The Head of School invited me to be a guest speaker in his literature class. The class is reading and discussing Fences by August Wilson, the story of Troy Maxson, a former Negro Leagues player whose baseball career ended before Major League Baseball integrated.
I knew the story from the Fences movie, and it lined up almost perfectly with the research behind my expedition. So I built a presentation to connect Troy Maxson’s character to the real history of the Negro Leagues — the players, the timing of integration, and what it meant for the generation that never got their shot in the majors.
The Presentation
Here is the deck I presented to the class:
Use the arrows to move through the slides.
A Baseball Coincidence
Here is something baseball fans will appreciate. James Earl Jones starred in the original Broadway production of Fences in 1987, playing Troy Maxson. Two years later, in 1989, he was in Field of Dreams — and gave one of the most famous speeches in any baseball movie, about why “people will come.”
The same actor who brought a Negro Leagues ballplayer to life on stage also delivered the speech that so many baseball fans know by heart.
James Earl Jones in “Field of Dreams” (1989).
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