stLouISTBaseball Celebrates Jackie Robinson's 75th Anniversary Of Breaking The Color Line
by Howard Manly Jackie Robinson was more than an athlete. 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.”
