Good Morning POU!
Today we highlight the Jackie Robinson of the National Hockey League.
Willie O’Ree
(The following is a reprint of a 2008 USA Today article dedicated to the 50th Anniversary of Willie O’Ree becoming the first African-American to play in the National Hockey League)
Willie O’Ree, the first black player in the NHL, has felt the staggering chill of a death threat arriving in his mailbox. But it didn’t come after his first game for the Boston Bruins on Jan. 18, 1958.
The threats have come in the last several years, after the NHL hired him to work with the league’s diversity task force to help promote hockey to black youngsters or players of diverse ethnic backgrounds.
“I still have the letters,” O’Ree says. “They said, ‘We know there are players of your kind in Canada, but you don’t need to bring them to the States.’ They said they knew what to do with my kind.”
One letter warned him not to attend a tournament because it involved teams with minority players. The NHL provided security, and O’Ree attended anyway. After enduring racial taunts, physical challenges and prejudice to play professional hockey, he certainly wasn’t going to let a threat disrupt an enjoyable weekend for young players. “I was more fearful for the kids,” he says. “I just shook my head that this still goes on.”
The NHL, which has 12 black players, is celebrating the 50th anniversary of O’Ree breaking the league’s color barrier. He scored four goals playing in 45 games in parts of two NHL seasons.
But his best work might be in the present. At 72, the gentlemanly O’Ree still works for the NHL, conducting 10 to 15 formal clinics a year and visiting schools, clubs, etc. He travels about 80,000 miles a year and, in 10 years as director of youth development for the diversity task force, makes about seven appearances a month.
“He may be more important now than he was back then because today he is reaching the kids,” says William McCants, president of the Detroit Hockey Association. “Back then what he did went unnoticed.”
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, acknowledging the impact O’Ree has made on the “40,000 children” he has met, knows “he has a resolve and an inner strength that allows him to do what he believes and not let anything get in his way.”
His hometown of Fredericton, New Brunswick, has built a rink to name after O’Ree. The Bruins are honoring the 50th anniversary, and the NHL will host a game between teams in the diversity program from Boston and Harlem after the Bruins-New York Rangers game Saturday. The Willie O’Ree All-Star Game, featuring the best players from the diversity league but absent since the 2004-05 NHL lockout, is set to return next season.
Baseball and segregation
Growing up in Fredericton, O’Ree says he had no idea what prejudice was before he ventured into professional sports. There were only two black families on his block, but “no one treated us any differently than the white kids.”
He matured into a multiple-sport athlete, although baseball and hockey were his main interests. “He was as good as a baseball player as he was as a hockey player,” says long-time friend David Hashey, an attorney in Fredericton.
After taking a slap shot to the face in his last season of junior hockey, O’Ree essentially played sports with one good eye. Yet as a second baseman-shortstop, he was skilled enough at 20 to earn an invitation to the Milwaukee Braves’ 1956 camp in southern Georgia and first dealt with segregation and prejudice. Black players were housed separately from white players.
“I flew into Atlanta and when I get off the plane, the first thing I see is restrooms marked ‘white only’ and ‘colored only,'” O’Ree says.
He says he knew almost immediately he regretted his decision to try baseball, but he stayed. He recalls one Sunday he made his only trip off the training grounds to attend Baptist services with other black players. After church, they had 20 minutes before the bus took them back to camp. The group wanted a drink and spied a drugstore. “I was cautious, but I didn’t see any signs saying we weren’t allowed,” he says.
Inside, two white men confronted them. “The N-word was used. It was a bad situation, and we got out of there,” O’Ree says.
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