When Orioles outfielder Cedric Mullins was in elementary school, he came home to ask his parents a question: Why had another boy at recess told him to go back to the cotton fields?
Fellow Georgia native and Orioles outfielder Dwight Smith Jr. grew up in an area where Confederate flags were prevalent. Once, he says, he was walking through his neighborhood when he saw a noose hanging from a tree.
After Jackie Robinson’s historic — and painful — integration of Major League Baseball in 1947, the league and its players have rarely spoken openly about race and equality, according to at least one expert.