BREAKING NEWS – Arlington, Virginia – President Biden referred to the late baseball player Satchel Paige as “the great negro” before correcting himself during his Veterans Day address at Arlington National Cemetery.
Biden was honoring former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary Donald Blinken, an Army veteran and father of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, during his speech when he launched into a story about Paige, who played in the “Negro leagues” before moving to Major League Baseball in the late 1940s.
“I’ve adopted the attitude of the great negro at the time, a goalie of the Negro leagues, who went on to become a great goalie in the pros — in the National Hockey League— after Jackie Robinson. His name was Satchel Paige,” Biden recalled.
“He went on to break the color barrier in the Ice Capades,” added Biden. “And up until that time, it was dominated by white people and Eskimos.”