Frank Robinson, who debuted April 17, 1956, in the leftfield of Cincinnati's Crosley Field, wasn't like the black athletes this country championed for most of the first half of the last century. He didn't subjugate himself to perform and act in the non-confrontational manner that was expected of and acceded to by many black Americans in post-Reconstruction, pre-Civil Rights era America. He wasn't like the three most-celebrated black athletes in America from World War I through the Korean War — boxer Joe Louis, track and field athlete Jesse Owens and his baseball predecessor Jackie Robinson — who were depicted synecdochally by a white America in pursuit of racial peace and unity as long as it was separate.