El personal de NYRR comparte sus rutas de Black Lives Matter 1 Mile

To support the Black Lives Matter movement, New York Road Runners has launched the Virtual NYRR Black Lives Matter 1M, a one-mile virtual race taking place between July 1 and July 12. Combined with the Rising New York Road Runners Moves for Black Lives Matter youth event, NYRR will donate $5 for each participant, up to a total of $100,000 to be distributed between four nonprofits: Donations to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. and The Audre Lorde Project for the adult race, and to Black Girls CODE and My Brother’s Keeper Alliance for the youth event.

Earlier this week, NYRR staff members shared why they are running this virtual race, and, drawing inspiration from that post, some staffers chose to run routes with connections to Black history. Here are a few selections for how members of Team NYRR set out to learn on the run.

Monte Irvin Orange Park, Orange, NJ

My route was inspired in part by the "Tipping Your Cap" campaign I've seen online, celebrating the 100th anniversary of baseball's Negro Leagues. I knew I would be home in New Jersey for the weekend, so I planned a route around Monte Irvin Orange Park in Orange. The park was founded in 1899 as Orange Park and renamed in Irvin's honor in 2006.

I had run in this park in high school and college, and I knew it was at least a mile around the main path, but I didn't know much about who Monte Irvin was. I knew that he was a baseball player—a statue of Irvin (pictured above) was installed a one of the park's entrances in 2016—but there had to be so much more to him and to his life to have had a park named for him. So my run would have two parts:

1. Run the mile
2. Learn about Monte Irvin

Here's what I found out about the run:

• The park is actually closer to one-and-a-quarter miles around. (Nothing quite like running the equivalent of a surprise extra lap on the track!)

More importantly, here's what I found out about Monte Irvin, and how he had a much greater influence on baseball as it integrated than I could have imagined.

• He grew up in Orange, as his family moved from Alabama early in his life.
• He started his professional baseball career in 1938 with the Newark Eagles in the Negro Leagues.
• He spent three years away from the sport, serving as an engineer in the U.S. Army during World War II in England, France, and Belgium.
• After returning home in 1946, he was approached by Branch Rickey from the Brooklyn Dodgers, but as he was dealing with tinnitus from the war and believed he was not in proper shape to play at a professional level, he turned down the offer. (The Dodgers would sign Jackie Robinson, who would become the first Black player in Major League Baseball in 1947.)
• Irvin played three more years in Newark, on a team that also included Larry Doby, who become the first Black player in the American League. The team would win the 1946 Negro League World Series, and Doby would sign a Major League contract with Cleveland the following year.
• Irvin would also play in the Puerto Rico Winter League in 1946 and 1947, winning League MVP awards and becoming a role model for a young Roberto Clemente in the process.
• In 1949, Irvin signed a contract with the New York Giants. He made his Major League debut in 1949 at age 30, becoming the second Black player in history to play for the Giants. As a somewhat older player on the roster, Irvin mentored Willie Mays after Mays joined the Giants' outfield in 1951.
• Irvin played in two World Series with the Giants, winning a title in 1954, and would retire in 1956 after spending his final season with the Chicago Cubs.
• In 1968, he took a public relations position in the Commissioner's office, becoming the first Black executive in Major League Baseball.
• In 1973, Irvin was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame for his career accomplishments across the Negro Leagues and the Major Leagues, and his jersey number 20 was retired by the (now San Francisco) Giants in 2010.

So now I know more about someone who grew up two towns over from my hometown and nearly became the first Black player in Major League Baseball. Finding out more about Monte Irvin through a virtual one-mile race likely won't change the entire world, but I finished the run knowing more than I did before, so that's one step forward for the day; now it's just a matter of keeping that momentum going to the next day and the next day and the next day.

-Ted Doyle

Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY

Many of my runs start with a jogging stroller filled with toys and snacks and end in a playground these days, thanks to my running buddy, my 2-year-old son, Ned.

For my route, I chose to run to the Imagination Playground, located in the park's southeast corner. Here there is a statue called "Peter and Willie," inspired by a character and his dog from the children's books by Ezra Jack Keats.

The statue was created by Otto Neals. Like my son, both Keats and Neals were raised in Brooklyn. Keats is white, but made his main character, Peter, a Black child at a time when minority characters in children's literature were few and far between. Peter made his first appearance in Keats' "The Snowy Day" in 1962. "Peter's Chair," the work upon which Neals' statue is based, was published in 1967. In this book, Peter is faced with giving up his favorite little chair to his new sister. He decides instead to run away with it and his dog, Willie. 

Neals, a Black artist, became the head illustrator for the Brooklyn General Post Office and has many works of public art in New York. The Prospect Park Alliance commissioned "Peter and Willie" in 1995, and the statue was dedicated two years later. "Peter and Willie" was dedicated as a literary landmark in 2016 by the American Library Association. 

Neals wanted the bronze statue to be accessible by its audience of young children, and intended for it to be touched and climbed upon. Ned took full advantage, sitting in the chair, climbing up the rock to sit next to Peter (whose book currently contains an exhortation to put on a mask), and petted Willie, Peter's dachshund. 

"Peter and Willie" provides an excellent opportunity for kids to interact with public art, and to see favorite story time characters jump off the page and into their worlds. Take some time to explain Neals' background as well as why Peter was such a breakthrough character when Keats created him.

-Lela Moore

Harlem, Manhattan, NY

I ran the Virtual NYRR Black Lives Matter 1M on the Fourth of July and chose a route that celebrated prominent Black figures in American history.

I began by biking to Harlem from my home on the Upper West Side, stopping first at the Frederick Douglass statue at the northwest corner of Central Park. Born into slavery, Douglass escaped and became an abolitionist, statesman, orator, and reformer. In a speech on July 4, 1852, he exposed the myth of American “liberty and justice for all.”

“The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.”

I biked north on Frederick Douglass Boulevard to the Harriet Tubman Memorial at 122nd Street. Tubman too escaped slavery, then returned more than a dozen times to rescue at least 70 other enslaved people. Her memorial statue depicts her striding forward and pulling up roots (representing slavery) that futilely attempt to hold her back.

Several blocks east, at 5th Avenue at 125th Street, I started a 1-mile run that included parts of miles 21 and 22 of the TCS New York City Marathon course. I headed south, then circled Marcus Garvey Park: right onto 124th Street, left onto Mt. Morris Avenue, then left again onto 120th Street. A political activist, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator, Garvey was born in Jamaica in 1887 and moved to NYC to champion the financial strength and independence of Black communities. His vision helped inspire the civil rights and Black power movements of the 1960s and 70s.

There’s no statue of Garvey, but I paused to admire the park’s beauty—which includes rugged terrain, ballfields, and a swimming pool—and the elegant brownstones that surround it, in front of which crowds gather to cheer on the marathoners. I turned right onto 5th Avenue and continued south, pausing at Duke Ellington Circle at 110th Street to photograph the statue of the legendary Harlem jazz musician, and finishing my run a couple of blocks later.

There are many more monuments to Black and African American historical figures located throughout NYC; as a postscript, later in the week I ran past "Invisible Man," a memorial to author Ralph Ellison whose 1952 novel of that name chronicles the Black American experience; it's located on Riverside Drive at 150th Street, near Ellison's former home. Learn more on the NYC Parks & Recreation website and plan your run today!

-Gordon Bakoulis

These are the routes that members of Team NYRR came up with, but we want to hear from you.

Did you create a special route for this virtual race? Tell us about it here and you may be featured in an upcoming blog post about the Virtual NYRR Black Lives Matter 1M!