The Chris Moeller Archives

Jackie Robinson and the rabble-rousers

This is an extraordinary day to celebrate the life of Jackie Robinson. Yesterday marked the 60th anniversary of Robinson's debut as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, breaking the longtime ban on African-American players in Major League Baseball, but today provides an opportunity for us to honor Jackie for all the extraordinary things he accomplished after breaking baseball's color barrier.

Like Martin Luther King, Jr., perhaps the only man that can claim a larger impact than Robinson on improving race relations in the United States, many pundits prefer to remember and embrace only a sanitized, non-threatening memory of an American hero. We're readily reminded of Dr. King's bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, his speech at the National Mall in Washington, and the marches he led throughout the South for racial justice. His legacy becomes more controversial, however, although equally vital, when we begin acknowledging that the obstacles to his dream are still with us today, not simply ghosts with attack dogs and water hoses from old black and white news reels.

King's beliefs about racial equality were tied directly to his thoughts about economic justice, for one cannot exist without the other. Voting rights for blacks and the end of desegregation in the 1960s was not the end-all and be-all of the struggle. He once famously said of our disparities in economic opportunity: "In America, we have socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor." King advocated a government compensatory program in the '60s providing $50 billion over 10 years to all disadvantaged groups.

The marches initiated by King were not limited to the South. He led rallies against unfair housing laws in Chicago and other Northern cities, and its worth remembering that the marchers faced dangerous public opposition there as well. He vehemently opposed the war in Vietnam, going so far as to label the U.S. "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world," and lamenting "individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries."

It puts me in the mind of Will Ferrell's race car driver "Ricky Bobby" in the comic film "Taladega Nights," who, in his nightly prayers, always remembers to thank "the little baby Jesus," the least complicated version of the Christian messiah. In marketing a hero, one cannot be allowed to endanger the nation's entrenched economic stratification or to strike any fear in the hearts of skittish corporate sponsors. We wind up with whitewashed versions of the truth.

Jackie Robinson was not just a ballplayer who kept his head down, played hard and endured terrific taunts and threats on the ball diamond. He didn't succeed by keeping his mouth shut and doing what he was told, though we're often painted a picture of a man who never fought back, an obedient former Army soldier who was chosen by the Dodgers because he could best follow the advice given by team president Branch Rickey. Robinson didn't physically fight back the first year, but he was immediately a tough competitor and heroically stubborn-- then a loud critic of many of the game's policies, and persistent in those criticisms. In a very short time, before his 1949 MVP season, Robinson had actually became very animated as a player, confronting fans, teammates, opponents, and umpires.

Robinson had stood trial and faced court-martial for insubordination during his military service in the early '40s, after refusing to move to the back of a segregated military bus. (He was found innocent and honorably discharged.) The event preceeded Rosa Parks' action by a decade, and helped lead also to the desegregation of the armed services. It was only one of the first in a long line of occasions in which Jackie would put the betterment of humanity above his own personal interest, and it shouldn't be forgotten now, particularly during an era in which we still hear claims that the military is the wrong place for social experimentation.

After his playing debut in 1947 and that extraordinary rookie campaign, Robinson never lost sight of the role he-- and all of us-- are cast to play. That's the reason I think April 16th is such a great day to honor him. He became empowered as a member of the league. He was sharply critical of the slow pace of integration in the game, as well as outside of it, and he became a very public political activist after his retirement in 1957, sending correspondence to Presidents and engaging himself fully in the Civil Rights movement, marching with King, defending Malcolm X, and serving as a newspaper columnist and a key figure in the black-owned Freedom Bank.

It's a sorer subject with baseball today, but Robinson also committed himself to righting the economic injustices in the game, becoming, first, in 1971, one of only four baseball men to testify in court on behalf of Curt Flood when Flood challenged the sport's reserve clause, which bound a player to one team for life. Then at the 1972 World Series, when a near-death Robinson was invited to speak on the field upon the 25th Anniversary of his debut season, he only relectantly agreed, then used the occasion to chastise the league and its clubs for failing to have ever hired a black manager. Within two years, African-American Frank Robinson (unrelated) was named manager of the Cleveland Indians.

Like Dr. King, I believe that if Jackie Robinson were alive today, he'd be enormously frustrated by the lack of progress in America in racial and economic fairness. Social advancement always depends upon rabble-rousers to awaken the general populace. This past week, we've seen and heard a lot of public resentment against a pair of modern-day rabble-rousers, Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, over their roles in the Don Imus radio and television firings. The chief complaint against the two men has always been that they're in search of personal publicity. But that's nothing new. King and Robinson both faced the same charges. They may both be paper saints today, lionized and rendered nearly artificial in death, but in life, they were dangerous activist threats to the political and financial establishments. They were not well-liked. But as Robinson once said, "I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me... all I ask is that you respect me as a human being."

posted by CM @ 3:08 PM