The Last Hero_ A Life Of Henry Aaron Part 1

The Last Hero_ A Life of Henry Aaron.

by Howard Bryant.

INTRODUCTION.

Nearing the crest of Manhattan's Upper East Side, all Henry Aaron wanted was a milk shake. It was June, and the weather was humid-an uncomfortable day gathering momentum toward oppressive.

Initially, the line out front wasn't much, just a couple of kids in baseball caps and shorts, holding baseb.a.l.l.s and cellophane-protected glossies. Then it grew longer, sloping eagerly down Ninety-third street toward Second Avenue. New York had never been one of Henry's favorite cities, yet he had awakened on this particular Sat.u.r.day at 4:00 a.m. so he could catch a 6:15 a.m. flight from Atlanta to La Guardia.

This autograph signing was the latest example of concept marketing: an event held in an upscale ice-cream parlor that doubled as a high-end memorabilia store. The idea that the upper-middle-cla.s.s gentry from Westchester and North Jersey would spend their disposable income on mint chocolate chip cones and autographed three-hundred-dollar baseball jerseys was the brainchild of Brandon Steiner, the head of New York collectibles juggernaut Steiner Sports.

Inside the brightly colored, baseball-themed storefront sat Henry Aaron, seventy-four years old, in an air-conditioned back room across from clear plastic containers of Gummi Bears, Swedish Fish, and bobblehead dolls. Behind a folding table, Henry was flanked by candy and enough photographic evidence of his life to suggest a forensic exhibit.

There were black-and-whites from his high-flying days in Milwaukee, when he was all muscle and torque and potential; there were plastic blue-and-white batting helmets with the cursive letter A A, for the Atlanta Braves, and pictures of when Hank hit a home run in the 1972 All-Star Game, played in Atlanta, the first major-league All-Star Game played in the Deep South. And there were snapshots of his jaunty, jowly American League finale, the career National Leaguer sporting the powder blue double knits of the Milwaukee Brewers.

Overwhelming it all were images from the night of April 8, 1974, at AtlantaFulton County Stadium. The images recorded that evening showed the follow-through from the batter's box, when his eyes lit up, and the moment he'd made impact. They showed the two kids catching up with him as he crossed the plate. They showed Joe Ferguson, the dumpy Los Angeles catcher, looking as though he were standing on the wrong subway platform. And they showed Hank Aaron holding up the historic ball returned to him by the teammate who had caught it, relief pitcher Tom House.

The line gathered outside and Henry girded. He knew it was time to reach into himself and get into character and become, once again, Hank Aaron. Each of the hundreds of photographs of the moment that had made him an international hero filled Henry with a special sense of dread.

This had been true for the last fifty-five years, this uneasy relationship. Inside, Aaron would do an in-store interview with ESPN Radio, trying to sound as though he actually cared about baseball in 2008, about which of today's players reminded him of himself (none!), and whether Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez could hit eight hundred home runs. ("I don't get to see him much," Hank said, "except in the play-offs and World Series.") During a commercial break, a perky staffer filling a waffle cone promised Henry she would make him a milk shake. ("Coming right up!") Henry stood up and stretched a bit while the eyes on him-from the few dozen fans inside the store to the throng still waiting on the sidewalk, tapping on the gla.s.s-bulged at the sight of him. They didn't yell, just stared at him, soaking in the deep creases of his face, the protruding belly, the white tennis shoes, and the limp, a souvenir from knee surgery that had left him on crutches for virtually the entire winter.

The ones who didn't speak tried to attract his attention with hand gestures and provocative clothing (a middle-aged woman sporting a Mets cap and cottage-cheese thighs, backpack slung over both shoulders, wore a T-shirt that read 755: THE REAL HOME RUN RECORD 755: THE REAL HOME RUN RECORD). He smiled politely, wading easily through the crowd, unpretentiously close physically yet at a complicated emotional remove.

The words from the crowd solidified for him the idea that Hank was a necessary creation, a public conduit for his considerable fame, his tremendous ability, which had been sculpted into legend, and it was this distance, impossible to navigate, between what he represented to them and who he was, that Henry Aaron truly detested the most. The most obvious clue could be found in the name itself, for n.o.body who really knew him ever called him Hank. Well, almost n.o.body. Only one member of the inner circle, a kid Henry had met back in 1966, ever got away with calling him Hank. Henry had promised Johnnie and Christine Baker that he would take care of their son Dusty when he arrived in his first spring camp, and maybe that was why the rules were a little different for Dusty Baker.

To everybody else who mattered, he was Henry. Neither his first wife, Barbara, nor his second, Billye, ever called him Hank. As a boy, his name was Henry. That was what his mother and father and all seven siblings knew him by. His best friend from grade school, Cornelius Giles? To him, he was Henry. When he'd first entered the big leagues a lifetime earlier, the name was how he differentiated the familiar, the friendly, from the rest. "When he first came up, if you called him 'Hank,' he wouldn't even hear you," recalled Billy Williams, who grew up close to Henry in Whistler, Alabama, a fingertip's reach from Mobile. "I remember we were in Chicago one day and everybody was yelling for him. They were screaming, 'Hank! Hank!' and he just kept walking. Then, when everything died down, I said, 'Henry!' and he immediately turned around. That meant you were a familiar face. That meant you knew him, and that was the only way he'd ever turn around."

The adorning of him as the people's champion ("You're still the home run king, Hank!") did not evoke a response. He did not respond to the dozen offhanded variations of the same theme-the Barry Bonds question. It was the public's way to broach the unspeakable, and by his total lack of reaction, you would have thought the numbers that used to define him-714, 715, and 755-as well as the names of Mays, Ruth, and Bonds, were by now just street noise to him.

The names and iconic statistics are, of course, much more than that and the oceanic s.p.a.ce between the public Hank, who avoids confrontation, and the private Henry, who is clear and pa.s.sionate and committed, explain why he can never do enough or say enough to satisfy supporters thirsty not only for his statesmanship but his fire. Bonds was where the collision between Hank and Henry was often the fiercest, where the facade came closest to dissolution. It was Hank, the public man, the legend, who wished Barry well in his quest to break the all-time home run record, who avoided controversy. It was Hank Aaron who publicly drove down the avenue of gracious cliche. Records were made to be broken, he would say. He had enjoyed his time as the record holder, and now it was time for someone else to take over.

