Reclaiming 42

RECLAIMING 42 RECLAIMING 42 Public Memory and the Reframing of Jackie Robinson’s Radical Legacy DAVID NAZE University of Nebraska Press • lincoln © 2019 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska Chapter 4, “Jackie Robinson Day: The Contemporary Legacy,” originally appeared in Out of Bounds: Racism and the Black Athlete, 135– 58 (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2014). Used with permission. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Naze, David, author. Title: Reclaiming 42: public memory and the reframing of Jackie Robinson’s radical legacy / David Naze. Other titles: Reclaiming forty- two Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [2019] |Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2018048120 isbn 9780803290822 (hardback: alk. paper) isbn 9781496214942 (epub) isbn 9781496214959 (mobi) isbn 9781496214966 (pdf) Subjects: lcsh: Robinson, Jackie, 1919– 1972. | African American baseball players— Biography. | Baseball players— United States— Biography. | Collective memory— United States. | Racism in sports— United States. | Political activists— United States— Biography | Major League Baseball— History. | bisac: sports & recreation / Baseball / History. | social science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies. Classification: lcc gv865.r6 n39 2019 | ddc 796.357092 [B]— dc23 lc record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2018048120 Set in Scala OT by E. Cuddy. In memory of Ed Wilson and Andrew Muldowney. Thank you for helping shape my sports world. Contents Preface . ix Acknowledgments . xvii Introduction: Have We Failed Jackie Robinson’s Legacy? . 1 1. Robinson’s Postplaying Career: A Political Impact . 45 2. The Robinson- Robeson Clash: A Siren Song Sung in Bass . 77 3. Cooperstown and Kansas City: The Museum Narratives . 101 4. Jackie Robinson Day: The Contemporary Legacy . 149 Conclusion: Taking Inventory of a Legacy . 175 Notes . 189 Bibliography . 199 Index . 205 Preface On April 15, 1947, the racial landscape of America changed. Not because of crisis, chaos, or confusion, but because of a political vision. That is, a vision shared by members of numerous communities and organizations. A vision not without disagree- ment or controversy. A vision that required colossal ambition and strategy. A vision that endured years of disappointment. A vision that was met with heavy resistance as well as anticipated approval. It was on this day that Jack Roosevelt Robinson broke baseball’s modern- day color barrier, forever changing the ways in which Americans viewed, and experienced, their favorite pas- time. No longer would baseball stand as a mere outlet for or escape from our quotidian routine, but baseball would forever become a microcosm of how communities embrace or reject cultural change. Mainstream America was seeing something new on the baseball field, literally, which consequently has forced us to consider the following question: Did Jackie Robinson’s breaking of baseball’s color barrier capture our national imagi- nation, or does our memory of Jackie Robinson illuminate our own desires for what Barack Obama refers to as “racial reconciliation on the cheap”?1 Either way we answer that question, there is no mistaking that Jackie Robinson was a radical. And by radical I mean in the ix most robust way possible. That is, Robinson was an individual whose mere presence in a white- dominated space posed a racial, political, and cultural threat beyond the periphery, a threat that posed a challenge for even those who supported racial change on a national level. This book is written through the lens of a rhe- torical scholar who comes from an admittedly privileged, white, male perspective, who is specifically interested in how Jackie Robinson’s legacy has been constructed by a mainstream, white, and male perspective. Robinson’s identity as a radical should be clear after seven decades since his breaking of baseball’s color barrier. In fact, not only should it be clear, but it should also be celebrated, if for no other reason than Robinson’s legacy has forced us to reconsider what racial reconciliation truly looks like in today’s mainstream America. But Robinson’s identity as a radical is not celebrated, at least not in the ways by which we typically celebrate his legacy. We can pretty much agree that Jackie Robinson was pivotal in the way America began talking about racial injustice. We can pretty much agree that Jackie Robinson was a unique baseball player with a skill set unseen by many mainstream baseball fans in the 1940s. And we can pretty much agree that Jackie Robinson is an American hero and icon, deserv- ing of every accolade and celebration of his impact on Ameri- can culture. But there appears to be something missing from those sentiments, something that hasn’t quite been identified in the mainstream narrative when talking