These little-leaguers took America by storm, now they’re coming to Ala. for something deeper than baseball

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June 15, 2015

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The Anderson Monarchs, the Philadelphia baseball team led by female pitcher Mo’ne Davis that fascinated fans during the Little League World Series last Summer, is now touring several locations significant to the Civil Rights movement in honor of Jackie Robinson, the Negro Leagues, and the Civil Rights Movement.

The Monarchs are going on a 4,000-mile tour to 19 cities to experience what it was like for black players in the Negro leagues prior to Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in 1947—all on an old-fashioned bus from that era.

The team will be visiting Birmingham on Wednesday June 24th before heading to Montgomery and Selma to visit the cities’ renowned Civil Rights monuments and museums.

In Birmingham the Monarchs will visit the 16th St. Baptist Church, where four black girls were murdered in a 1963 bombing—three of the four girls were the same age as the members of the team are now.

“I do feel really bad, because they could have changed the world,” said Mo’ne Davis who turns 14 the day the team arrives in Birmingham. “And for them to lose their lives at such a young age? You never know what they could have done.”

The young African American girl captivated the sports world last summer when she became the first Little League player ever to be featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated after pitching a shutout during the Little League World Series.

Monarchs’ coach Steve Bandura left a well-paying job in sales and marketing to work full-time creating a training program aimed at “instilling pride, purpose and discipline in disadvantaged kids.”

Bandura requires all of the kids in the program to study the history of the Negro Leagues, Jackie Robinson, and integration.

“I want to send the message that young people can effect change and need to effect change, especially with the state of our nation after all of the recent racial incidents,” said Bandura, a white man who said he was deeply affected by the Civil Rights fights that occurred during his childhood in Chicago.

Not only will the players be traveling in an authentic 1947 bus similar to the ones in which Negro League ball players rode from city to city during the grueling baseball season, the teens aren’t allowed to have smartphones either.

“You’ve got to see the world,” Mo’ne explained when she described the no-gadget rule. “You have to see it with your own eyes.”

(h/t New York Times)