unconstitutional in 1954. There was widespread resistance to the court’s unanimous decision across the South, and it took three years and pressure from the local NAACP chapter for the Little Rock school board to adopt an integration plan.

» READ MORE: Visiting Dick Allen in the hospital made a 9-year-old realize that his hero was also human

Nine students were chosen based on their grades and attendance records to attend Central in the fall of 1957, guided by local civil rights activist Daisy Bates. In response, then-Gov. Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to block the students from entering the school.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower ultimately intervened, federalizing the Arkansas National Guard and ordering it to allow the nine students through. A mob of white protesters lined the street in front of Central, hurling racial abuse at the students.

Even when they were allowed inside, the Little Rock Nine faced continued harassment and abuse from their white peers. And before the following school year could begin, Faubus shut down all public high schools in Little Rock to prevent desegregation from continuing. They remained closed for the entire 1958-59 school year, which only further inflamed racial tensions in the city.

Six years after the events at Central High, Dick Allen played his first game for the Travelers. Also at Travelers Field that night, to throw out the ceremonial first pitch, was Orval Faubus.

On the way to their next stop at the Arkansas State Capitol and the Little Rock Nine memorial that stands in front of it, conversation in the SUV turned to Jenkins’ earliest days in Arkansas.

Jenkins, a 20-year-old Black pitcher from Chatham, Ontario, was unprepared for the racial strife in the Deep South. He had read about segregation in the newspaper in Canada, but had never experienced anything like it before.

“The manager, Frank Lucchesi [a future Phillies manager], was a smart guy. He told us when we got off that plane, ‘Don’t say anything,’” Jenkins said.

Jenkins made only four appearances for the Travelers that season, pitching to a 6.30 ERA in 10 innings, before being sent back down to the Phillies’ single-A affiliate in Miami. He made his major league debut in 1965 and was traded to the Cubs a year later. Jenkins went on to win 20 games in six consecutive seasons for the Cubs and became the first Canadian elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

While living in the South, Jenkins tried to avoid trouble. But sometimes it was hard to escape. On one occasion when he was in double A, Jenkins and two Black teammates walked by a sit-in protest at a restaurant in Georgia. They watched people crack eggs on the protesters’ heads.

“We just walked to the other side of the street,” Jenkins said. “You don’t want to be a part of it. All of a sudden, three prospects in the Phillies organization are arrested for something crazy.”

Allen had been equally unprepared for life under Jim Crow. He grew up in Wampum, Pa., a tight-knit community with a population just over 1,000, and one relatively free of racial conflict.

Allen wrote in his autobiography that he would not have been able to date his white high school crush. But Wampum High — a place he honored on the back of his jersey in his final major league season in 1977 — was integrated. He could eat at any restaurant he wanted, and his best friend, Bob Isabella, was white.

When Allen arrived in Arkansas, one of the first things he saw was a man at the airport carrying a sign that read, “LET’S NOT NEGRO-IZE OUR BASEBALL.”

“In Wampum we were welcome anywhere,” Allen said to Sports Illustrated in 1973. “I had heard about all that stuff, like the sign in the airport, but I never dreamed I’d be involved in it. I was scared.”

In Wampum we were welcome anywhere. I had heard about all that stuff, like the sign in the airport, but I never dreamed I’d be involved in it. I was scared.

Life in Little Rock looked different for Allen than it did for Jenkins.

Jenkins stayed with a host family, just off the campus of Philander Smith University, a historically Black school. He didn’t do much, he said, other than go to the ballpark and come home. He didn’t have a car, so the team had someone pick him up between 2:30 and 3 p.m. each game day and drive him to the stadium.

Allen, on the other hand, stayed at a Holiday Inn for three days after arriving in Arkansas, before a bellhop there connected him with the family of Melba Pattillo Beals, one of the Little Rock Nine. They rented him a room.

He had his own car, and was on his own for meals. Not that he had many options of places to eat.

While arrangements were made for visiting teams to eat in mixed-race company at certain restaurants, since Allen was not on a visiting team, he was turned away. He learned to heat cold takeout on a light bulb in his room, a habit he would carry with him throughout his life.

During games, closely surrounded by his infielders, Jenkins felt safe on the pitcher’s mound.

Allen, alone on an island in left field, did not.

Left field at Travelers Field, later renamed Ray Winder Field, was known as “the Dump” because of a ridge along the wall that made it a treacherous place for fielders. Allen transitioned to third base the following year as a Phillies rookie. But in 1963, he was an outfielder.

