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Baseball's Sublime Hero |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / REVIEWS |
| Author: David Conrads |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 2/1/1998 |
| Size: 2,601 Words, 16,090 Characters |
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JACKIE ROBINSON
A Biography
Arnold Rampersad
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997
512 pp., $27.50
THE JACKIE ROBINSON READER
Edited by Jules Tygiel
New York: Dutton, 1997
280 pp., $23.95
JACKIE ROBINSON
An Intimate Portrait
Rachel Robinson, with Lee Wilkins
New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996
240 pp., $29.95
The 1997 baseball season marked the fiftieth anniversary of the end of segregation in major league baseball. It was 1947 when Jackie Robinson made his historic debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. The news of his signing a contract to play in white-only "organized" baseball electrified the nation. Not for sixty years had the major leagues seen even a token black player. Segregation was still the law of the land throughout the South. Indeed, all the early civil rights landmarks--the desegregation of the armed forces, the Brown vs. the Board of Education decision, and the Montgomery bus boycott--were years away. Baseball was at the vanguard of social change.
The fiftieth-anniversary baseball season was dedicated to Robinson. A documentary was played before games and during rain delays in ballparks across the country. President Clinton appeared with Rachel Robinson, the ballplayer's widow, at a memorial ceremony at Shea Stadium in New York, and Robinson's old uniform number, 42, was permanently retired from all twenty-eight team rosters. That season was also accompanied by the publication of a trio of important new books, each of which sheds light on Robinson's life and career.
In Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait, published late in...
Read Full Article
... the current black players that they owe Jackie nothing."
Robinson died nine days later. The players in the Cincinnati dugout may have been indifferent, but when the young Reverend Jesse Jackson delivered the eulogy for Jackie Robinson, three thousand mourners packed New York's Riverside Church and tens of thousands lined the streets of Harlem to watch the passage of his mile-long cortege.
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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