Informant38

Dear Nigger Henry,
It has come to my attention that you are going to break Babe Ruth's record. I don't think that you are going to break this record established by the great babe Ruth if I can help it. Getting back to your blackness, I don't think that any coon should ever play baseball. Whites are far more superior than jungle bunnies. I will be going to the rest of your games and if you hit one more home run it will be your last. My gun is watching your every black move. This is no joke.

Dear Nigger,
You black animal, I hope you never live long enough to hit more home runs than the great Babe Ruth. Niggers are like animals and have a short life span. Martin Luther King was a troublemaker, and he had a short life span.

Dear Hank Aaron,
I hope you get it between the eyes.

Dear Hank Aaron,
I hate you!!!! Your such a little creep! I hate you and your family. I'D LIKE TO KILL YOU!! BANG BANG YOUR DEAD.
P.S. It mite happen.

...When I look back on that whole episode of Henry going after the Ruth record, that's the most amazing part of it to me. People had no idea what he was going through. Nowadays, a player will get one threat and he won't even go out on the field. Henry had them practically every day, and for a long time he didn't say a word about it. - Dick Cecil, former Braves V.P.

"I asked Carla to save the hate letters that she didn't have to turn over to the authorities. I didn't read most of them, but I wanted to have them as reminders. I kept feeling more and more strongly that I had to break the record not only for myself and for Jackie Robinson and for black people, but also to strike back at the vicious little people who wanted to keep me from doing it. All that hatred left a deep scar on me. I was a man doing something that God had given me the power to do, and I was living like an outcast in my own country. I had nowhere to go except home and to the ballpark, home and to the ballpark. I was a prisoner in my own apartment."

"It was in Philadelphia in May that I finally mentioned to some sportswriters about the hate mail. One of them made a note of it at the bottom of a baseball story, but then the story was picked up in Atlanta and New York and the whole thing broke open. From that point on, the mail turned. I guess people were stunned by what they read, because thousands and thousands of them started writing me positive letters. One of the sports-talk radio shows in New York conducted a campaign to get people to support me. It was especially nice to see kind words coming out of New York because that seemed to be where the greatest number of hate letters came from."

I HAD A HAMMER
The Hank Aaron Story
Hank Aaron with Lonnie Wheeler