It was a sold-out crowd for the Travelers’ first game that year, and people picketed Allen’s presence. To get into the stadium, he had to walk by the same sort of racist signs he’d seen at the airport.

Allen dedicated a chapter of his 1989 autobiography, Crash, cowritten with Tim Whitaker, to his time in Little Rock. He recalled reciting Psalm 23, standing in the outfield before that first game. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.

When a fly ball came in his direction on the first play of the game, he froze and let it drop. “I missed the ball because I was scared,” he wrote. “I don’t mind saying it.”

He made up for it later in the game by hitting two doubles and scoring a run on a sacrifice fly in a 4-2 victory.

“I remember wanting to show those Little Rock folks my strength,” Allen wrote. “My inner strength.”

He left the game that night later than all of his teammates. His car was alone in the lot, with a note on the windshield that said DON’T COME BACK AGAIN N —

“There might be something more terrifying than being Black and holding a note that says n — in an empty parking lot in Little Rock,” Allen said in Crash. “But if there is, it hasn’t crossed my path yet.”

Allen continued hitting well throughout his time in Arkansas. But he also continued to live in fear. His car was vandalized on several more occasions. He was harassed by police officers. He received hate mail.

In a video played at the Phillies’ number retirement ceremony for Allen in 2020, he recounted calling his mother, Era Allen, on a pay phone early in his time in Little Rock. He told her he wanted to come home.

You listen to me, boy. Put that phone to your ear, can you hear me? Now, God gave you to me. He’s given you a talent, and a place to show it. And don’t you let ‘em drive you out.

“You listen to me, boy. Put that phone to your ear, can you hear me?” Era replied. “Now, God gave you to me. He’s given you a talent, and a place to show it. And don’t you let ’em drive you out.

“He’s given you that talent, and I’m your mother. If you do, you’re not being disobedient to me, you’re being disobedient to God.”

After ending the call, Allen wept. But then he started to realize that she could be right. He did want to play baseball, and he knew he was good at it. He felt his resolve harden.

“If they’re going to kill me,” he remembered thinking, “let them kill me right in that batter’s box.”

Allen was 21. He had not asked to be a trailblazer. He didn’t even know he was supposed to be one.

“I kept thinking,” he said at the time, “‘Why me?’”

The Little Rock Nine had been prepared, as much as they could be, by Bates, the civil rights activist, for what they were set to face. Her home, which has been preserved as a museum and was a stop on Allen Jr. and Jenkins’ tour through the city, was the Nine’s de facto headquarters.

Bates was president of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP, and ran the Black newspaper, The Arkansas Free Press, with her husband, L.C. Bates. The students were dropped off and picked up at the Bates house before and after school so they could arrive as a group. But that meant that the one-story house with yellow bricks became a target of violence from segregationists.

Shots were fired at the house by a passing car, a rock was thrown through the window, and crosses were burned on the lawn. As Allen Jr. stood in the front room of the Bates house nearly 70 years later, those stories struck a chord with him. During Allen’s first stint with the Phillies, a rock had been thrown through the window of his home, and trash had been dumped on the lawn.

The Bates house was equipped with an internal intercom system as a safety measure. Alone in Little Rock, Allen had no such preparation, and no such support system.

He believed that he was left in the minors as a punishment from general manager John Quinn for holding out for a $50 raise the year before. But Allen also theorized later that the Phillies had been using him as a pawn to break the color barrier in Arkansas, without giving him forewarning.

Little Rock was in danger of losing its team. The Southern Association, a segregated minor league, had collapsed in 1961, leaving the Travelers without a home. They did not field a team in 1962 but received the opportunity to join the International League and become the Phillies’ triple-A affiliate for the following year.

But to play in the International League, which had been integrated since Jackie Robinson played for the Montreal Royals in 1946, the Travelers needed a Black player.

Allen suspected later that no matter how well he hit, he was never going to be called up to the majors until the Travelers’ season ended. He had watched teammates with inferior stat lines receive call after call before him, until he was finally able to join the Phillies at the end of August.

None of this had ever been explained to Allen.

“Maybe if the Phillies had called me in, man-to-man, like the Dodgers had done with Jackie, and said, ‘Dick, this is what we have in mind. It will be very difficult, but we’re with you’ — at least I would have been better prepared,” Allen wrote in Crash. “I’m not saying I would have liked it. But I would have known what to expect.”

It wasn’t just the ballplayers who lived under the weight of segregation. Over lunch, Allen Jr. recounted a story he’d been told about his mother, Barbara Moore, going to visit Allen in Arkansas.

