Jackie Robinson's Unwhitewashed Legacy

By Keith Boykin

Seventy-five years ago this week, Jackie Robinson broke the color line in major league baseball. It was April 15, 1947 when Robinson played for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

That’s usually where the story begins and ends for most of white America. It’s supposed to be a sign of racial progress, an indication of just how far America has come from the bad old days of segregation.

But that’s not the end of the story.

As with so many other Black heroes in American history — Jesse Owens, Dr. King, Muhammad Ali — Robinson’s legacy has been whitewashed to fit the clean and tidy, and ultimately, false narrative of racial progress.

“Baseball and Jackie Robinson haven’t had much to say to each other,” he told LA Times reporter Ron Rapoport in 1972. “It’s hard to look at a sport which Black athletes have virtually saved, and when a managerial job opens they give it to a guy who’s failed in other areas because he’s white.”

Robinson knew that his reputation had been tarnished because of his politics. “White America doesn’t like a Black guy who stands up for what he believes,” he told Rapaport. And he was not afraid to condemn the persistence of racism in baseball, and the rest of America.

Decades before former NFL player Colin Kaepernick was vilified for taking a knee, Robinson took his own principled stand against American hypocrisy. “I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a Black man in a white world,” he said.

Robinson had nothing to do with the Dodgers after he left baseball, according to Rapoport. And in his final address to the public, he made it clear that baseball had more work to do.

Speaking at the 1972 World Series, during a ceremony honoring the 25th anniversary of his major league debut, Robinson finished his remarks with his own mic drop moment.

“I’m extremely proud and pleased to be here this afternoon. But I must admit I’m going to be tremendously more pleased and more proud when I look at that third-base coaching line one day and see a Black face managing in baseball.”

Nine days later, Jackie Robinson died of a heart attack. He was only 53 years old.