OPINION: As MLB celebrates the 75th anniversary of Robinson breaking the color barrier, let’s remember that he was more than a baseball pioneer; he was a civil rights champion, too.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, some folks only concentrate on MLK’s dreams while ignoring his denouncements. King wasn’t just about fighting systemic racism. He also spoke forcefully against poverty and the Vietnam War, topics that endangered his life more than singing “Kumbaya” with Klansmen.
But whitewashing King’s legacy makes the status quo easier to maintain.
The same is true each Jackie Robinson Day.
Today, April 15, marks the 75th anniversary of Robinson smashing Major League Baseball’s color line when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field. His entry in 1947 started a ripple of integration across sports and portions of society (e.g., the military and public schools). After six All-Star seasons in a 10-year career, he retired and eventually was enshrined in the Hall of Fame.
And that’s where his story ends…unless you pay attention and reject any sanitized version of history.
Integrating the major leagues was no small feat and harder to imagine today, where some of this country’s most prominent Black Americans are pro athletes. Back then, no sport was bigger than baseball, “the national pastime,” which became deeply embedded in American culture and society as a galvanizing force after World War II.
Yes, Robinson broke a color barrier that had existed in the major leagues since 1884. But he wasn’t just a slick-fielding second baseman who was a terror on the base paths and a beast in the batter’s box. He was more than a baller who won awards for Rookie of the Year (1947) and Most Valuable Player (1949).
Those were issues of fun and games.
Matters of life and death were his real focus.
Robinson initially played meek in becoming an MLB pioneer, but he was never about that submissive life. He proved it in 1944—11 years before Rosa Parks—as a 25-year-old Army lieutenant. Ordered to sit in the back of a bus, he refused and was court-martialed.
As Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey prepared for the historic signing, he made Robinson promise to suffer racial indignities without objection. But the agreement lasted only two years, after which the MVP was cleared to not turn the other cheek. “From that moment on, I defended myself against anti-Negro insults with all the force at my command,” Robinson wrote in Baseball Has Done It.
Source: Don’t believe that whitewashed version of Jackie Robinson they keep telling you about
