Joe Black

He was told that the color of his skin would keep him out of the big leagues, but Joe Black worked his way up through the Negro Leagues and the Cuban Winter League. He burst into the Majors in 1952 when he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers. In the face of segregation, verbal harassment, and even death threats, Joe Black rose to the top of his game; he earned National League Rookie of the Year and became the first African American pitcher to win a World Series game. With the same tenacity he showed in his baseball career, Black became the first African American vice president of a transportation corporation when he went to work for Greyhound. In this first-ever biography of Joe Black, his daughter Martha Jo Black tells the story not only of a baseball great who broke through the color line, but also of the father she knew and loved.

Joe Black was a baseball pioneer, the first black pitcher ever to win a World Series game. He was Jackie Robinson's roommate on the Brooklyn Dodgers. Joe Black then became the only Major Leaguer to become a full-time public school teacher after his baseball career ended. The Black family lived in a very modest house right next to the authors father's auto body shop near the railroad tracks in the poorest part of Plainfield, New Jersey and they knew his late father, Nathan. The author first met Mr. Black when he came to Hubbard Junior High School as a teacher and baseball coach and their forty-five year friendship continued until his death in 2002. As his teacher, coach, and mentor until the end of his life, Mr. Black became a trusted friend and mentor. He greatly influenced the authors life, his law practice, and his family. Selzer was given the honor of being the opening speaker at Joe Blacks Memorial Celebration on June 1, 2002. Many of Joes friends, acquaintances, and former colleagues contributed stories for this book; among them are Bill Cosby, Sandy Koufax, Bob Costas, Joe Garagiola, Dusty Baker, Jerry Reinsdorf, Jerry Colangelo and others. John Teets, former CEO of the Greyhound Corporation, talked of Joe Black's progress in advancing to become the first African American executive in the transportation industry. While in this position Joe Black wrote an an inspiring and motivational nationally syndicated column and did radio spots, both called "By the Way". Several of these thoughtful columns appear in this book.

This work examines the historical significance of the state of New Jersey in the Negro League legacy, especially the black baseball players, teams, owners and managers, and their struggles against not just segregation, and their accomplishments. The book includes photographs, appendices (records of New Jersey Negro League teams, 1923-1948, and a chronology), notes, a bibliography of research sources, an annotated list of suggested further readings, and an index.

Other historians have tended to treat black urban life mainly in relation to the ghetto experience, but in Black Milwaukee, Joe William Trotter Jr. offers a new perspective that complements yet also goes well beyond that approach. The blacks in Black Milwaukee were not only ghetto dwellers; they were also industrial workers. The process by which they achieved this status is the subject of Trotter's ground-breaking study. This second edition features a new preface and acknowledgments, an essay on African American urban history since 1985, a prologue on the antebellum and Civil War roots of Milwaukee's black community, and an epilogue on the post-World War II years and the impact of deindustrialization, all by the author. Brief essays by four of Trotter's colleagues--William P. Jones, Earl Lewis, Alison Isenberg, and Kimberly L. Phillips--assess the impact of the original Black Milwaukee on the study of African American urban history over the past twenty years.

An amazing autobiography of a criminal from a forgotten time in american history. Jack Black was a burgler, safe-cracker, highwayman and petty thief.

This colorful picture book shows toddlers the meaning of Boker Tov - which is "good morning" in Hebrew. Welcoming a bright new day, the lyrical text and delightful illustrations highlight the many things to be thankful for each day. Written by internationally renowned rabbi and musician Joe Black, this book will have kids and parents joyfully saying the Hebrew words “Boker Tov!” as they follow the fun rhyming text.

Meet the ladies: a flock of smart, affectionate, highly individualistic chickens who visit their favorite neighbors, devise different ways to hide from foxes, and mob the author like she’s a rock star. In these pages you’ll also meet Maya and Zuni, two orphaned baby hummingbirds who hatched from eggs the size of navy beans, and who are little more than air bubbles fringed with feathers. Their lives hang precariously in the balance—but with human help, they may one day conquer the sky. Snowball is a cockatoo whose dance video went viral on YouTube and who’s now teaching schoolchildren how to dance. You’ll meet Harris’s hawks named Fire and Smoke. And you’ll come to know and love a host of other avian characters who will change your mind forever about who birds really are. Each of these birds shows a different and utterly surprising aspect of what makes a bird a bird—and these are the lessons of Birdology: that birds are far stranger, more wondrous, and at the same time more like us than we might have dared to imagine. In Birdology, beloved author of The Good Good Pig Sy Montgomery explores the essence of the otherworldly creatures we see every day. By way of her adventures with seven birds—wild, tame, exotic, and common—she weaves new scientific insights and narrative to reveal seven kernels of bird wisdom. The first lesson of Birdology is that, no matter how common they are, Birds Are Individuals, as each of Montgomery’s distinctive Ladies clearly shows. In the leech-infested rain forest of Queensland, you’ll come face to face with a cassowary—a 150-pound, man-tall, flightless bird with a helmet of bone on its head and a slashing razor-like toenail with which it (occasionally) eviscerates people—proof that Birds Are Dinosaurs. You’ll learn from hawks that Birds Are Fierce; from pigeons, how Birds Find Their Way Home; from parrots, what it means that Birds Can Talk; and from 50,000 crows who moved into a small city’s downtown, that Birds Are Everywhere. They are the winged aliens who surround us. Birdology explains just how very "other" birds are: Their hearts look like those of crocodiles. They are covered with modified scales, which are called feathers. Their bones are hollow. Their bodies are permeated with extensive air sacs. They have no hands. They give birth to eggs. Yet despite birds’ and humans’ disparate evolutionary paths, we share emotional and intellectual abilities that allow us to communicate and even form deep bonds. When we begin to comprehend who birds really are, we deepen our capacity to approach, understand, and love these otherworldly creatures. And this, ultimately, is the priceless lesson of Birdology: it communicates a heartfelt fascination and awe for birds and restores our connection to these complex, mysterious fellow creatures.

In the 1930s, deep in Bexar County (pronounced Bear County), a man from a powerful family finds a way to make money on the other side of the law. Joe Black operates successfully as a bootlegger, and when prohibition ends, he establishes a dance hall. One thing different from other dance halls and bars is the fact that he has live alligators that he feeds as entertainment for his guests. Joe Black soon finds himself in a love triangle that ends in death for one of the lovers and near-death for the other. One of his workers discovers this dark secret, and Joe Black stops at nothing to stop her from exposing his evil deeds. Who lives and who dies as the plot unfolds in a twist of terrifying events? In the end, there are secrets that shed a sense of light in all the darkness. Light triumphs over evil and lives on forever due to the heroic deeds of one of the victims. This story is inspired by true events that unfolded over a period of fifty years.