At the beginning of the 1949 season, the Robinson family left their Flatbush apartment for a new home in the St. Albans neighborhood of Queens. In doing so, they joined a vibrant Black community in the Addisleigh Park section of the neighborhood. Throughout the forties and fifties, St. Albans was home to a wide range of Black musicians, actors, and athletes. Despite opposition from their white neighbors, and the neighborhood’s past as a segregated community, these entertainers and their families helped build a local legacy that still resonates today.

(l to r) Jackie Jr., Sharon, and David Robinson stand in front of the family home in St. Albans. Jackie Robinson Museum

By 1949, the Robinsons were realizing that their home, the second floor of a two-story house on Tilden Avenue in Flatbush, would soon be too small. Jackie Jr. was approaching his third birthday, and a second child, Sharon, was on the way. The family was looking for more space, which meant a move further from Ebbets Field than Jackie Robinson had lived since joining the Dodgers. In the middle of Jackie’s career-high 1949 season, Rachel found the family a new home, located at 112-40 177th street in the St. Albans neighborhood of eastern Queens.

112-40 117th Street, where the Robinsons lived from 1949 to 1954. Jackie Robinson Museum

Like many suburbs and neighborhoods in the Northeast, St. Albans carried a racist history. Planned as a railroad suburb in the early 1900s, the area quickly became home to hundreds of moderately well-off white families seeking to move outside of the city.¹ While the area was not formally segregated when it was first developed, restrictive housing covenants were put in place in the 1930s and 40s, barring property owners from selling their home to anyone who wasn’t white.

A row of houses in Addisleigh Park in 2015. Wikimedia Commons

Covenants like these governed thousands of suburbs and neighborhoods throughout the early twentieth century. Crucially, these covenants were not formally laws: in 1917, the Supreme Court ruled in Buchanan v. Warley that zoning codes enforcing segregation were unconstitutional. Instead, these restrictions were written into the deeds of the properties themselves, declaring that they could not be sold or rented to Black people (or, in many cases, other racial and ethnic minorities). Generally, every property in a neighborhood or town would have such a clause written into the deed. In the 1930s, having such a covenant was often a requirement for receiving a mortgage backed by the Federal Housing Administration.

A redlining map of the St. Albans Area. Public Domain, courtesy of Mapping Inequality

Between 1935 and 1940, the Federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) produced a series of maps of every major American city, assigning labels to different neighborhoods based on how desirable they were to mortgage lenders. Areas with a sizeable Black population were given red labels, indicating that they were the least desirable for banks. This process came to be known as redlining. While these maps themselves were not necessarily used to determine whether an individual borrower would receive a loan, they reflect and codify racist practices that were already widely in use. Residents of red areas typically paid higher interest rates on mortgages—if banks were willing to lend to them at all.

The Robinsons moved into their home (located in the section labeled C77) in 1949, about a decade after HOLC produced these maps. According to the accompanying report, section C77 had a “gradual encroachment of Negroes from the north” (section D18), terminology suggesting that the creators of these maps regarded Black families both as economically undesirable and potentially dangerous to white homeowners. Further, the report noted that many other sections would have a downward “trend of desirability over the next 10-15 years,” reflecting the racial beliefs of both HOLC and other institutions who had designed similar maps in the twentieth century.²

In 1948, the Shelly v. Kraemer Supreme Court decision rendered racial covenants unenforceable, though redlining and other related practices continued. Even before then, a trickle of Black families had been moving to St. Albans as homeowners deliberately broke the covenants in their deeds. Other white residents fought back with lawsuits and racist leaflets.³ Refusing to welcome their new neighbors (and attempting to preserve their property values), many of them left. In their place, a larger wave of middle-class Black families began to arrive. Alongside them came a number of prominent entertainers. Beginning with jazz greats Count Basie and Fats Waller years earlier in 1940, musicians began to turn the area into a vibrant community. Other artists, athletes, and intellectuals followed soon after. Eventually, Ebony published an article (complete with the names and addresses of many famous residents!) boasting that St. Albans was “home for more celebrities than any other U.S. residential area.”⁴

Friends Jackie Robinson Jr. and David Campanella demonstrate less-than-ideal towel use in a 1951 polio prevention public service announcement. New York Amsterdam News, Jackie Robinson Museum