Aaron would be called bitter, an a.s.sessment that hurt him deeply. Henry would often say he wanted the people to know him, yet he was convinced that all the public wanted to know about was Hank. "People don't care about me. They don't care about the things that made me into the person I am," he said one wintry day in January 2008. "They don't care that I raised five children and try to help people do whatever they can to get the most out of their lives, to allow them to chase their dreams. All they care to talk about is that I hit seven hundred and fifty-five home runs or what I hit on a threetwo pitch. There is so much more to me than that." The s.p.a.ce between Hank and Henry wasn't supposed to be such difficult terrain. He was supposed to be like Reggie or Ruth, Ted Williams and John Wayne, where the person and the legend meshed so seamlessly that the individual became became the myth. And whatever gulfs did exist, Henry believed most people felt it just wasn't their problem. The fans didn't care that what drove him was not the unremarkable desire simply to be left alone (many superstars before and after him were uncomfortable with the demands of fame), but the wish to use the enormous advantage of his talent, first to avenge the devastating limitations racism placed on previous generations of Aaron men, and, second, like Robinson, to be complete, to develop an important voice on important subjects beyond the dugout. the myth. And whatever gulfs did exist, Henry believed most people felt it just wasn't their problem. The fans didn't care that what drove him was not the unremarkable desire simply to be left alone (many superstars before and after him were uncomfortable with the demands of fame), but the wish to use the enormous advantage of his talent, first to avenge the devastating limitations racism placed on previous generations of Aaron men, and, second, like Robinson, to be complete, to develop an important voice on important subjects beyond the dugout.

Henry believed the fans had no interest in these concepts, in his moral indignation; they just wanted Hank. He was on their baseball card. He was supposed to make them happy, and for all his gifts on the baseball field, Henry Aaron lacked the oratory skills and unrestrained charisma (he loathed public speaking) to bridge the gap between Henry's smoldering drive and Hank's reticent celebrity. Roxanne Spillett, a friend and philanthropic partner of Henry, said, "When I think of Henry Aaron, I see an introvert in an extrovert's role. Anyone who has ever been put in that position knows just how difficult it truly is."

To memorabilia collectors, Henry was nothing but a commodity. They were the ones who pushed the bats in the man's large hands, their eyes cold marbles, devoid of nostalgia or awe. They were the ones who demanded specifics. ("This one has has to say to say seven hundred and fifteenth home run seven hundred and fifteenth home run, not seven hundred and fifteen home runs.") The ones in line who weren't, however, who waited in the heat to trudge an inch closer to him, they were the ones who told him stories (or at least tried; the line had to keep moving) about what Hank Aaron meant to them, then and now. He was their happiness before and, in a baseball universe ethically complicated and corrupted by drugs and money, the person they looked to for their conscience today. ("I just want you to know you're the real real home run champion.") It was Hank whom the public came to see, and each and every one of them, in their shorts and tank tops and Yankees and Mets caps, stared into the lines of the old man's face, hoping-in fact, begging-to make eye contact, so that when their turn to have their picture signed of Hank breaking the record or a souvenir baseball or their tattered copy of his face on the cover of the home run champion.") It was Hank whom the public came to see, and each and every one of them, in their shorts and tank tops and Yankees and Mets caps, stared into the lines of the old man's face, hoping-in fact, begging-to make eye contact, so that when their turn to have their picture signed of Hank breaking the record or a souvenir baseball or their tattered copy of his face on the cover of the New York Daily News New York Daily News, April 9, 1974 ("Mr. Aaron, I just wanted you to know that I've been saving this newspaper for thirty-four years.... Just to meet you ... this is my pleasure....") finally came, they would find just the right words with just the right pitch that would separate them from the rest, and their words alone would bridge their distance, personalizing for him the impersonal ch.o.r.e of signing merchandise for money.

And they all so desperately wanted different slices of the same pie: for him to soak in his moment back in 1974 and carry it with him with ease and joviality and reverence, as they did. They approached the line and pleaded with their eyes for him to regale them with a story and a laugh about 715, an anecdote, one gold nugget from the man himself about that night, which would make his glory a little bit more theirs.

Henry would not accommodate this request; a photo and a handshake and a signature would have to be enough. When he did pause with a glint of energy in his eye, it was not for a fan who had triggered a warm baseball memory; it was at the moment he looked to his left up at the television, put down the vanilla milk shake he had finally been handed, and saw the tennis player Venus Williams finish off her match in the Wimbledon quarterfinals.

"It's going to be Venus and Serena," Henry said. "And Venus is going to win the whole thing again."

Henry always enjoyed the interaction with people that came with being Hank, but rarely the duty itself. Brandon Steiner would hand over a check for more than ten thousand dollars to Henry (Hammerin' Hank Enterprises, to be exact), who would, in turn, donate the money to the Friendship Baptist Church in Atlanta, the church he'd been attending for forty years. He was ruefully cognizant that Hank was the one who provided the fuel, generated the interest, and provided the platform for Henry to exist as a person whom universities would line up to offer honorary degrees to, whom corporate CEOs would pay tens of thousands of dollars to play a round of golf with, and whom governors and presidents would listen to.

Hank made all that possible, and Henry knew it. With Hank's popular muscle, Henry could continue to grow even more iconic, even bigger in his nearly invisible, powerful way, like that horrible day in 2007 when the Bluffton College team bus skidded off Interstate 75 in Atlanta, killing five members of the baseball team. Henry sat by the bedside of one of the survivors, a boy in a coma, whom Henry had never met in his life, never telling a soul about the visit. That was Henry, elevated above the creation of Hank and his nemesis, Willie Mays, who would never acknowledge that Hank had been every bit his equal in spikes and had soared far past him when the final outs of their careers were recorded. "Willie," a Henry confidant told me bitterly, "Willie ceased being a person the day he retired. Who did Willie ever help except Willie?"

Without Hank, there were no platforms that would, he believed, give Henry a greater and more lasting significance, one that would rival whatever Hank had done in the outfield. There was only Henry Aaron of Mobile, Alabama, making deathly sure he did not look whites in the eye, a man with much to say but with no platform from which to say it.

