During a pregame ceremony at Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock on Saturday, the Arkansas Travelers will retire jersey No. 6 in honor of baseball Hall of Famer Dick Allen.

Allen wore No. 6 during the 1963 season when he desegregated the Travelers. That season is the subject of the cover story in today's Perspective section.

Allen was the club's most valuable player in 1963 with an International League-leading 33 home runs, 97 runs batted in, 12 triples and 299 total bases. He led the team with 93 runs and 157 hits. Arkansas was a Triple-A club at the time. Allen made his Major League Baseball debut with the Philadelphia Phillies in September 1963.

In 125 years of play, this is the first number officially retired by the franchise. The Travelers don't use No. 42 (retired by MLB for Jackie Robinson, who broke MLB's color barrier) and don't use Seattle retired numbers 11 (Edgar Martinez), 24 (Ken Griffey Jr.) and 51 (Ichiro Suzuki and Randy Johnson). Arkansas is a Mariners affiliate.

Most Arkansans will be watching college football games Saturday night. But it's fitting that the historic baseball franchise is honoring its first Black player. Allen died in December 2020.

"In Arkansas, the only adverse reaction to integrated baseball came from the White Citizens Council," Jim Bailey wrote for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 1997. "Business leaders, well represented on the Travelers' board, were anxious to avoid a repeat of the 1957-59 turmoil in Little Rock. Their concerns were groundless. In the relative calm that settled in about 1960, the Citizens Council had been busy squandering any remaining credibility.

"When Black freedom riders came south to challenge segregation policies with tactics such as lunch-counter sit-ins, Little Rock lawyer Amis Guthridge, who headed the local Citizens Council, announced the launch of reverse freedom rides. Any Black person willing to travel from Little Rock to Hyannis Port, Mass., site of the summer compound of President John Kennedy and the extended Kennedy family, could have a free bus ticket. The Citizens Council found several takers in the summer of 1962. The sight of rabid segregationists politely chauffeuring Black people to the bus station induced laughter across the political........

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