Roy Campanella, Robinson’s Dodgers teammate, moved to St. Albans in 1948. After Jackie and the family arrived the next year, Jackie Jr. and David Campanella, Roy’s eldest son, became close friends, enjoying the community they shared in their new neighborhood. Though the family now lived miles away from Ebbets Field, privacy was still impossible. Jackie recounted how baseball fans would constantly swarm the house, taking pictures and demanding to see the children. “Usually, Rachel was diplomatic with the intruders,” Jackie later recounted. “But some of the liberties people took got on her nerves.”⁵

Between 1946 and 1955, the list of famous names grew. Actress Lena Horne was the next to arrive, and other jazz musicians such as Ella Fitzgerald and Illinois Jacquet followed shortly afterward. Later, saxophonist John Coltrane and funk rocker James Brown moved in the 1960s. Political theorist and activist W.E.B. DuBois also called St. Albans home, as did his wife, Shirley Graham DuBois, whose novels and musical works continue to shape our understanding of race in America today.

 

Rachel and Sharon Robinson pose for the camera on the sidewalk in front of their St. Albans home. Jackie Robinson Museum

Robinson and Campanella weren’t the only athletes in town, either. Heavyweight champ Joe Louis (who had collaborated with Robinson to desegregate the Army’s Officer Candidate School during World War II) moved in 1955. Floyd Patterson, also a heavyweight title holder, lived in St. Albans as well. Patterson and Robinson would work closely together in the 1960s, traveling together to speak at civil rights rallies and even attempting to start an ill-fated housing development.

The Robinsons left St. Albans in 1954. Searching for a retreat from their busy city life (and the too-friendly-by-half baseball fans that came along with it), the family moved again, this time to a new home in Stamford, Connecticut. The Robinsons’ St. Albans house still stands today, as do many of the original homes in Addisleigh Park. For Jackie Robinson and the family, the neighborhood was not just a symbol of a changing America, but a home in which they could share in the growing racial diversity that defines New York City. Though Jackie Robinson’s stay in the neighborhood was brief, he helped build its culture into a vibrant Black enclave at the edge of Queens.

References

[1] Theresa C. Noonan, “Addisleigh Park Historic District Designation Report” (New York: New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, February 1, 2011). https://smedia.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/2405.pdf

[2] Nelson, Robert K., LaDale Winling, et al. “Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America.” Edited by Robert K. Nelson and Edward L. Ayers. American Panorama: An Atlas of United States History, 2023. https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining.

[3] https://www.untappedcities.com/explore-queens-addisleigh-park-the-african-american-gold-coast-of-ny/

[4] “St. Alban’s,” Ebony, September 1951.

[5] Jackie Robinson and Alfred Duckett, I Never Had It Made (New York: Putnam, 1972), 116

 

Last week, we explored Jackie’s performance in the 1947, 1949, and 1952 World Series, as well as a “phantom” program from the never-played 1951 Dodgers-Yankees matchup. As the series returns to New York, we will look at Robinson’s four other World Series against the Yankees between 1953 and 1956. In celebration of the historic Dodgers-Yankees rivalry, the Jackie Robinson Museum will be open for special hours on Tuesday, October 29 and Wednesday, October 30 from 11AM to 6PM!

Dodgers players mob pitcher Johnny Podres after he pitches a complete game shutout in the 1955 World Series. Getty Images

1953

After their crushing defeat in 1952, the Dodgers returned to the World Series the next year. Winning an impressive 105 games, the Dodgers cruised to the National League pennant, coming in thirteen games ahead of Milwaukee. Again, they were pitted against the New York Yankees, who were looking to add to their streak of World Series victories. The 1953 Brooklyn Dodgers are considered one of the best teams of all time. Expectations were high, even though the Yankees were considered 6-to-5 favorites. Even Jackie didn’t want to seem overconfident: “I don’t want to bat 1.000,” he said before the series started. “I just want to get a hit at the right time.”

Robinson, of course, did not bat 1.000, but he had his most successful World Series to date. After getting only a single hit across the Dodgers’ losses in Games 1 and 2, Robinson’s bat jumped to life as he went 4-for-8 in Brooklyn’s victories at home in Games 3 and 4. In Game 5, the Yankees won an 11-7 slugfest backed by a grand slam from Mickey Mantle, sending the series back to the Bronx.

In Game 6, the Yankees jumped to an early 3-0 lead against the Dodgers Carl Erskine. In the bottom of the sixth, however, Robinson doubled with one out. Realizing that his team needed a spark, Jackie provided it the way he knew best: by taking the next base. With MVP catcher Roy Campanella at the plate, he broke for third base and made it easily. Campanella then scored him on a groundout, making it 3 to 1. The Dodgers would rally again in the top of the ninth, tying the game on a Carl Furillo home run. In the bottom of the frame, however, Billy Martin poked a single up the middle to score the Yankees’ winning run, giving them their fifth World Series victory in a row.