And all of them, especially the round-bellied sports fan high rollers, would make the same mistake: They believed the way to get to Hank was to mention 715 more lovingly than they spoke of their own children, unaware of, or just tone-deaf to, the nuances (warning signs, all) that so much of that night had suffocated him like a boa. He would grow silent and distant, and they would call him bitter. Perhaps they should have listened to Henry a little bit more during those few times when he let his considerable guard down.

"It still hurts a little bit inside, because I think it has chipped away at a part of my life that I will never have again. I didn't enjoy myself. It was hard for me to enjoy something that I think I worked very hard for," he had said a decade earlier. "G.o.d had given me the ability to play baseball, and people in this country kind of chipped away at me. So, it was tough. And all of those things happened simply because I was a black person."

He had been living with the conflict for over half a century, was convinced n.o.body cared about the price of the moment that gave them so much joy, and so Henry retrenched and let Hank play pretend, dutifully and professionally signing everything-lithographs, batting helmets, bats, baseball cards-with the remove and distance of an insurance agent. Like an insurance agent, being Hank was, after all, a job.

Yet he did not blame them for loving Hank without understanding Henry-or, more accurately, for not making the distinction between the two men who lived in one body, each providing the foundation for the other-by being surly and churlish. Hundreds of fans arrived at an ice-cream shop for their wide-angle view of 715, and he obliged.

When the afternoon of make-believe had ended, both parties were satisfied. The public was ecstatic: Fathers and sons and mothers and daughters got to see Hank, got to breathe his air. He especially softened for the impatient, uncomprehending children born three decades after he'd swung his last bat, all of them unsure why their wistful and dutiful fathers were pushing them in front of this grayed, unfamiliar man, and even more bewildered why they spoke with reverence in their creaking voices instead of displaying unbending fatherly authority. ("Son, take a good look at this man.... You're going to tell your grandkids about this.") Henry won, too, for he was one step closer to sending Hank away permanently, secure in the knowledge that at this stage, the days of make-believe would become even fewer. Henry left the room, shaking hands with the staff, signing one last round of stuff while thanking them for a "pretty good milk shake." "I wasn't sure I was gonna get it," he said cheerfully, "but I'm glad I did." He seemed more convinced than ever before that it was time to head to West Palm Beach, to the secluded home he had built, where he could say good-bye to Hank Aaron and his glossies, his Sharpies, his enormous shadow and public obligations, in favor of Henry.

"You know what the hardest thing is? What n.o.body wants to understand-is me. People want their memories of me to be my memories of me," Henry Aaron said. "But you know what? They're not."

PART ONE.

ESCAPE.

CHAPTER ONE.

HERBERT.

DURING THE QUIET times, always in a small group, or more preferably, a one-on-one setting-in the back of a cab on the way to the airport, over dinner after an exhausting afternoon of smiles, greetings, and waving to the aggressive gaggle of fanatics that always made him nervous-he would try and let people in, try to help them understand him. Henry Aaron would drift back, far past his life and his own individual achievements. You had to go back to the first decade of the last century, and then flip the calendar back further still into the bitter contradictions his people lived, to the land of the ghosts that forever remained inside of him. He would try to explain rural Alabama, across the southern Black Belt into the corner of America that created him. times, always in a small group, or more preferably, a one-on-one setting-in the back of a cab on the way to the airport, over dinner after an exhausting afternoon of smiles, greetings, and waving to the aggressive gaggle of fanatics that always made him nervous-he would try and let people in, try to help them understand him. Henry Aaron would drift back, far past his life and his own individual achievements. You had to go back to the first decade of the last century, and then flip the calendar back further still into the bitter contradictions his people lived, to the land of the ghosts that forever remained inside of him. He would try to explain rural Alabama, across the southern Black Belt into the corner of America that created him.

Even the name, "Black Belt," meant different things to different people, spoke of conflicting layers. Some people said its origin derived from the dark hue of the southern soil, moist as a chocolate cake. Others said the name referred to the immense financial potential of the land, which offered such lucrative possibilities that its owners would always be, at least according to financial ledger, in the black.

And yet for others still, the etymology of the Black Belt simply described those black people, Henry's people, whose dark hands dug deep into the land every day for centuries, from sunrise to dusk, whose feet trudged thanklessly across acres of unrelenting realities: the richest land in the country would always be worked by the poorest people-once for free, and then for pennies.

It was into this life that the original Henry Aaron was born, on December 20, 1884. In the spring of 1910, a part-time federal employee named Louis J. Bryant combed an important southern set-piece-the wide swath of cotton fields and dirt roads-collecting data for the United States government. In late May of that year, he arrived at Camden, the venerable county seat of Wilc.o.x County. Rich in harvestable soil and advantageous geography, Wilc.o.x County had been one of the richest cotton-producing counties in Alabama during most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From Camden, the Alabama River twisted southward, then turned into the Mobile River before emptying free into the Gulf of Mexico.

Slavery had long been the lifeblood of Wilc.o.x County. Paddleboats carrying cotton and tobacco crowded the Alabama, but it was the transportation of slaves from down the river that gave Wilc.o.x County its special economic power. So important were slaves to the financial fortunes of the region that whenever a prominent slave ship docked in Canton Bend-the county seat during slave times-town business effectively stopped. Auctions for newly arrived blacks commenced promptly at noon each Thursday, and the ships that served Wilc.o.x County were so well known for producing quality slave manpower that Canton Bend bankers would close early on Thursdays in order to attend auctions in the town's center. The custom was so deeply ingrained into the fabric of Wilc.o.x County that even a century later, after slavery had become only a haunting memory, many southern banks in the old Black Belt areas still closed at noon midweek. Just before the Civil War, the county seat was moved from Canton Bend to Camden, and its preemanc.i.p.ation customs moved along with it.

The black population of Wilc.o.x underscored the county's economic reliance on slavery. According to the 1860 census, twenty-six blacks were listed in the county rolls as "free colored," but each lived uneasily, in constant danger of being captured and resold into slavery. Government records show 905 whites owning 17,797 African slaves. Even with a relatively low white population (slightly under seven thousand), Wilc.o.x County nevertheless held the ninth-highest total of slaves in Alabama and the nineteenth-highest in the entire country.

