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Baseball Honors Jackie Robinson, Who Integrated Game in 1947
Baseball Honors Jackie Robinson, Who Integrated Game in 1947
By Ralph Dannheisser
When the Washington Nationals took the field April 15 against the New York Mets, their shortstop wore uniform number 42.
So did the catcher ... and the pitcher.
So did the Mets' batter.
So, in fact, did 330 players, coaches and managers throughout Major League Baseball that day.
It wasn't some surreal mix-up, but rather baseball's tribute to Jackie Robinson, who, on the same date in 1947, broke the color line that had kept African Americans out of the major leagues since the 1880s. Robinson, a star of the Brooklyn Dodgers during that team's greatest decade, wore number 42 throughout his career.
Robinson's entry into the league had been carefully orchestrated by Dodger President Branch Rickey. A former baseball, football, basketball and track star at the University of California at Los Angeles, Robinson was playing for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League. Determined to end the policy that relegated black players to their own Negro Leagues, Rickey took the first step in 1945 by signing Robinson for Brooklyn's minor league affiliate, the Montreal Royals. In 1947, Rickey moved him up to the parent Dodgers. (See "Baseball Great Jackie Robinson Broke Color Barrier in 1947 ( http://www.america.gov/st/sports-english/2007/January/20080321170112liameruoy0.5196344.html?CP.rss=true ).")
TRIAL BY INSULT
Rickey had handpicked Robinson for his pioneering role not only for his athletic skills but also for his perceived ability to keep his temper in check - to maintain focus despite the insults and even death threats that he would experience upon integrating the league.
The wily Rickey tested Robinson on their first meeting by berating him and shouting racial epithets that he knew Robinson would face if hired. Robinson recalled in a 1961 article in Reader's Digest that Rickey had ended the bizarre interview by explaining, "I've been trying to give you some idea of the kind of punishment you'll have to absorb. Can you take it?"
Take it he did and he excelled as a major league player. Named Rookie of the Year in 1947 and the National League's Most Valuable Player in 1949, he was admitted to baseball's Hall of Fame in 1962.
Robinson's instant and lasting success in Brooklyn was to have an immense impact not only on baseball, but also on American life at large. Within the sport, many other Negro League stars swiftly followed his path into the majors. On a broader level, baseball's centrality in American culture assured that Robinson's celebrity set the stage for civil rights advances societywide.
COURT MARTIAL
By the same token, Robinson's own civil rights activism was far from limited to baseball.
As a young second lieutenant in the Army serving at Fort Hood, Texas, in 1944 - well before his Dodger debut - he had defied an order by a white bus driver to move to the back of the bus to make room for a white officer.
That was 11 years before Rosa Parks became a civil rights icon by similarly refusing an order to move on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus - an action that was to provoke the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott led by a then-little-known Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
In Robinson's case, charges that he showed disrespect toward an investigating officer led to his court martial. He was acquitted, but soon received a medical discharge from the Army.
"Robinson's gutsy action foreshadowed subsequent baseball diamond conduct," John Vernon writes in the spring 2008 issue of the U.S. National Archives publication, Prologue, "and served notice on the military, which would begin desegregating in 1948, and the world that here was a black man unwilling to take even a modicum of racial guff." (See "End of U.S. Military Segregation Set Stage for Rights Movement ( http://www.america.gov/st/diversity-english/2008/February/20080225120859liameruoy0.9820215.html ).")
Indeed, the other aspects of his civil rights activism bracketed Robinson's time with the Dodgers and continued until his death from diabetes and heart problems at age 53 in 1972.
RACE, SPORTS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM
To examine Robinson's impact on U.S. society, George Washingto n University in Washington has offered annually since 2002 a sociology course entitled "Jackie Robinson: Race, Sports, and the American Dream."
Professor Richard Zamoff, who developed and teaches the course, says it is "based on the premise that Jackie Robinson transcended sports and that his arrival was a defining moment in the history of the United States." It examines "how Robinson transformed the American and political scene as an athlete, informal civil rights leader and American hero," he adds.
Robinson was "a man who made it possible for white Americans to have black heroes," Zamoff says, and employing that ability "caused America to reconnect itself with honor."
Robinson used his celebrity to push his vision of racial justice. He helped found the Freedom National Bank in Harlem in New York City, which is owned by African Americans, and established a construction company to build housing for low-income families. He served on the board of the NAACP. And he was politically active, speaking widely and initiating correspondence with leaders - including Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon - that forcefully expressed his civil rights views.
ANGRY PROPHET
Michael Long, an associate professor of religion at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, stresses much the same points in his new book, First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson.
In an interview with America.gov, Long said Americans focus excessively on Robinson's accomplishments through baseball - especially in his first year. "What we often do is freeze our heroes, and we've frozen Robinson in 1947. That's the year he was turning the other cheek and we freeze him there because he's so unthreatening, he's so safe for us," he says.
That fails to show a more complex Robinson, Long maintains. "We need to remember that Jackie Robinson was much bigger than that, and by the end of his life, he's a very angry prophet. He's angry at American leaders for not giving African Americans their due or their constitutional rights. And really after baseball he devotes his entire life to the civil rights movement, so that his children can enjoy first-class citizenship."
"He always believed that there was a long way to go. And so he never rested on his laurels, he never saw the limited progress as enough," Long says. "He kept his eyes on the prize."
Source: U.S. Department of State
judythpiazza@newsblaze.com
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