Why Jackie Robinson Still Matters

As we celebrate Palm Sunday, some of U by wearing frilly flower laced bonnets, others by communing with Mother Nature, I felt it timely to deliver another sermonette, a eulogy even to the Great Jackie Robinson. Almost as an inspiring figure as Martin Luther King, Mr. Robinson also died too young, but unlike Dr. King, for awhile his life and achievements seemed to be largely overlooked. Major League baseball has done itself and America proud by having an annual "Day of Rememorance" on April 15th, the day Jackie Robinson first entered a big league ball game in 1947. This yearly honoring of Jackie Robinson makes Tax Day sting just a little less.

Some years ago, I read a short story of Mr. Robinson's challenges in becoming the first "negro" to play in the majors. Branch Rickey, as I recall, was then the Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who selected Him to be the person to break the color barrier in professional sports. Knowing the vile, hateful receptions Mr. Robinson would have to endure, Mr. Rickey sought to "steel" him by sharing with him a number of passages from the book "The Life of Christ", written by the noted English Theologian, Frederic William Farrar. The Farrar quote that I found most compelling reads something like: "Even the brute and the coward secretly admire a man of integrity, who lives daily his principles of justice and honor, and does not answer their evil in kind. That rare courage, that ability to truly turn the other cheek, separates the strong from their weaker inferiors". Wow, that certainly is an empowering message - right out of the classic Hollywood Masterpiece "A Man for All Seasons", as is Mr. Jackie Robinson.

One other strong man of character also deserves mention here, Pee Wee Reese, Dodger teammate to Jackie Robinson. A son of the old South, Mr. Reese proclaimed to the fans, opposing players, the press and most importantly to all his other teammates, that in Jackie Robinson, he saw neither a black or white man, but instead he saw a gifted baseball player whose only color of importance was Dodger Blue.

I was fortunate myself, 20 years later in 1967, to participate in an analogous civil rights moment in the new South, where Davidson College's All-American basketball player, Mike Maloy, integrated my school's athletic programs, as one of the very first blacks to play in the Southern Conference. Recently, the College honored Mike, who died in 2009, with a permanent exhibit in the Baker Sports Complex. Having seen first hand some of the racial challenges Mike Maloy confronted - two decades after Jackie Robinson so courageously set the paths for others to follow - I am empowered even today by both of their lives of integrity and honor.