The county was run by influential families with deep Confederate pedigrees. The two leading family names in Wilc.o.x were Tait and Gee. The Gees were the first white inhabitants of the county, and the northernmost arch of the river was named Gee's Bend, after the ten-thousand-acre cotton plantation settled on the banks by Joseph Gee. The Gees facilitated slave trades between the family estates in North Carolina and Wilc.o.x County, while the Taits routinely enjoyed the privilege of having among the highest number of slaves in the county, and generations of Tait men, led first by the patriarch, Charles Tait, would hold prominent positions both in southern politics and social circles. Powerful Confederate organizations, such as the Daughters of the Confederacy, were, in part, founded in Wilc.o.x County. Slavery and cotton combined dominated the economy, and the Tait name was an affluent one, the family exploiting one of the most profitable of slave-trading corridors in the state. A few years after Bryant's visit, on April 1, 1913, another former slave owner recorded his recollections for the state archives in a typed letter: My Dear Sir,1Your favor of recent date received. I take pleasure in furnishing the following information regarding slavery.CABINS AND QUARTERSThe cabins were generally one- and two-roomed. They were constructed of pine poles, had plank windows and floors and were ceiled.The slaves were required to make their own furniture. This was plain, nude, and consisted mainly of a table, benches and a few chairs.The cabins had one and two rooms. A slave family was housed in a two room cabin. The rooms were all ceiled up well, and were very comfortable in the winter.CLOTHING, SHOES, ETC ...The slaves were furnished with good warm clothing which was made of kerseys and osnaburg. They were allowed four suits a year. These were made by the white women and the negro seamstresses on the place. The "Lady of the White House" superintended the making.FOODTheir food mainly consisted of bacon, bread, potatoes and peas. 3 to 4 pounds of meat was the allowance per week. They had little "extra patches" which they worked at odd times and made money to purchase extras had little "extra patches" which they worked at odd times and made money to purchase extras.They did their cooking at night for the following day. They generally ate their breakfast at home and carried their dinner to the fields in a little bucket.WORK AT THE HOUSE, IN THE FIELD, IN TOWN, ETC ...Their work was mainly ploughing, hoeing, and splitting rails, and any work that would naturally be performed at a plantation. The work hours was from sun-up to sun-down. They were allowed holidays on Christmas and 4th July.

The region, like the nation, collectively could not envision a world without slavery. In Wilc.o.x County, slaves were not merely purchased but also bred by slaveholders, with the intention of creating a workforce in perpetuity. In The Reins of Power The Reins of Power, his memoir of growing up in Wilc.o.x County, Clinton McCarty wrote that when James Asbury Tait, son of Charles Tait, the first federal judge from Alabama and later a U.S. senator, inherited the family business following his father's death, he perfected the practice of maximizing the financial value of slaves.

Charles Tait rejected the convention of paying more for slave boys, McCarty wrote, and instead would pay an average of $625 for girls. Because any baby born to a slave became by law the property of the plantation owner, Tait set out upon breeding his future workforce, routinely paying as much as fifty dollars more for slave girls just reaching p.u.b.erty than for teenage boys. The Tait plantation, for example, owned 180 slaves in 1835, but between 1819 and 1834, Tait estimated that fifty-eight slaves were born on his property.

In the surviving family business journals, James A. Tait left a portrait of his slaves' living conditions and their necessity in providing labor for the Tait plantation. In memorandums t.i.tled "The Sickly Season" and "Negro Housing," he wrote: More care must be always be taken2 about health during the sickly season than at other times.... There is more danger to Negroes picking cotton than any other, the hot sun shining on their backs whilst stooping.... 30,000 lbs of cotton total Negroes equal to 18 bales ... crop of 1837.... Negroes housing ought to be moved regularly once in two or three years ... this is essential to health. The filth acc.u.mulates under the floors so much in two years to cause disease. This is cheaper and easier than to pay doctors and nurse sick wages. The putrid threat that prevailed so fataly about health during the sickly season than at other times.... There is more danger to Negroes picking cotton than any other, the hot sun shining on their backs whilst stooping.... 30,000 lbs of cotton total Negroes equal to 18 bales ... crop of 1837.... Negroes housing ought to be moved regularly once in two or three years ... this is essential to health. The filth acc.u.mulates under the floors so much in two years to cause disease. This is cheaper and easier than to pay doctors and nurse sick wages. The putrid threat that prevailed so fataly [sic] [sic] in the winter of 1837, 38 was caused by the filth under the houses, and I have no doubt 4 little Negroes died of it. in the winter of 1837, 38 was caused by the filth under the houses, and I have no doubt 4 little Negroes died of it.

During the Reconstruction years, when the plantation system gave way to sharecropping, blacks in Wilc.o.x County fared no better than they had prior to emanc.i.p.ation. By 1890, well after the war, blacks outnumbered whites by four to one, the slavery system was dead, and the depression in cotton harvesting had dramatically reversed the affluent position of many whites, but the culture in Wilc.o.x County of whites living in complete dominion over blacks endured. The ensuing result was a region that housed thousands of blacks working the unforgiving land, generation following hopeless generation, prospects as bleak as the granite sky. The topography of the county had virtually guaranteed that change, if at all, would take place at a lethargic pace. The river opened into a teardrop called Millers Ferry, which isolated the portions of the county-such as Gee's Bend-that had yet to be bridged, leaving the great plantations essentially walled off from the rest of the area. As one visiting writer observed, "Gee's Bend represents not merely a geographic configuration drawn by the yellow pencil of the river. Gee's Bend represents another civilization. Gee's Bend is an Alabama Africa. There is no more concentrated and racially exclusive Negro population in any rural community in the South than in Gee's Bend."

Over the days Louis Bryant visited Camden, he discovered just how little life had changed for the black people of Wilc.o.x County. The homes that bordered the pockmarked dirt roads were virtually identical to those that had been written about in the old letter: dilapidated wood-planked cabins that had once been slave quarters balanced unevenly on wooden blocks to protect the rough pine floors against worms and flooding, the rot the moist Alabama soil so easily accelerated. The raised floor also provided marginal relief against the intense heat of the summer months-just enough so little kids could play and cool off underneath the houses. The roofs were comprised of a patchwork of rectangular shingles varying in length. The cabins were spartan, having only one or two rooms, a woodstove with cook-top, and a small four-paned window on each side, patched with newspaper to insulate its borders. Some cabins were constructed with pine logs, insulated by a crude combination of mud and gra.s.s. Bryant's recordings would be included in the vast database that would become the thirteenth Census of the United States.

