Jackie Robinson: life and legacy in baseball history

Jackie Robinson

The discourse of American politics is focused on individual rights, action and identity. This trait was developed as a result of the social movements that took place during the 1950s and 1960s that highly contributed to the birth and development of a common identity for individuals who shared a particular characteristic, be it ethnic origin, sex, religion, etc. This shared identity enabled their voices to be heard more loudly and clearly, and their discontents to be expressed as a coherent common pain; this pain was no longer restricted to individual life, but transformed into a discontent that was publicly voiced and widely shared. Consequently, this feeling of release and public expression had beneficial effects in terms of the individual who ceased to feel isolated and found comfort in knowing that others shared the same identity and thus the same problems. In order to fully understand the importance of 1960s social movements, it is very important to look at the definition of identity as a sociological concept: "meanings a person attributes to the self as an object in a social situation or social role."

Collective identity was the catalyst of social change during the 1960s and 1970s.

One of the most important gains of the 1950s and 1960s was the birth of a new kind of politics called "identity politics." Identity politics was based on strong collective identities which have the capacity to penetrate political life and exert pressure which eventually conduces to changes in policies and even mentalities. The major social paradox of the 1960s was that the peaceful fight for civil rights was met with violent opposition; nonetheless, political activists remained strong and left an immense legacy of social change achieved through relentless advocacy which remains a huge inspiration even today. However even prior to the 1960s and 1970s, there were certain public African-American figures that greatly influenced the struggle for equality of chances. One of these people was Jackie Robinson, the first African-American Major League Player of the modern era. His 1947 Major League debut represented an important step towards the end of racial segregation in sports. Similarly to most fields of activity in the United States, there was a strong barrier of color in sports, including baseball. Thesis: Jackie Robinson's contribution to the end of over 60 years of racial segregation was immense. This paper argues that it was through his 1947 debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers that Jackie Robinson made a significant impact on the color barrier in sports. However, Robinson's impact on racial segregation extended far beyond the baseball field. He was the first African-American Major League Baseball analyst, and the first vice president of a major American corporation. In addition, in the 1960s he contributed to the creation of the Freedom National Bank, an African-American owned and controlled entity based in New York which advocated civil rights.

The importance of baseball in American society cannot be doubted, and the impact of Jackie Robinson's life and career is a clear argument which supports this idea. Robinson was the first African-American in modern times to play in the major leagues. He succeeded magnificently because he was able to show more than the talent which would have simply made him a Hall of Fame player; Robinson was in many ways, a hero, comparable to any other hero in American popular culture. What transformed him from a great player into an icon was his involvement in the civil rights struggle which established him as the person to blaze the path that Martin Luther King would follow

Although by 1955 every Texas League club except Shreveport, Louisiana, had African-American players, the integration of the South was not unmarked by incidents. In 1952 African-American players began to appear on minor league clubs in the South. Due to low attendance, the Dallas Eagles of the Texas League signed former Homestead Gray pitcher Dave Hoskins who would become the "Jackie Robinson of the Texas League."

Hoskins took Texas by storm, and attracted large crowds as he posted a 2.12 earned run average and finished third in the league batting with a .328 mark. It was Hoskins performance that determined other teams throughout the South to sign African-American players, and in 1953, 19-year-old Henry Aaron desegregated the South Atlantic League which included clubs in Florida, Atlanta, and Georgia and Bill White appeared in the Carolina League. Aaron played for Jacksonville, a city that had denied Jackie Robinson that chance to play seven years earlier. By 1954, when the United States Supreme Court issued its historic Brown v. Board of Education decision ordering school desegregation, blacks had appeared in most Southern minor leagues

However, African-American players were faced with a great deal of opposition and obstacles prior to desegregation. In 1953 the Cotton States League barred brothers Jim and Leander Tugerson from competing, and the following year Nat Peeples managed to play for a team in the Southern Association but only for two weeks. For the rest of the 1950s, the league did not accept any African-Americans, a strategy which negatively affected attendance which in turn led to the collapse of the Southern Association in 1961. Young stars like Aaron, Curt Flood, Frank Robinson, Bill White and Leon Wagner were still faced with racial prejudice but they "took it out on the ball," as Curt Flood wrote, "What had started as a chance to test my baseball ability in a professional setting had become an obligation to test myself as a man."

