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Fairfax Underground
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
BLACK HISTORY MONTH JACKIE ROBINSON
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BLACK HISTORY MONTH.
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Date: February 16, 2018 09:58PM
JACKIE ROBINSON’S BASEBALL CAREER
Jackie Robinson’s debut in organized baseball (April 18, 1946, with the Montreal Royals of the International League, the Dodgers’ best farm club) is now a legend. In five at-bats he hit a three-run homer and three singles, stole two bases, and scored four times, twice by forcing the pitcher to balk.
Promoted to the Dodgers the following spring, Robinson thrived on the pressure and established himself as the most exciting player in baseball. His playing style combined traditional elements of black sports–the opportunistic risk-taking known as “tricky baseball” in the Negro Leagues–with an aggressive style of play. According to his manager Leo Durocher, “This guy didn’t just come to play. He come to beat ya.”
In their response to Jackie Robinson, African Americans rejected “separate but equal” status and embraced integration. Robinson’s presence in baseball electrified them, and they flocked to see the Dodgers in huge numbers and from great distances.
African American sportswriters, many of whom had advocated baseball integration for years, focused their attentions on Robinson and the black players who followed him. His success encouraged the integration of professional football, basketball, and tennis, while the Negro Leagues, which in a sense depended on segregation, began an irreversible decline, losing ballplayers, spectators and reporters.
During his first two years with the Dodgers, Robinson kept his word to Rickey and endured astonishing abuse amid national scrutiny without fighting back. His dignified courage in the face of virulent racism–from jeers and insults to beanballs, hate mail, and death threats–commanded the admiration of whites as well as blacks and foreshadowed the tactics that the 1960s Civil Rights Movement would develop into the theory and practice of nonviolence.
JACKIE ROBINSON AND CIVIL RIGHTS
Robinson, however, finally broke his emotional and political silence in 1949, becoming an outspoken and controversial opponent of racial discrimination. He criticized the slow pace of baseball integration and objected to the Jim Crow practices in the Southern states where most clubs held spring training.
Robinson led other ballplayers in urging baseball to use its economic power to desegregate Southern towns, hotels and ballparks. Because most baseball teams integrated relatively calmly, the “Jackie Robinson experiment” provided an important example of successful desegregation to ambivalent white southern political and business leaders.
Having watched baseball integrate through a combination of individual black achievements, white goodwill, economic persuasion and public outspokenness, Robinson, when he retired from baseball in 1957, sought to bring the same tactics to bear on increasing African American employment opportunities.
His lifelong struggle continued to his last public appearance, nine days before he died: He told television viewers of an Old-Timers’ Game, “I’d like to live to see a black manager.” Fittingly, his eulogy was delivered by the outstanding advocate of African American self-help and employment opportunity–the Reverend Jesse Jackson. “When Jackie took the field,” Jackson declared, “something reminded us of our birthright to be fre
Jackie Robinson’s debut in organized baseball (April 18, 1946, with the Montreal Royals of the International League, the Dodgers’ best farm club) is now a legend. In five at-bats he hit a three-run homer and three singles, stole two bases, and scored four times, twice by forcing the pitcher to balk.
Promoted to the Dodgers the following spring, Robinson thrived on the pressure and established himself as the most exciting player in baseball. His playing style combined traditional elements of black sports–the opportunistic risk-taking known as “tricky baseball” in the Negro Leagues–with an aggressive style of play. According to his manager Leo Durocher, “This guy didn’t just come to play. He come to beat ya.”
In their response to Jackie Robinson, African Americans rejected “separate but equal” status and embraced integration. Robinson’s presence in baseball electrified them, and they flocked to see the Dodgers in huge numbers and from great distances.
African American sportswriters, many of whom had advocated baseball integration for years, focused their attentions on Robinson and the black players who followed him. His success encouraged the integration of professional football, basketball, and tennis, while the Negro Leagues, which in a sense depended on segregation, began an irreversible decline, losing ballplayers, spectators and reporters.
During his first two years with the Dodgers, Robinson kept his word to Rickey and endured astonishing abuse amid national scrutiny without fighting back. His dignified courage in the face of virulent racism–from jeers and insults to beanballs, hate mail, and death threats–commanded the admiration of whites as well as blacks and foreshadowed the tactics that the 1960s Civil Rights Movement would develop into the theory and practice of nonviolence.
JACKIE ROBINSON AND CIVIL RIGHTS
Robinson, however, finally broke his emotional and political silence in 1949, becoming an outspoken and controversial opponent of racial discrimination. He criticized the slow pace of baseball integration and objected to the Jim Crow practices in the Southern states where most clubs held spring training.
Robinson led other ballplayers in urging baseball to use its economic power to desegregate Southern towns, hotels and ballparks. Because most baseball teams integrated relatively calmly, the “Jackie Robinson experiment” provided an important example of successful desegregation to ambivalent white southern political and business leaders.
Having watched baseball integrate through a combination of individual black achievements, white goodwill, economic persuasion and public outspokenness, Robinson, when he retired from baseball in 1957, sought to bring the same tactics to bear on increasing African American employment opportunities.
His lifelong struggle continued to his last public appearance, nine days before he died: He told television viewers of an Old-Timers’ Game, “I’d like to live to see a black manager.” Fittingly, his eulogy was delivered by the outstanding advocate of African American self-help and employment opportunity–the Reverend Jesse Jackson. “When Jackie took the field,” Jackson declared, “something reminded us of our birthright to be fre