Bryant recorded on May 23, 1910, that Henry Aaron lived with his family in a rented cabin on 325 Clifton Road in Camden. The 1910 census listed Henry as twenty-five years old, the head of the household, living with his twenty-three-year-old wife, Mariah, born 1887, and their eighteen-month-old son, Herbert, born October 24, 1908. Family members would describe Henry as a man who did not speak unless spoken to and who was slow to come to his opinions of people, but once he had reached a conclusion, his a.s.sessments were firm and accurate. Once he had become a famous baseball player, Henry would often say not only that he had been named after his grandfather, whom he referred to as "Papa Henry," but also that he owed his methodical approach to work and his deliberate style of communication not to Herbert, his father, but to Papa Henry.

Papa Henry told the census taker that both he and Mariah had been born in Alabama, as had their parents. His occupation was listed as a "laborer" who worked as a "general farmer." According to the census, Papa Henry could neither read nor write and had never attended formal school. Mariah, according to the same data, was recorded as able to read and write and was listed as being school-educated, making her one of the very few blacks on Clifton Road who had attended school. Mariah was among a small percentage of blacks in Wilc.o.x reported to be literate.

Official doc.u.ments paint a skeletal picture of Papa Henry's roots. A bas.e.m.e.nt fire at the Commerce Department in 1921 destroyed most of the data from the 1890 census, leaving little, if any, paper trail to Henry's father, who was likely either one of the last children born into slavery or part of the first generation of southern blacks born free in the United States. Poor record keeping, gaps in memory, and, most disastrously, the disinterest in the black community expressed by local and federal record keepers-the official term to describe this phenomenon was undercounted undercounted-would leave mysterious but not uncommon holes in the family story. The irony was that it was easier to keep track of blacks in captivity-slaves were, after all, property no different from a horse or a wagon or a house-than the freedmen who comprised the first generation of postCivil War American blacks.

When the census was done again in Camden ten years later, on January 24, 1920, the census taker, a man named Joseph H. Cook, recorded the family name as "Aron." Cook reported that that the Aarons now had six children: Herbert, eleven; Cottie, nine; Mandy, seven; Olive, seven; William, five; and James, three. Herbert would say in later interviews there would be six more children. "I am the oldest of twelve children and father of six," Herbert told an interviewer in 1985. Age would always pose a riddle throughout the family. On the 1920 form, Mariah, whom Henry and his siblings called "Mama Sis," was listed as being born in 1894, making her seven years younger than she was listed as being on the 1910 report, which would have made her fourteen years old when Herbert was born.

Like most people connected to Wilc.o.x County, the Aarons were touched by the enormous shadow of the Tait dynasty. Charles Tait's grandson, Robert, was a Confederate captain, and in 1860, he owned 148 slaves. During the ruthless white reclamation of power that dissolved Reconstruction, the foundation of the sharecropper system was born and blacks who had once worked the land as slaves now tended to the same land as free blacks, and for many-because of the illegitimate bookkeeping and other shady practices that left blacks in a perpetual state of debt-there was no escape from the system. According to the 1920 census, Papa Henry and his family lived next door to Frank S. Tait, Charles Tait's great-grandson. The Taits were the only white family on the street, suggesting that the black families on that street rented their housing from the Taits and worked the family land accordingly as sharecroppers. This was almost certainly true in the case of Papa Henry, whose World War I civilian registration card listed F. S. Tait as his employer.

As a boy, Herbert worked the fields in Camden, picking cotton into his teens. Though public records are unclear, it is likely at some point or another he worked the enormous Tait property, as had his father.

Herbert was restless and dreaded a life of dreary, hopeless agrarianism. The routine in Camden had not changed for a century: work the land for nonexistent wages, with little chance for self-improvement or respect from the white community, which for the better part of two centuries had held absolute power. In later interviews, he would say the members of his family lived in the fields and the church. As he grew older, he was aware of an important, curious phenomenon: Many blacks he knew were leaving Wilc.o.x-for Mobile, and even Chicago and California-and he decided he would be one of them. From the time of Herbert's birth, in 1908, up until his twentieth birthday, the black population in Wilc.o.x County dropped nearly 30 percent.

And yet, despite the obvious contradictions, whites still clung to the old paternalisms. In The Reins of Power The Reins of Power, Clinton McCarty recalled the prevailing att.i.tude regarding blacks in Wilc.o.x County during the time Herbert Aaron was coming of age in Camden: Blacks as a race were commented3 on in routine white conversation mostly in terms of the care they needed, the trouble they caused, or the anecdotes and jokes they lent themselves to. Except for those long loyal to and productive for one's family, they were said to be lazy, shiftless, promiscuous, addicted to petty theft, quick to ingratiate for a purpose, childlike in their intellectual capacity; on more than one occasion, I heard adult white males address adult black males in the sort of sing-song cadence usually heard when adults talk to small children. Blacks were described as incapable of good taste, humorous in their speech, often amusingly animated in their actions. But with it all they were credited with being the occasional sources of heart-of-the-matter descriptions and homely wisdom. Always there was the suggestion that whites were still the blacks' truest friends ... and would come to their aid in time of trouble. on in routine white conversation mostly in terms of the care they needed, the trouble they caused, or the anecdotes and jokes they lent themselves to. Except for those long loyal to and productive for one's family, they were said to be lazy, shiftless, promiscuous, addicted to petty theft, quick to ingratiate for a purpose, childlike in their intellectual capacity; on more than one occasion, I heard adult white males address adult black males in the sort of sing-song cadence usually heard when adults talk to small children. Blacks were described as incapable of good taste, humorous in their speech, often amusingly animated in their actions. But with it all they were credited with being the occasional sources of heart-of-the-matter descriptions and homely wisdom. Always there was the suggestion that whites were still the blacks' truest friends ... and would come to their aid in time of trouble.

