Reviews for Jackie Robinson

The average rating for Jackie Robinson based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-12-11 00:00:00 Douglas A Kelly Arnold Rampersad's biography of Jackie Robinson is the monthly selection for the baseball book club for December 2018. Rampersad, who has also written biopics of Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison, was selected by Robinson's widow Rachel to tell his story some twenty years after his passing. As a baseball fanatic I grew up knowing the basics, that in 1947, Jackie Robinson integrated baseball when he suited up for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15. By doing so, Robinson had agree to not fight back to abuse for the first two years of what team president Branch Rickey referred to as his noble experiment. Robinson became the leader of the Dodgers and before his playing days were over finally helped his team best the hated Yankees in the World Series in 1955. These are the stories of baseball lore that I grew up with, and, while captivating, they did not tell the full story of Jackie Robinson the person. Rampersad along with Rachel Robinson has told that story, and what a story of achieving the American dream it is. Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born on January 31, 1919 in Cairo, Georgia, the youngest of five siblings. Georgia was still in the throes of Jim Crow laws and would not witness racial equality until the end of Robinson's life. Desiring a better life for her children, Robinson's mother Mallie made the decision to migrate to Pasadena, California as part of the Great Migration. Along with a dozen other family members, the Robinsons made their way west where Jim Crow was not as rampant. Within two years Mallie purchased a home on the corner lot of 121 Pepper Street, and the home became the sought after destination for all of the neighborhood kids. It was in this environment, albeit in a community that still held out for some vestiges of Jim Crow, that Jack Robinson grew up and developed into a four sport star. From the streets of Pasadena, Jack would graduate to Pasadena Junior College and then to UCLA where he would catch the eye of both national sports writers and of Rachel Isum, his future wife and partner in his endeavours. Rampersad devotes the first half of the book to Jack's childhood and sports playing days in the face of segregation and integration. He did so with dignity and won the respect and friendship of most people he came across, black, white, and any color in between. Most of the sports information was a review for me, but it is always enlightening to read about Robinson, a true American citizen. While I have come to detest the current version of the Dodgers and their big budget spending, the 1940s Brooklyn Dodgers run by Branch Rickey represent to me what was wholesome about both baseball and American society in the first half of the 20th century. Despite this repeat of information, it was a treat to read about Robinson's exploits on the baseball diamond. By 1957; however, all that came to an end as the O'Malley family pushed Rickey out of the Dodgers organization and chose to trade Robinson to the crosstown rival Giants. Declining a trade, Robinson chose to retire from baseball. Within the year, both the Dodgers and Giants would relocate to California, and Jack Robinson had no space within the major league baseball community. Jackie Robinson would devote the last fifteen years of his life to racial integration politics, both in campaigning and in business. A self proclaimed independent, Robinson supported the candidate who he felt represented the needs of black people the best. Robinson's stance would anger many in the African American community who would call him an Uncle Tom or sellout to whites; yet, Robinson stuck to his principles and would support people black or white who would give him and his family the best chance to achieve the American Dream. His work had him cross paths with luminaries as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, President Richard Nixon, Jesse Jackson, and Nelson Rockefeller, for whom he worked as a staff member. Robinson would serve as a role on organizations as the NAACP and worked tirelessly for the rights of African Americans, both on the road campaigning and at membership dinners across the nation. He also wrote a weekly column for the Amsterdam Newspaper out of Harlem as his opinion on race matters was one to be regarded long after his career as an athlete was over. Rachel Robinson broke barriers in her own right as psychiatric nurse on the staff of Yale Teaching Hospital. Rachel returned to get her masters degree while raising three teenaged children at a time when the glass ceiling had not been shattered, especially for African American women. That she did so when Jack was still on the road campaigning for civil rights took a toll on their family's life; yet, Jack in his own way was proud of Rachel's achievements. It has been said that only the good die young. Jackie Robinson succumbed to diabetes on October 24, 1972 at the age of 53. He had just been honored by major league baseball on the occasion of the twenty fifth anniversary of his integrating the sport. Rachel Robinson took over his fledgling Jackie Robinson Foundation, which today is run by her children Sharon and David, which awards scholarships to promising high school students of color to attend the university of their choice. In 1997, fifty years following his integration of baseball, the major leagues retired his number 42. Each year on April 15, baseball recognizes Jackie Robinson Day, and, fittingly, all players wear number 42. Yet, Jackie Robinson was more than number 42 on the Dodgers. He was a loving husband and father and a tireless campaigner for civil rights across many platforms. Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom post humous, Jackie Robinson is regarded as one of the standout American citizens of the 20th century and a man whose life it is always a joy to read about. 4.5 stars

Review # 2 was written on 2013-07-14 00:00:00 Jeremy Oleson I am often struck by the way American popular culture cherry picks the virtues of its heroes. We all know the story of Jackie Robinson—a stellar African American athlete who starred in multiple sports at USC and was selected by Brooklyn Dodgers’ manager Branch Rickey to be the first African American to play major league baseball. Robinson was taunted and threatened, hit in the head with fastballs on multiple occasions, and often the victim of clear rule violations. Yet he remained cool, unshaken, unperturbed, and played a graceful, playful game of baseball. That is the story that the recent movie “42” gave us, it’s what Ken Burns gave us in his documentary about baseball, and it’s what the bits and pieces of oral history you might have heard at a bar and tap your father frequented when you were growing up. It’s a great story in that it bravely shows the racist side of our character while giving us a disarmingly safe and non-violent hero who withstands every challenge he faces. It’s a liberal, Rosa Parks kind of story, and it makes us feel good about how far we’ve come. But it’s not quite the whole story, as the deeply researched and cleanly written new biography from Arnold Rampersad makes clear. Robinson did what Rickey asked him to do, but he resented it most of the time, was angry most of the time, and worried about money most of the time. He was a deeply religious, deeply conservative man who admired Richard Nixon greatly, who was critical and fearful of Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, who sold his name to a range of business interests after leaving baseball, and who engaged in a number of sharp business practices himself when he opened ventures on his own. Even to his wife, who loved him loyally and with very clear eyes, he was often insensitive, even cruel. None of this undermines what Robinson did for baseball in his playing days nor does it tarnish the courage he showed as he walked on to the field every afternoon, especially in southern cities like St. Louis and Baltimore. But by reducing Robinson’s story to something that could be printed on the back of a baseball card, we are leaving out the very complicated reality that makes Robinson’s role in baseball history so human and so important. Robinson overcame so much in himself to do what he did; he had to conquer his own demons as well as the shitheads who were screaming at him. To render those demons invisible is to make his accomplishments a cartoon instead of an important part of history. Rampersad has fixed that for Robinson, and as the author of definitive biographies of Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Arthur Ashe, he is doing a great deal to tell true stories about the African American past before those stories, like Robinson’s, slip into the limp legends that everyone knows. Full disclosure: I took a class with Arnold Rampersad when he was a new professor at the University of Virginia in 1975. He doesn’t remember me—I got a B+--but I’ve been trying to follow his scholarship ever since.