Roe v. Wade: The Supreme Court Rows Upstream.

I was born and raised in Washington, D.C. When I was a kid, we had a major league baseball team, the Senators, who were the worst professional baseball team. As Shirley Povich, the sportswriter for The Washington Post used to say, ‘Washington — first in war, first in peace, last in the American League.’

But what did I care? I was a kid, and on weekends when the Senators were at home, my mom would give me a dollar, I would walk down Georgia Avenue to old Griffith Stadium, buy a seat in the left-field bleachers for fifty cents, twenty-five cents got me a hot dog, fifteen cents got me a program, and ten cents got me a drink.

It was the time of my life. I once saw Mickey Mantle hit a home run over the left field scoreboard which as far as I know is still flying through the air. I was even there on opening day one year and watched President Eisenhower throw out the first ball.

Many, many years later, maybe fifty years later, I saw a photograph of the left field bleachers at Griffith Stadium taken from behind home plate. I realized looking at the photo that the bleachers were the only seats in the ballpark where Blacks could sit.

I had absolutely no idea when I walked down Georgia Avenue to the stadium that I was going into a segregated, public space. Segregated in the nation’s capital city, no…