Throughout the 1950s blacks appeared regularly among the league leaders of the Texas, South Atlantic, Carolina, and other circuits, advancing both their own careers and the cause of integration.

Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, children in Birmingham daring the dank jails so they could grow up to go to good schools and drink out of public water fountains, civil rights pioneers marching uprightly into torrential water cannon and snarling dogs.

Martin Luther King was the most prominent figure of the peaceful battle for civil rights. His methods included peaceful protests and inspirational speeches which mobilized audiences and helped create a sense of common identity and unity among Afro-Americans. The Black Power Movement came as a response to Martin Luther King's non-violent approach. Its leader, Malcolm X, constructed his discourse around the idea of racial pride and rejected integration and peaceful protests. Instead, he appealed to the rage that had accumulated in the Afro-American community as a result of injustice, inequality and discrimination.

For the first time, Afro-Americans saw themselves as a homogenous group with a common goal and a common oppressor to face. Neither these events that marked the struggle against segregation nor the appearance of these strong activists could be directly linked to Jackie Robinson but because he made the first step, it is safe to argue that millions of Americans made their own walk thinking it was in fact possible to make a change. From this point-of-view, Robinson was an inspiration, an image of heroism in the minds of those who needed the courage to keep striving for racial equality.

Branch Rickey was the general manager and co-owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers during the 1940s. His aim was to integrate major league players, and was looking for the ideal player that could help him achieve this goal, and this player was Jackie Robinson. Robinson was born in Georgia in 1919, and had four siblings -- three brothers and a sister. He was brought up in Pasadena, California, by his mother Mallie. Robinson's father, Jerry, left the family the year Jackie, who was the youngest of the five children, was born. One of Jackie's brothers, Mack, was the first to experience athletic success in the Robinson family by finishing second in the 200-meter dash at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin where African-American athlete Jesse Owens won four gold medals

. Jackie Robinson attended Pasadena Junior College, and then UCLA where his talent in basketball, football, track and baseball was first truly noticed. His performances were nothing short of remarkable as he led his league in scoring in basketball, set a record in the broad jump, and achieved relative fame as a running back on the football team. However, at this point baseball was definitely not the center of his attention as far as sports.

When World War II erupted Robison had graduated college. He became a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. In July 1944, Robinson boarded a bus on his military base and was ordered to the back by his superiors. Military vehicles had been desegregated by then, so Robinson refused. He was taken to a guardhouse for questioning and later put on trial for insubordination but he was soon acquitted. His insubordination was consistent with his behavior at UCLA where he had established himself as a man who was not ashamed of his race. In fact, Robinson was proud of his racial and cultural heritage, a quality which would also attract his future wife while they were both still students at UCLA. Upon leaving the military Robison found work with the Negro League Kansas City Monarchs. The World War II years marked the heyday of the Negro Leagues. With black and white worker flooding into Northern industrial centers, with relatively full employment, and with a scarcity of available consumer goods, attendance at all sorts of entertainment events increased dramatically. In 1942 three million fans saw Negro League teams play, and the East-West game in 1943 attracted over fifty-one thousand fans

In 1945, during his only season with the Monarchs, Robinson played shortstop, and excelled on the bases. His success with the Monarchs determined sportswriter Wendell Smith to arrange a tryout with the Boston Red Sox for Robinson and two other African-American players from the Negro Leagues. However, they were not signed, and the Red Sox would become the only Major League team to integrate, in 1959 when they would enroll their first African-American player. At this time, Brooklyn Dodgers manager Branch Rickey was already looking for the right player who would break the color barrier at the team, so he sent scout and former catcher Clyde Sukeforth to convince Robinson to meet with him in August about a job with the new all-black team called the Brown Dodgers that Rickey was planning to start putting together. Once Robinson met Rickey, the latter told him that he was actually interested in recruiting him for the Dodgers. Robinson was put through an exhaustive selection process which tested his character and courage as well as his self-control on the field. In fact, according to Robinson's autobiography, he asked Rickey at one point whether the tests were aimed at finding someone afraid to fight back against insults and threats, and Rickey replied that he was looking for a ballplayer "with guts enough not to fight back."

By the end of the season, Robinson had a job with the Montreal Royals, the Dodgers' top Minor League team. Robinson spent one season with the Royals helping them win the Little World Series.