1955

The 1955 Dodgers entered the World Series as 98-game winners as they headed to Yankee Stadium once more. Across the first five innings of Game 1, the two teams traded blows as starting pitchers Don Newcombe and Whitey Ford struggled to retire the side. Robinson was an important factor in the early phases of the game, hitting a triple to center in the top of the second and scoring on Don Zimmer’s single. By the top of the eighth, however, the Yankees had pulled ahead, 6 to 3. Carl Furillo singled and Robinson had dashed to second on an error. After a sacrifice fly scored Furillo, Robinson waited at third with his team down by two.

After timing the tiring Ford’s delivery, Robinson dashed for home and barely slid beneath the tag of Yogi Berra, completing the steal of home. Berra was furious, immediately leaping to his feet to argue Larry Summers’s safe call. Even though the Dodgers were down two runs (and indeed, would go on to lose 6 to 5), Robinson was proud of his choice. “When they give me a run, I’m going to take it,” he later quipped, as the Dodgers prepared for Game 2. To Robinson, this steal was the jolt that the Dodgers needed. 36 years old and nearing the end of his career, Jackie was still terrifying opposing pitchers with his speed and daring.

 

The Dodgers dropped the next game as well. The next day, they returned to the friendly confines of Ebbets Field for Game 3. With the home crowd at their backs, the Bums’ fortunes began to change. Roy Campanella went 3-for-5 with a double and a home run. Robinson continued his reign of terror as well: When he doubled in the bottom of the seventh, he goaded Yankees’ left fielder Elston Howard into throwing to the base behind him, allowing Jackie to run to third as well. All in all, the Dodgers combined for eight runs, securing victory in the third game.

Victories in Games 4 and 5 brought the Dodgers within one game of victory as the series returned to the Bronx. Again, it was Snider and Campanella who anchored the lineup as they prepared for the showdown in the Bronx. A 5-1 defeat in Game 6 set up the decisive final game.

The next day, over 62,000 fans filled Yankee Stadium to see the matchup between the Yankees’ Tommy Byrne and the Dodgers’ Johnny Podres, a 22-year-old lefthander who had earned the win in Game 3. After three scoreless innings, Gil Hodges knocked in Dodger runs in the fourth and sixth, giving the Brooks a 2-0 lead. It would be defense and pitching that ruled the day, however. In the bottom half of the sixth inning, the Dodgers’ Sandy Amorós tracked down Yogi Berra’s well-struck fly to left field and then doubled off Gil McDougald at first base, ending the Yankees’ threat. Podres would go on to complete the shutout, giving Brooklyn its first ever World Series victory and netting the young pitcher World Series MVP honors.

 

The victory sent Brooklyn into delirious joy. Parades were held, confetti was thrown, and a local pizza parlor even held a mock funeral for the defeated Yankee dynasty. The Dodgers had never won a World Series before 1955, and celebrations lasted for days. Jackie, for his part, didn’t even play in the final game. Even so, his steal of home in Game 1 and his leadership throughout the series cemented his legacy as a dauntless competitor on baseball’s biggest stage.

This 1955 World Series ring, belonging to Commissioner Ford C. Frick, can be found in the lobby of the Jackie Robinson Museum.

1956

The Dodgers and Yankees would meet once more during Jackie Robinson’s career, in 1956. By the end of the season, Jackie was preparing to leave baseball. No longer the everyday second baseman, Robinson played most of the 1956 campaign at third, with some games at second and in the outfield as well. Still, he was an effective hitter, rebounding from a somewhat lackluster 1955.

In the second inning of Game 1, Robinson homered off of Whitey Ford. With none on and the Dodgers down 2-0 after yet another Mickey Mantle blast in the first, Robinson laced a line drive just inside of the left field foul pole, cutting the Yankee lead in half. Hodges and Furillo followed with a single and a double, tying the game at 2 apiece. The Dodgers would go on to win, 6 to 3, and would go on to win the next day in a 13-8 romp as well.

The Dodgers’ fortunes turned for the worse when the Series traveled north to the Bronx. Whitey Ford and Tom Sturdivant held the Dodger bats in check over the first two games at Yankee Stadium, surrendering only five runs between them. In the third game, the Dodgers fell victim to a perfect game thrown by Don Larsen, the only one in the history of the playoffs. Twenty-seven Dodgers came to the plate, none of whom ever reached first base.

