Jackie Robinson Because he was the man who knocked Jim Crow clean out of the park Baseball player, civil rights activist b. 1919 – 1972

Because he was the man who knocked Jim Crow clean out of the park Baseball player, civil rights activist b. 1919 – 1972

When considering Jackie Robinson, think about the basics, about the justification for Jim Crow, which existed not because whites did not want to live among blacks, just as the reason for segregation in baseball wasn’t because white players and fans did not want to compete against blacks or watch them play.

The justification lies in the basics, in the bones, that fundamental belief that African-Americans were sociologically and scientifically incapable of joining white society. The best way to consider Robinson is to consider the victory of his opposition had he failed.

Joe Louis and Jesse Owens came before Robinson, but each participated in an individual sport, where whites could appreciate black talent, but not have to dine with them, share a cab with them, and yes, take a shower next to them. Blacks were enjoyed without having to remove the invisible wall of segregation as a national belief system or even consider the logic of its construction.

The African-American athlete is the most influential and important black employee in American history. Robinson leads the list and always will because of the colossal stakes of his failure. His opponents would have used him as proof African-Americans could not walk and live among whites, not just because they were black, but because they were convinced that blackness disqualified African-Americans from cultivation, dignity, refinement, responsibility, leadership, discipline and manners — the very foundations of Jim Crow and total black subjugation. A Robinson misstep in performance was one thing, but in temperament would have been catastrophic.

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Certainly another black player would have been given a chance to integrate, but when? The dominoes of his failure alter the entire remainder of the 20th century. On the small scale, Robinson’s failure would have certainly eliminated or curtailed the legendary careers of Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Bob Gibson, Roberto Clemente in baseball, and probably Jim Brown in football, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain in basketball, as both the NBA and NFL integrated after Robinson was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers.

On the larger scale, a Robinson social failure likely keeps the military from integrating its units, which it did in 1948, three years after Robinson was signed, or allowing blacks to stay in major hotels in several cities, as Robinson forced in St. Louis in the 1950s. Instead of being immortalized on a stamp, Robinson would have been the symbol for his enemies and his likely cowed white allies, the face not of why segregation couldn’t work, but why it needed to remain. – Howard Bryant