by Howard Manly
Jackie Robinson was more than an athlete.
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Seventy-five years have now passed since Robinson became the first Black man to play for a professional white baseball team. Major League Baseball is celebrating the seminal moment that occurred on April 15, 1947, when Robinson, wearing No. 42, strode on the field as a Brooklyn Dodger.
But as historian Chris Lamb of IUPUI points out, “those celebrations will fall short if they don’t address how Robinson confronted white supremacy with class and dignity … when his own minor league manager once asked, ‘Do you really think a nigra is a human being?’”
Robinson’s life was focused on achieving racial equality in America — and he paid a price.
In one 1953 sports magazine article headlined “Why They Boo Jackie Robinson,” he was described as “combative” and “emotional.” A Cleveland paper called him a “rabble-rouser” who was on a “soapbox.”
As politics professor Peter Dreier explains here, “It was Robinson’s strong patriotism that led him to challenge America to live up to its ideals. He felt an obligation to use his fame to challenge the society’s racial injustice.”
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