Blazing trails: How NCYL leader Shakti Belway is continuing her grandfather’s barrier-breaking legacy
This Black History Month, NCYL is proud to celebrate our groundbreaking Executive Director and her connection to Jim ‘Junior’ Gilliam, who helped integrate Major League Baseball
Shortly after Shakti Belway arrived in the small northwest Mississippi town of Cleveland a little more than a decade ago, it would have been understandable — perhaps even expected — if she had surveyed the scene and hopped on the next flight out.
Shakti, at the time a burgeoning civil rights attorney, was invited to Cleveland by Margaret Block, an acclaimed educator and activist who spent her life defending civil rights. Block, who died just a few years later, had reached out for support in helping Cleveland, a city with a stark racial divide, desegregate its schools — some 60 years after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.
After getting to know members of the community, the local political and racial dynamics, and the power structures that were continuing to maintain vestiges of Jim Crow in the town of roughly 12,000 people near the Arkansas border, Shakti was inspired to stay and fight.
Though Shakti didn’t recognize it at the time, her bravery and willingness to immerse herself in a small corner of Mississippi and boldly fight against inequality was and remains deeply embedded in her DNA.
Decades prior — back when the Brown v. Board of Education decision was still fresh news, and when Cleveland should have been integrating its campuses — Shakti’s grandfather was blazing his own civil rights trail right through America’s national pastime.
Jim “Junior” Gilliam was just 17 years old in 1946 when his talents on the baseball diamond earned him a call-up to the Baltimore Elite Giants. The Giants were a member of the Negro National League, which, to that point, was the highest level of professional baseball that included Black players. That all changed when, just a year later, Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier.
Just a few years after that, Gilliam was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers, the same MLB team that employed Robinson. This allowed Gilliam to team with and learn from Robinson, whose historic efforts later inspired MLB to retire his No. 42 jersey across the sport. It also led to Gilliam taking over as the Dodgers’ full-time second-baseman, replacing the aging Robinson, who was moved primarily to the outfield.
Gilliam was up for the challenge. He won the National League’s Rookie of the Year in 1953 and went on to represent the Brooklyn and then Los Angeles Dodgers as a player and/or coach for the next 25 years, up until his death in 1978. During that span, he won four World Series championships as a player and then became one of the first Black coaches in MLB.
In the latter years of his coaching career, Gilliam strived to become MLB’s first Black manager. Though Gilliam would never land that managerial job, he continued to inspire many — in baseball and beyond.
Gilliam’s funeral drew thousands of attendees and featured heartfelt reflections from baseball luminaries, such as Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, and civil rights leaders, such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Former teammates remembered him for his enduring “spirit.”
That spirit has continued through his descendants, even those he’d never get to know.
There were subtle signs during her childhood, Shakti recalls, that would remind her that her grandfather was a big deal to a lot of people.
As a young child, she had a small Dodgers No. 19 jersey — the team retired No. 19 in Gilliam’s honor after his death — that she would sometimes wear for fun. She attended a ribbon-cutting in Los Angeles for Jim Gilliam Park, a now-recreation center that remains today. She saw people change their expressions or attitude when they would hear Gilliam’s name.
She heard stories about her grandfather rooming with Jackie Robinson, but she couldn’t yet grasp the brutality of what Gilliam, Robinson, and so many other Black people faced as they attempted to integrate well-known institutions.
It wasn’t until diving deep into community-building work in Mississippi that Shakti said she began to feel that sense of connection with her trailblazing grandfather.
“It just stunned me — I was fighting similar battles, and likely running into many of the same frustrations, that he had faced so many years ago,” she said.
Shakti’s efforts in Mississippi weren’t in vain. She had the honor of standing alongside veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. She worked with children, youth, families, and communities across the state to challenge unfairness in how children were treated. This included striving to end the racially disparate school-to-prison pipeline in Meridian, Mississippi, resulting in the U.S. Department of Justice’s first-ever lawsuit challenging these egregious practices. Shakti also represented private plaintiffs and worked alongside other attorneys and advocates to finally desegregate Cleveland’s schools in 2017. She helped remove a “badge of inferiority” that had weighed down generations of Black students and families in the community.
That same drive has fueled other impactful work throughout Shakti’s career. And it continues to power her leadership at the National Center for Youth Law, where — like her famous grandfather — she is making history. Shakti is the first woman and first person of color to serve as executive director at NCYL, an organization born 53 years ago in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement.
In his prime, Gilliam was among the best top-of-the-lineup hitters in MLB, consistently setting his teams up for success by getting on base and setting the stage for the batters behind him. In an entirely different way, he provided similar leadoff support for his granddaughter.
“It’s complicated to think about what he endured and how it affected him and our family,” Shakti said of her grandfather, whose fame and extended time on the road, as well as the political and social context surrounding him, strained some relationships back home. “But above all, I’m proud to carry on his legacy of standing against injustice and, even in the face of extreme adversity, remaining committed to doing what’s right.”
Shakti Belway is Executive Director of the National Center for Youth Law, a nonprofit organization that for more than 50 years has advocated on behalf of children, youth, families and communities. During her career, Shakti has worked in human rights advocacy, as a civil rights attorney, policy reformer and litigator, as an educator, and as a child and youth advocate.
