Florida woman sees her dad's Negro League stats enter mainstream

“And they would draw straws to see who literally would ride on the hood of the car. And they weren’t going from say, St. Pete to Clearwater. These guys were going from New York to Birmingham to Kansas City to Baltimore. ... And back then, cars didn’t go like, 80 miles an hour. ... And it wasn’t always a nice day either. I mean, that’s ridiculous.”

A bad rap

Equally ridiculous, according to Kimbro-Hamilton, was the reputation Kimbro acquired over time. One of the oldest of 10 children born in Nashville, Kimbro’s father died at an early age. That tragedy, coupled with the fact that the nearest segregated school was 12 miles one way, resulted in Kimbro dropping out in the sixth grade to help his family survive.

Because he had a limited education, Kimbro felt he couldn’t communicate well, Kimbro-Hamilton said. That fact, along with an incendiary sense of self-pride, led to him being labeled as aloof, sullen and often difficult to manage.

“That was just a farce. He was one of the smartest men I ever met, and I’ve met quite a few smart men in my time,” said Kimbro-Hamilton, who earned a doctorate in sports administration at Temple and became the first women’s basketball coach at Bethune-Cookman.

“My father was a very smart man. He was an astute businessman. ... He was way more than he thought he was.”

But he possessed the self-awareness to realize he never could have silently withstood the discrimination and death threats leveled against Jackie Robinson when he broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947. By then, Kimbro was 35, his window for big-league entry virtually shut.

“He was a man that had a great heart, he was a very good man. But you couldn’t step on his toes,” Kimbro-Hamilton said.

“I said, ‘Daddy, could you have done what Robinson did?’ He said, ‘Oh, hell no.’ And this is what he said, ‘Because somebody would’ve been in the jail, and somebody would’ve been under the jail.’ And you knew what that meant. White players, all they had to do was step on his toes, or look like they were going to step on his toes, and it would’ve been over.”

Kimbro seemed to soften as he approached his septuagenarian years, evolving into an ambassador of his marginalized pastime who would spend hours at a Negro League memorabilia shop in Nashville swapping memories with old peers or sharing them with strangers. He died in the summer of 1999 at age 87 and was inducted posthumously into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame five years later.

Today’s he is enshrined in Major League Baseball annals. Call it validation arriving in increments, generation by generation.

“He was a huge influence in my life,” Drew said. “I love my mother to death, but you have certain bonds with certain parents, and he was mine. ... I used to say, ‘Didn’t you used to get angry (at the discrimination)?’ He was like, ‘No, that’s just the way it was.’ ”