In 1947 Robinson went to spring training with the Brooklyn Dodgers but his accession into the majors was definitely not easy. St. Louis Cardinal players threatened to refuse to play against the Dodgers if the latter included Robinson. Racial segregation was part of sports thus it was also part of baseball. It was no coincidence that Robinson was met with threats and insults in St. Louis. The threatened 1947 Cardinals' strike against Robinson's presence on the field reflected the hostility of the majority of local fans in the area

. Long after the 1947 event, virtually the entire club which included mostly players from the South, was hostile to Robinson during his debut year.

Ford Frick, National League president, reacted forcefully to this threat although he had never been a supporter of integrating the majors. As Robinson's first season with the majors progressed, he faced continued attacks and taunts from opposing players, and saw his family threatened. However, there is one important note to be made here: fans, including large numbers of African-Americans, turned out to see the new star, and Robinson certainly delivered. He batted .297 with 42 bunt hits and stole a league-leading 29 bases while winning the Rookie of the Year Award. Brooklyn won the first of six pennants it would capture during Robinson's 10 years with the team, along with the World Series in 1955, the first-ever world championship for the Dodgers. Jackie Robinson followed his extraordinary rookie season with even greater years. He won the batting title in 1949 with a .342 average and was named Most Valuable Player in the National League. That same year he drove in 124 runs and won another stolen-base title, with 37. The 1949 season was the first of six consecutive years that Robinson batted over .300. As the 1956 season ended, Robinson had a lifetime batting average of .311 1 with 1,518 hits and 197 stolen bases

. Once his career as a professional baseball player had ended, Robinson traveled South during the 1960s to lend his support to the civil rights movement. When Curt Flood fought the reserve clause, Robinson stood up in federal court and testified on behalf of individual freedom. Jackie Robinson died in 1972, aged 53, due to heart disease and diabetes, only 10 days after throwing out the first ball at the World Series that same year.

Robinson's status as a well-respected athlete generated social consequences. As far as his professional career as a baseball player, Robinson needed only one year to prove that the quotations from the Bible invoked by Christian Fundamentalists to justify racial segregation were both wrong and un-Christian. His amazing performances also encouraged whites who despised bigotry to speak in favor of civil rights, and he gave Southerners the opportunity to see that African-Americans were people just like them, and that racially fueled fear was completely unreasonable

. In addition, Robinson demonstrated that it was better for the American people to be united and that all citizens deserved equal opportunities to excel in their chosen profession. Although it would be another two decades before civil rights legislation would push the movement forward through government sanction, men like Martin Luther King and other African-American activists greatly benefited from Robinson's success which made their voices sound louder, and reach wide audiences. In respect to the African-American community, the impact of Robinson's success as a professional baseball player was beyond measure. Recalling the day when Robinson came to Florida with the Dodgers, Ed Charles, later a star for the New York Mets, said: "I can recall myself talking to God, asking why things were the way they were, asking 'When will there be a better day for our people?' And then when Jackie came, it was like, 'My dreams have come true now. We'll have that opportunity to prove to the world that given a fair chance, we can produce, we can be responsible.'"

The desegregation of baseball opened the way not only to African-Americans, but also to blacks in other parts of the Americans as well.

Throughout the twentieth century, baseball had generated a double standard on Latin players accepting only those with light complexions. With the color barrier down, clubs discovered great talent in the Caribbean with Minnie Minoso, also known as the "Cuban Comet" becoming the first Latin star in the Major League.

Scores of black players came into organized baseball after Jackie Robinson broke that trail in 1947. Many of them (in minor league Southern towns especially) faced the same daily assault of taunts and insults. Many, including players such as Larry Doby, Monte Irvin, Willie Mays, and Roy Campanella, were capable of the same unflinching valor as Robinson if they had been called to the challenge

. But because Jackie Robinson had fought the first battle, they had an inspiration, an example to follow. Although Robinson's combativeness that marked his relationship with many reporters could have worked against his early election to the Hall of Fame, it didn't. He was elected, virtually unanimously, in 1962, and presented by Branch Rickey.