Herbert had been secretly dating a young girl, also from Wilc.o.x County, named Stella, whose family names were Pritchett and Underwood. In the records, Estella's birth year ranged from 1909 to 1912, and the exact dates of her family origins would also remain unclear, even to the family.

Herbert had plans to leave Camden, with its grim prospects. He was heading for Mobile. Herbert and Stella waited until she was old enough to leave town, but in 1927, Stella became pregnant and the two moved south down the river, four hours from Mobile. Later that year, Stella gave birth to their first child, Sarah, most likely out of wedlock. As much as movie theaters and water fountains, city records were segregated during those days, and the records of blacks were not nearly as accurate as those of whites. According to Book 36 of the Mobile Colored Marriage License Book, page 503, Herbert and Stella Aaron were married in Mobile on August 22, 1929, by justice of the peace and notary public Thomas B. Allmann. On his marriage certificate, Herbert spelled the family name "Aron," and he was listed as twenty-two years of age, five eight, and weighing 142 pounds. Stella was listed as nineteen years of age, five seven, and weighing 115 pounds. The license book stated both were Protestant and were marrying for the first time.

The original surname, the first one the clan would claim as a free American family, had been Aaron. As the country moved through the wrenching antebellum period, the hope and disappointment of Reconstruction, and then the subsequent establishment of Jim Crow as the southern rule of law, the Aaron name would move along with it. For a man who would carry his name with an eaglelike pride, Henry recalled his name weathering numerous variations, from Aron to Arron and occasionally Aarron, a stinging byproduct of the lack of educational opportunities afforded blacks at the turn of the twentieth century. By 1930, the family name had returned to its biblical origins, and would not change.

"Our name changed often,"4 Henry would explain. "My mother and father, they could not read or write, and so it was spelled differently many times over the years." Henry would explain. "My mother and father, they could not read or write, and so it was spelled differently many times over the years."

Herbert Aaron had come to Mobile as a slender nineteen-year-old without prospects beyond labor, and although he was unable to read or write, he was determined nevertheless that life would be better for him than it had been for his father. He considered himself religious-he attended Episcopal Sunday services in Mobile-but, unlike his predecessors, did not envision a life rooted in the church.

In Mobile, work was plentiful but unpredictable in its reliability. Mobile was Alabama's main port city, and in the years following World War I, it boasted a growing economy and a diversity of jobs. This optimism stood in strong contrast to the city's sagging economic fortunes in the decades following the Civil War. In later years, when his son grew famous, Herbert would tell interviewers that, in terms of manual labor, he had done it all. In Camden, he had picked cotton, as well as operated heavy machinery and motorized farm equipment. According to city records, Herbert and Stella moved to 1170 Elmira Street in Down the Bay, one of the two major residential areas for blacks inside of Mobile's city limits. Rent was six dollars per month. In the Mobile city directory, Herbert listed his first job as a laborer, and later he drove a truck for the Southall Coal Company.

Down the Bay was situated in the southern part of the city, blocks away from the idyllic magnolia-lined beauty of Government Street, bordered by the Magnolia Cemetery to the south, Government Street to the north, and Cedar and Ann streets to the east and west, respectively. Demographically, Down the Bay was poor, unemployment high. The neighborhood was primarily black, but, unlike Davis Avenue-the main thoroughfare, which served as the center of the other predominately black section of Mobile-not without diversity. The 1930 census listed fifteen dwellings on Elmira Street, seven white households, eight black. Whites lived on each end of Elmira, the blacks in the middle. To the north, by contrast, was Davis Avenue, once known as Stone Street and then renamed before the Civil War for Jefferson Davis. It was called "Darkey Town" by blacks and whites alike before adopting the more modern and proud nickname "the Avenue."

To northerners, Mobile seemed both formidable and chilling. The city was situated in the deepest part of the Deep South, just miles from the Mississippi border, a frightening pocket of intolerance, where good people who said or did the wrong things might just disappear. To white and black southerners alike, however, Mobile was one of the more livable cities for blacks. Bienville Square, with its rushing alabaster water fountain and softly blossomed magnolias and oaks, represented the best of Mobile for its whites, the middle- and upper-cla.s.s gentry, and on special days-birthdays, holidays-the white poor. The park represented southern beauty, especially on those perfect spring days before the heat soared, and for a time in the late nineteenth century, both blacks and whites had come to see Bienville Square as a place representative of all of the city's residents.

Both races, naturally, came to resent the northern view of Mobile as another intractable southern monolith. It was not uncommon for blacks to rise to the defense of Mobile as an example of southern tolerance. One of the reasons Mobilians tended to take a more benign view of race relations was due to its population. Unlike Wilc.o.x County, where a small number of whites controlled four times as many blacks, the white population in Mobile hovered around 50 percent.

By the time Herbert and Stella arrived, legal and social segregation had been firmly entrenched for nearly two decades, and in that regard Mobile was no different from the rest of the South. Locals believed that despite the law, daily accommodations had allowed both blacks and whites to live in relative dignity. It was an idea, of course, that rested on the notion that moderation resided in the eye of the beholder. If you were the ones on top, daily life might have been fine, acceptable, without the coa.r.s.e and brutal edge of, say, Birmingham.

If you were black and did not upset the social order, it was not necessary to live in fear. Moderation also depended on one's standard of measurement, and in the South, the measure had always been Birmingham, two hundred miles to the north, centered in the heart of the Black Belt, both in the agricultural and racial sense. The locals would always use the backbreaking rigidity of Birmingham as the standard, and the contrast always worked in Mobile's favor. Compared to Birmingham, Mobile appeared almost sleepy.

Part of the reason for this was its quirky history. Where most regions in the South were demarcated by the oppressive and linear weight of slavery, Mobile's racial lines were somewhat less obvious. The city had been inhabited by the French and the Spanish. Where in much of the South there were just blacks and whites, Mobile was populated with another racial group, Creoles of Color. Though the event would first be co-opted and later defined by New Orleans, Mobile was the first city in the United States to celebrate Mardi Gras. The historical demographics of the city-with its high number of French and Spanish and a high number of citizens of mixed racial origin-made it difficult to strictly enforce the emerging racial codes that had effectively destroyed the promises of Reconstruction.

