There are defining moments in the life of a nation when a single individual can shape events for generations to come. For America, the spring of 1947 was such a moment, and Jackie Robinson was the man who made the difference." With these words, President Clinton contributed to Long Island University's three-day celebration of that momentous event in American history when Robinson became the first African American to play major league baseball.
First published in 1998, Jackie Robinson: Race, Sports and the American Dream includes presentations from that celebration, especially chosen for their fresh perspectives and illuminating insights. A heady mix of journalism, scholarship, and memory offers a presentation that far transcends the retelling of just another sports story. Readers get a true sense of the social conditions prior to Robinson's arrival in the major leagues and the ripple effect his breakthrough had on the nation. Anecdotes enliven the story and offer more than the usual "larger than life" portrait of Robinson.
A mélange of contributors from the sports world, academia, and journalism, some of Robinson's contemporaries, Dodger fans, and historians of the era, all sharing a passion for baseball, reflect on issues of sports, race, and the dramatic transformation of the American social and political scene in the last fifty years. This book is a must read for anyone interested in American Sports history and sports in general.
Foreword Senator Charles E. Schumer Preface Acknowledgments Jackie, Do
They Know? An Ode to Jackie Robinson Tom (Tommy) Hawkins Introduction Part I.
Historical Perspectives
1. In the Eye of the Storm: 1947 in World Perspective
2. Men of Conscience
3. Moses Fleetwood Walker: Jackie Robinson's Accidental
Predecessor
4. Monte Irvin: Up from Sharecropping Part II. Fans' Remembrances
5. It Happened in Brooklyn: Reminiscences of a Fan
6. The Interborough Iliad
7. Father and Son at Ebbets Field
8. A Ten-Year-Old Dodger Fan Welcomes
Jackie Robinson to Brooklyn Ivan W. Hametz
9. Mah Nishtanah Part III. The
Radical Press/ Agenda
10. Baseball on the Radical Agenda: The Daily Worker
and Sunday Worker Journalistic Campaign to Desegregate Major League Baseball,
1933-1947
11. White Dodgers, Black Dodgers
12. Robinson-Robeson Part IV. On
the [ Level?] Playing Field
13. Hank Greenberg, Joe DiMaggio, and Jackie
Robinson: Race, Identity, and Ethnic Power
14. Burt Shotton: The Crucible of
1947
15. Jackie Robinson on Opening Day, 1947-1956 Part V. Measuring the
Impact on Baseball
16. Jackie Robinson and the Third Age of Modern Baseball
17. Jackie Robinson and the Emancipation of Latin American Baseball Players
18. The Two Titans and the Mystery Man: Branch Rickey, Walter O'Malley, and
John L. Smith as Brooklyn Dodgers Partners, 1944-1950 Part VI. Measuring the
Impact on Society
19. Robinson in 1947: Measuring an Uncertain Impact
20. "Do
Not Go Gently into That Good Night": Race, the Baseball Establishment, and
the Retirements of Bob Feller and Jackie Robinson
21. Kareem's Omission?
Jackie Robinson, Black Profile in Courage
22. Should We Rely on the
Marketplace to End Discrimination? What the Integration of Baseball Tells Us
Part VII. Thank You, Jackie Robinson
23. Greetings
24. Keynote Address About
the Contributors Index
Joseph Dorinson and Joram Warmund
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