about Jackie Robin- son’s legacy. In fact, there is a lot missing. Case in point: When we hear the name Jackie Robinson, what images and thoughts do we immediately conjure about the man? It would be a safe bet to assume that most of us would immediately think about his integrity, his perseverance, his personal character, his matu- rity, and, perhaps most of all, his courage. It would likely be just as safe of a bet that we don’t think about his political aspi- rations, his postbaseball career, his harsh critiques of Major League Baseball (mlb), or his clashes with fellow members of the civil rights movement. Those details, the details that came to define the man more privately than publicly, have been forgotten, x . Preface or more likely never been taught to the general public. Conse- quently, those details have been forgotten or neglected because it has been easy to forget or neglect them. And this should not come as a surprise to us as a society. Often we forget the details of one person’s legacy, either because of the passage of time or because we were never really taught about those details in the first place. That is what this book is attempting to do: to reclaim at least some of the details of Jackie Robinson’s life, the details that have been too easily washed away in a culture that seems to be satisfied with the idea that we live in a postracial society. Generations never saw Robinson play, and that allows numerous overly reductive and simplistic narratives to survive. Know- ing the depths of Jackie Robinson the player and political agent would take hard work that most are unwilling to begin. The ease with which we have chosen to remember Jackie Robinson in a general sense makes it a convenient legacy. In fact, Michael G. Long’s recovery of Robinson’s documented civil rights discourse has allowed us access to a Robinson not typically conveyed in mainstream recollections of his legacy. Long’s book First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson addresses how problematic it is to reduce Robinson’s memory and legacy to an oversimplified account of convenience. As Long proclaims: Perhaps it has been safe and convenient for us to picture Robinson as the tolerant, clean- cut ballplayer who gently helped to integrate professional sports in the United States. But however comfortable it may be, our collective focus on the first part of his baseball career is utterly unfair to the Jackie Robinson who loudly criticized the prac- tices and policies of racist America, devoted countless hours to civil rights fundraising and rallies, twisted the arms of politicians hun- gry for black votes and yet fearful of a white backlash, and encour- aged young African Americans who have since become well-known veterans in the ongoing battle for civil rights.2 Long is right. It is utterly unfair to reduce Robinson’s legacy solely to the beginning of his baseball career. Building on Long’s work, this book aims to move beyond Robinson the baseball player. Preface . xi Perhaps the most compelling, maybe even the most obvi- ous, historical parallel we can draw from Robinson’s legacy is that of Martin Luther King Jr. Both were pivotal characters in the genesis of the modern American civil rights movement; both drew the ire of members in both white and black communities as each man attempted to balance the racial ten- sions found within and across racial lines; both have been celebrated as the most important figures in their respective spaces; both have been praised for being subservient when it was deemed necessary and criticized for being outspoken when it was deemed inappropriate; both were skilled at their respective crafts but perhaps praised, at least from a mainstream perspective, more for their personal character and courage than their celebrated skill set; and both, sadly, have had the details of their legacies oversimplified, commodified, and forgotten. The parallel is so similar in fact that when Michael Eric Dyson exclaimed in his book I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. that we have failed Martin Luther King’s racial memory, I couldn’t help but immediately think about our same failure on behalf of Jackie Robinson. The following passage from Dyson’s biocriticism provides a basis for understanding the critical importance of reexamin- ing the commemorative legacies of agents of social change such as MLK and others: Since his death, we have made three mistakes in treating King’s legacy. First, we have sanitized his ideas. Second, we have twisted his identity. Finally, we have ceded control of his image. King becomes a convenient icon shaped in our own distorted political images. He is fashioned to deflect our fears and fulfill our fantasies. King has been made into a metaphor of our hunger for heroes who cheer us up more than they challenge or change us.

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