She needed to see a doctor during her trip, and stopped by an office in Little Rock. The receptionist said the doctor was out, and advised her to come back in an hour.

“And when you do,” the receptionist said, “can you use the side entrance?”

Allen was so anxious about his then-wife attending games that he made sure she sat above the Travelers’ dugout, where he could see her each time he came in from the field. He would tell Moore to buy all the concessions she wanted before the game started, so she wouldn’t have to leave her seat. He wanted her in his line of sight at all times.

Travelers Field itself was segregated. Black fans could only sit in certain sections, and had designated water fountains and washrooms.

Bill Brooks had been one of those fans. Brooks, now 75, starred on the track team at Central shortly after it became desegregated, and also spent five years in the St. Louis Cardinals organization. The documentary crew stopped by Brooks’ house for his perspective, as he had played 53 games with the Travelers in 1971 when they were St. Louis’ double-A affiliate. He even recalled playing against Allen in spring training. (“He just hit the ball so hard,” Brooks said.)

They were chasing us, yelling, ‘n—, n—, n—!’ And I said, ‘What is going on?’ We ran. We ran and ran as fast as we could, through the streets and through yards and everything, trying to get away.

But before all that, he remembered watching a Travelers game from a hole in a fence with his brother, at age 13 or 14. As they walked home afterward, a group of white kids in a truck started chasing them.

“They were chasing us, yelling, ‘n —, n —, n—!’” Brooks said. “And I said, ‘What is going on?’ We ran. We ran and ran as fast as we could, through the streets and through yards and everything, trying to get away.”

They wound up escaping by cutting through lawns where the truck couldn’t follow. Later, Brooks looked up the word that had been hurled at him and his brother in the dictionary. He didn’t know what it meant.

“The Webster Dictionary at that time said, ‘A dirty, unclean person,’” he said. “And I said, ‘Hmm, they don’t know me. I’m not dirty and I’m not unclean. So how can they call me names when they don’t know me?’”

When Allen Jr. graduated high school, his father gave him a golden medallion on a chain that depicted Jesus Christ on a cross. Allen used to have one just like it, but he lost it one day — Allen Jr. thinks probably at the racetrack, where his father spent time with the horses he was so fond of.

It was a reminder, Allen told his son. Anytime you go through a hardship, look at this and remember that nothing compares to what Christ endured. It was a lesson that had helped Allen himself through his time in Little Rock.

Allen Jr. had the chain soldered together so there’s no clasp. He wears it every day. He was wearing it when he and Jenkins visited what’s left of Ray Winder Field on an April afternoon.

The dump in left field has been paved over. All that remains is the scoreboard, looming over a hospital parking lot, a freeway bustling along behind it.

The group climbed out of the SUV to take it in. Looking at old photos of the stadium as reference, Jenkins and Allen Jr. oriented themselves, and realized they were standing near the spot where Allen infamously dropped the fly ball, 62 years ago.

“I remember him telling me that story,” Allen Jr. said. “His mind wasn’t in it, and he just froze.”

Later that night, the Travelers welcomed them back. Now the double-A affiliate of the Seattle Mariners, the team moved to Dickey-Stephens Park near the Arkansas River at the start of the 2007 season. Allen Jr. and Jenkins were set to throw a ceremonial first pitch before the Travelers’ game against the Midland RockHounds.

Jenkins spent time on the field chatting with the modern-era Travelers and signing for fans. And then he walked out to the mound with Allen Jr. The crowd greeted the Hall of Famer and the son of a Hall of Famer with an ovation as a picture of a young Allen and young Jenkins illuminated the scoreboard.

Standing on the infield grass and waving at the crowd, Allen Jr. was reminded of something he’d been told earlier on his journey. One of the documentary crew’s first trips had been to Allen’s hometown of Wampum. While they were filming at the high school gym, Allen Jr. was approached by a local councilman.

“You’re the closest thing right now that the world’s going to get to your father,” he told Allen Jr., “without him actually being here.”

Allen used to tell his son that he would hate to be in his shoes. He knew it would be difficult to bear his name and follow in his footsteps.

But that April evening, with a baseball in his hand and his father’s teammate by his side, Allen Jr. didn’t feel it as pressure. When he boarded the plane to leave Arkansas the next day, he would look out the window and wonder how Allen had survived what he went through.

But he also thought about bringing his son, Richard Allen III, back to Little Rock someday. He hopes to take him on a tour — hopefully the Ray Winder Field scoreboard will still be standing — and show him the history. And, of course, they’ll take in a Travelers game together.

“I was proud,” Allen Jr. said. “I was proud to be who I am.”