The truth was, however, that during the final decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, whites across the South organized a ma.s.sive resistance to whatever gains blacks had made during Reconstruction. If fond memories existed of Bienville Square as a gathering place for all Mobilians, it was also true that long after the nation had abolished the slave trade, illegal slave ships docked on the Mobile River, next to the L&N Railroad and the Mobile and Ohio docks, and chained-together captured Africans were sold at auction in Bienville Square during the week. Another old slave market stood blocks away, on Royal Street, between St. Anthony and Congress.

During the first two and a half decades of the twentieth century, southern whites methodically restored the old social order through a punishing combination of legal and extralegal means. Mobile, despite an exterior gentility and a favorable comparison to some of the harsher southern cities, did not escape this organized a.s.sault on black freedoms.

In 1900, Montgomery adopted a series of segregation ordinances. Mobile was under similar pressure to enact stricter segregation laws, though the city had been relatively free of major incident. The following year, numerous states, including Alabama, rewrote their state const.i.tutions, legally imposing segregation orders, disenfranchising blacks from voting and other social freedoms they had enjoyed during Reconstruction. Between 1895 and 1909, the first year of Herbert's life, a ma.s.sive campaign of disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt had begun.

South Carolina enacted laws severely limiting people of color from voting and prohibiting contact between the races in terms of education, marriage, adoption, public facilities, transportation, and prisons. During the same period, similar laws were enacted in Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia ("White persons who marry a colored person shall be jailed up to one year, and fined up to $100. Those who perform such a marriage ceremony will be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined up to $200"), Maryland, Washington, Idaho, California ("Persons of j.a.panese descent in 1909 were added to the list of undesirable marriage partners of white Californians as noted in the earlier 1880 statute"), Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, North Dakota (literacy tests) and South Dakota (intermarriage or illicit cohabitation forbidden between blacks and whites, punishable by a fine up to one thousand dollars, or by imprisonment up to ten years, or both), Kansas, and Nebraska.

In justifying separation of the races, the press served as an effective tool to incite fear among whites. It purported that blacks did not possess the social capacity to be treated with the same courtesies as whites, and that blacks were dangerous, uncivilized, a grave threat to the safety of the white women of Mobile. (In 1915, Alabama pa.s.sed a statewide law prohibiting "White female nurses from caring for black male patients.") The social order had been upset by the large influx of blacks who inhabited the city during the final decade of the 1800s. The Mobile Daily Item Mobile Daily Item was the most actively hostile newspaper in the city toward blacks-its coverage only spurred growing insistence among whites for the return of segregation. During a ten-day period in October 1902, its coverage proved even more relentless: was the most actively hostile newspaper in the city toward blacks-its coverage only spurred growing insistence among whites for the return of segregation. During a ten-day period in October 1902, its coverage proved even more relentless: FURY OF A TEXAS MOB5Finds satisfaction in lynching of negroesHEMPSTEAD, TEX., OCTOBER 21-After being tried with legal form and procedure for criminal a.s.sault and murder and given the death penalty in each case, Jim Wesley and Redd.i.c.k Barton, negroes, were, late this afternoon taken from the authorities and lynched in the public square by an infuriated mobNEGRO PEEPER6Is discovered on the gallery of a citizen residing on Espejo StreetMr. Charles Helmer, while on his way home Tuesday night last with his wife and a party of ladies saw a negro on the gallery of Mr. George McCary, on Espejo Street, near Government. The Negro was on the gallery peeping through the blinds and when one of the ladies discovered him, he jumped to the ground. Mr. Helmer chased the man across a pasture but was unable to capture him.

The black response derived from the old paternalistic relationships with whites. The famous educator Booker T. Washington appealed to the white city elders across the South to confront the "criminal colored elements" but not to "punish the entire Negro race" with segregation ordinances. Washington's disciples began echoing a similar theme in Mobile. Washington was already a national figure, and his presence in Mobile increased the influence of two black businessmen, Charles Allen and A. N. Johnson. Washington would vacation with Allen, often fishing at his home. Johnson owned a funeral home prominent in the black community and published his own newspaper, where he often broke with Washington's doctrines of appeas.e.m.e.nt with whites. Washington appealed to whites to recall the positive relationships between the two races, a relationship that in large part favored whites. Johnson seemed to have a clearer notion of white intentions. Through his writing, he sought to challenge the existing structure. He understood that a single increase in restrictions would only lead to more.

Johnson was right in his belief that a movement to undo current relationships between the races was afoot. Erwin Craighhead, the editor of the ostensibly moderate Register Register, endorsed in an editorial the necessity of segregation on streetcars. These sensational headlines and editorials only heightened racial tensions in the city, and any idea that Mobile would be different from the rest of the South crumbled. The newspapers increased their character a.s.sault on Mobile's blacks, including a decision by the newspaper editors to publish on the front page reports of crimes committed by blacks hundreds of miles away.

BOUND FACE TO FACE7They had murdered a young farmer while on his way home One of the negroes escaped into ArkansasNEWBORN, TENN., OCTOBER 8-Garfield Burley, and Curtis Brown, negroes, were lynched here at 9 o'clock tonight by a mob of 500 persons.... The mob would not listen to the judge and forcibly took possession of the two men.... Ropes were presented and the two men were taken to a telephone pole where they were securely tied face to face. At a given word, they were strung up and in a few minutes both were p.r.o.nounced dead. The lynching programme was carried out in an orderly manner, not a shot being fired.BAD NEGROSam Harris Riddled with Bullets at Salem Ala.USED AXE ON WOMEN8The negro was placed in custody and held until Miss Meadows had sufficiently recovered to identify him. This she did at 4 o'clock this afternoon, and the negro was taken in charge by about 125 armed men and his body riddled with bullets on the spot. He denied his guilt until the first shot was fired, when he acknowledged the crime.

By October 16, 1902, Mobile reacted with a sweeping ordinance that had been adopted in New Orleans, as well as in Montgomery and Memphis.

TEN MORE POLICEMEN PROVIDED9.

FOR CITY: SEPARATION OF THE.