For several years in the early 1950s, the Negro Leagues remained a breeding ground for young black talent. The New York Giants recruited Willie Mays from the roster of the Birmingham Black Barons, and the Boston Braves discovered Hank Aaron on the Indianapolis Clowns. The Kansas City Monarchs produced more than two dozen major leaguers, including Robinson, Paige, Banks, and Howard. But for most African-American baseball players the demise of the Negro Leagues had disastrous effects as Effa Manley wrote in 1948, "The livelihoods, the careers, the families of 400 Negro ballplayers are in jeopardy because four players were successful in getting into the major leagues."

The slow pace of integration left most in a state of limbo. Some players like Buck Leonard and Cool Papa Bell were too old to be considered; others like Ray Dandridge and Piper Davis saw themselves relegated to the minor leagues, where even outstanding records failed to win them promotion

. Throughout the 1950s the Negro American League struggled to survive, recruiting teenagers and second-rate talent for the modest four-team loop. In 1963 Kansas City hosted the thirtieth and last East-West All-Star Game, and the following year the famed Monarchs ceased touring the nation. By 1965 the Indianapolis Clowns remained as a last vestige of Jim Crow baseball.

On the issue of civil rights and equal rights activists, Robinson wrote in his column in the Amsterdam News, "You mouth a big and bitter battle, Malcolm but it is noticeable that your militancy is mainly expressed in Harlem where it is safe."

Robinson thought that Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was a crook. Although even Powell's supporters shared Robinson's point-of-view, they did not do anything about it. However Jackie defended the Harlem politician when Congress unseated him. Perhaps playing with the likes of Hugh Casey and Leo Durocher had convinced Robinson that rascals could be put to good purposes.

In politics, as in sport, Robinson was uncompromising, ambitious and inspiring. Jackie Robinson became an active Republican. He believed that free enterprise was a feature of freedom. Being a New York Republican meant supporting Nelson Rockefeller and Jacob Javitz, who in turn manifested their support of the civil rights movement, while Confederate Democrats like Richard Russell and Strom Thurmond had done the exact opposite. Robinson endorsed Richard Nixon for president in 1960 after he met with Jack Kennedy and found his commitment to civil rights listless. Robinson weakened his support of Nixon when the vice president refused to call for Martin Luther King's release from the Birmingham jail. Moreover his support completely withered away when the party nominated Barry Goldwater in 1964, who had voted against civil rights bills. Robinson refused to endorse Goldwater, saying the party had abandoned blacks.

To Robinson, integration always embodied equal participation in American culture on the part of African-Americans. However this did not imply that the latter had to be emerged in American culture to the point of self-annulment. In the heady integrationist atmosphere of the 1950s, Jackie and his wife, Rachel Robinson opted to reside in the white suburbs of Connecticut. But Jackie's primary energies and commitment was always centered on black America. Robinson countered the political goals of black separatism with a vision of black capitalism, in which African-American investors, helped by sympathetic whites and government assistance, would create black-owned businesses, employ black workers, generate demand among the black masses, and raise the general level of prosperity, education, and opportunity among the nation's black population

. Robinson was perhaps overly optimistic because he envisioned this as a chance for African-Americans to equally participate in American society by contributing to the American economy, rather than creating a separate economy. Unlike some contemporary African-American conservatives, Robinson never lost sight of the need for government assistance to overcome the legacy of past discrimination to achieve these ends

The early 1970s found Robinson going through physical and emotional trials which seemed to manifest themselves as a test of faith. His firstborn son had succumbed to drug addiction that had led to his death. Robinson's body was severely affected by diabetes and heart ailments, his hair had turned completely white, and his eyesight was fading. Roger Kahn, in The Boys of Summer, which introduced the Robinson saga to yet another generation, memorably described having to slow his own pace "so as not to walk too quickly" for the ailing Robinson

. Most disappointing for him was, perhaps the fact that the African-American community was still not enjoying equal rights, and that the door to the 'promised land' had not been completely opened. His onetime political ally, Richard Nixon, now sat in the White House, the beneficiary of "white backlash" and suitor of a "Southern strategy." The limitations of black capitalism were now obvious. While a significant number of African-Americans had been able to take advantage of the opportunities that Robinson had helped engender, the persistence of poverty and the high rate of drug abuse and dealing, crime, and violence had even claimed his own son. "I cannot possibly believe that I have it made while so many black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity as they live in slums or barely exist on welfare,"