RACES ON STREET CARSPet.i.tions, circulated by the Item and Signed by More Than 500 People, Read and Favorably Acted Upon- full text for the Ordinance Requiring the Separation of the Races on All of the Street Cars.Be it ordained by the mayor and general counsel of the city of Mobile as follows: That all street railcars operated in the city of Mobile and its police jurisdiction shall provide seats for the white people and negroes, when there are white people and negroes on the same car, by requiring the conductor or any other employee in charge of said car or cars to a.s.sign pa.s.sengers to seats on the cars, or when the car is divided in two compartments in such manner as to separate the white people from the negroes by seating the white people in the front seats and the negroes in the rear seats as they enter said cars; but in the event such order of seating might cause inconvenience to those who are already properly seated, the conductor ... may use his discretion in seating pa.s.sengers, but in such manner that no white person and negro must be placed or seated in the same section or compartment arranged for two persons; provided that negro nurses having in charge white children or sick or infirm white persons may be a.s.signed seats among the white people.Be it further ordained, that all conductors and other employees while in charge of cars are hereby invoked with the police power of a police officer of the city of Mobile, to carry out rail provisions, and any person failing or refusing to take a seat among those a.s.signed to the race to which he or she belongs, if there is any such seat vacant, at the behest of a conductor ... shall, upon conviction, be fined a sum not less than five dollars and not more than fifty dollars.

And so it was done. Jim Crow laws were now established in Mobile, if not as violently enforced as in other southern cities, although equally rigid. Two weeks later, on November 1, the black leaders A. F. Owens, A. N. Johnson, and A. N. McEwen staged a boycott, which lasted barely two months. During the time of the boycott, some white business owners, unconvinced the city would benefit from the segregation ordinance, openly defied it. James Wilson, the owner of the Mobile Light and Railroad Company, told his conductors not to enforce the law. Whites sat anywhere they chose on Wilson's cars, and blacks were, for a time, seen seated in the front. The courts intervened and the segregation laws were not only upheld but strengthened. On streetcars, conductors could use their own discretion in upholding the ordinances. After December 1902, whites faced jail time and a fifty-dollar fine for not upholding segregation statutes.

Streetcars were the first step. Total segregation came next, followed by the vigilante violence Mobile thought it had avoided. The outspoken black leaders, who once believed they had a voice, fled the city. A. N. Johnson escaped to Nashville in 1907.

"With the disintegration of the boycott10 and the court's decision, segregated public conveyances legally became an established element of life in Mobile-a condition that persisted unchanged until the 1950s," historian and Mobile native David Alsobrook wrote in his comprehensive 1983 dissertation. "By 1904, Mobile's blacks, as in other southern cities, were separated from whites by munic.i.p.al and state laws and by customs. Mobile had segregated public conveyances, schools, parks, restaurants, hotels, theaters, hospitals, cemeteries, saloons and brothels. With the single exception of public transportation, segregation was maintained without the pa.s.sage of munic.i.p.al ordinances." and the court's decision, segregated public conveyances legally became an established element of life in Mobile-a condition that persisted unchanged until the 1950s," historian and Mobile native David Alsobrook wrote in his comprehensive 1983 dissertation. "By 1904, Mobile's blacks, as in other southern cities, were separated from whites by munic.i.p.al and state laws and by customs. Mobile had segregated public conveyances, schools, parks, restaurants, hotels, theaters, hospitals, cemeteries, saloons and brothels. With the single exception of public transportation, segregation was maintained without the pa.s.sage of munic.i.p.al ordinances."

By the time Herbert and Stella arrived, whites and blacks alike now lived under a new, terrifying system, naturally worse for blacks but also not easy for whites who didn't believe in segregation. David Alsobrook recalled walking down the street in Mobile one day as a boy and seeing the charred remains of a cross. In addition to the legal segregation codes was the daily etiquette whites demanded, unwritten codes that, if not followed, could be deadly. Herbert knew them all by heart: 1. No offering handshakes with whites, for it a.s.sumed equality.

2. No looking at or speaking to white women.

3. No offering to light a white woman's cigarette.

4. All whites were to be addressed as "sir," "mister" or "ma'am," but whites were free to address blacks by their first names or "boy."

This was Herbert Aaron's America. He knew where he stood.

CHILDREN WERE BORN frequently to the Aarons. The combination of children and Herbert's constant (and not always successful) search for work forced the family to look for housing as often as Stella bore children. A son, Herbert junior, was born in 1930, and the family moved again, this time to 10 O'Guinn. Then the family moved to 1112 Elmira, before renting another apartment in Down the Bay, at 666 Wilkinson, for nine dollars per month. frequently to the Aarons. The combination of children and Herbert's constant (and not always successful) search for work forced the family to look for housing as often as Stella bore children. A son, Herbert junior, was born in 1930, and the family moved again, this time to 10 O'Guinn. Then the family moved to 1112 Elmira, before renting another apartment in Down the Bay, at 666 Wilkinson, for nine dollars per month.

Four years later, on February 5, 1934, at 8:25 p.m., Stella gave birth again, this time to a twelve-and-a-quarter-pound boy named Henry Louis. The baby was so large that Stella nicknamed him "the Man."

A year before Henry was born, Herbert took a job as a part-time riveter at the Alabama Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Company, on Pinto Island, on the Mobile River. The company had been in business since World War I. Herbert worked as a boilermaker a.s.sistant and riveter on coal barges, minesweepers for the U.S. Navy, and tank barges for oil companies. The work was hard and often irregular, but a few years later, as the war in Europe escalated and tensions with j.a.pan increased, a job at ADDs...o...b..came one of the plum ones to have in Mobile, especially for blacks. At the company's peak, a third of ADDSCO's workers were black, though that did not mean the workforce was treated with complete equity. The riveting and manufacturing and labor crews were largely segregated. Blacks and whites entered together through the large main gate, but both proceeded through designated separate entrances. When he first accepted the job, Herbert was paid sixteen cents an hour.

With the family now numbering five, the apartment on 666 Wilkinson was no longer sufficient. In 1936, Gloria Aaron was born. Two more children followed, Alfred, who did not survive pneumonia, and Tommie, in 1939. At this point, Herbert began forming a bold vision for a semiemployed black person: owning his own house. In Down the Bay, both Elmira and O'Guinn streets were fairly integrated, but, according to census data, only the whites on the streets where Herbert lived owned their homes.