Humiliated in Game 5, the Dodgers returned to Brooklyn determined to fight back. For the first nine innings, Yankee hurler Bob Turley was almost as effective as Larsen the day before, giving up only three hits and no runs. Luckily for the Dodgers, Clem Labine was equally brilliant, scattering seven hits across ten innings of shutout ball. In the bottom of the tenth inning, with the series on the line, Robinson came to the plate with Jim Gilliam on second. On a 1-1 count, Robinson lined a base hit off the left field wall, just out of reach of a leaping Enos Slaughter. As Gilliam raced around to score the winning run, Robinson’s danced around the bases celebrating his walk off knock.

In many ways, it was a fitting end to a brilliant career. Though he didn’t know it at the time Robinson’s walk off was his final hit in the majors. The Dodgers lost the next day, 9-0, with Robinson going without a hit. Yogi Berra hit two home runs as Don Newcombe was shelled over the first three innings of a blowout loss. Jackie was disappointed by the margin of defeat. “I didn’t mind so much that they beat us,” he said to New York Times reporter Roscoe McGowan after the drubbing. “But I hated to be beaten that way.” For Robinson, whose indefatigable competitive spirit had burned brightly for a decade, this World Series was the end of a storied career. At the beginning of 1957, he took a job as vice president of personnel at Chock full o’ Nuts, a local coffee chain, and began devoting himself to the growing civil rights struggle.

Over his career, Jackie Robinson played in over half of the World Series matchups between the Dodgers and the Yankees. His blazing speed and surehandedness in the field left an indelible mark on this historic rivalry, the legacy of which continues today. Now, a new chapter is unfolding in New York and Los Angeles. As the series returns to the Bronx, we hope you will join us at the Jackie Robinson Museum during the historic World Series this October and beyond to learn more about the triumphs and struggles of baseball’s first Black player in the modern era.

Keep Reading: The Yankees-Dodgers Rivalry Continues

On Friday, October 25, 2024 the New York Yankees will head to Los Angeles for their twelfth World Series matchup against the Dodgers. It’s a historic rivalry—one that stretches back to the Dodgers rollicking days as “Dem Bums” in Brooklyn. No two teams have met in the World Series more often. From 1947 to 1956, Jackie Robinson played a key part in six of the eleven contests so far, terrifying Yankees pitching with his speed on the basepaths and dazzling fans with his superb fielding. This week, the Jackie Robinson Museum is celebrating the 2024 world series as these two franchises add a new chapter to their rivalry. Our galleries will be open on Tuesday, October 29 and Wednesday, October 30 as the Dodgers come to New York for Games 3, 4, and 5. Join us in person or online as we explore some video highlights and artifacts from the Dodgers-Yankees World Series in which Jackie played.

1947

Jackie’s first World Series against the Yankees was in 1947, in his rookie year. Across the regular season, Jackie had shown he was a top-notch player. He hit .297 and led the league in stolen bases, earning first-ever the Rookie of the Year award. As a result, National League opponents were already quite familiar with Jackie Robinson’s daring on the basepaths and his superb contact hitting. The Yankees, however, still needed an introduction. In the first inning of Game 1, Jackie Robinson drew a walk against Spec Shea. On the second pitch of the next at-bat, he broke for second, sliding into the bag just ahead of catcher Yogi Berra’s throw. Two innings later, Robinson drew another base on balls and unnerved Shea into balking him to second base.

Despite Robinson’s adventures on the basepaths, the Dodgers lost the first game, 5 to 3. The series was best remembered for the heroics of Dodger pinch-hitter Cookie Lavagetto in Game 4. For eight and two-thirds innings, Yankee starter Bill Levens had no-hit the Dodgers, surrendering only a single run in the bottom of the fifth. With two out and two runners on, Lavagetto lashed a double to right that scored both runners for a walk off win, evening the series at two games apiece. They would go on to lose the series in seven games. Robinson could not replicate his excellent hitting from the season, hitting only .259 with a pair of doubles.

1949

The Dodgers next faced the Yankees in 1949, after celebrating their National League pennant victory with a ticker-tape parade in Brooklyn a few days before. Unfortunately for the Bums, this contest was significantly more mismatched than the one two years before. Despite an MVP season from Robinson, as well as the addition of the All-Star battery of catcher Roy Campanella and right-hander Don Newcombe, the Dodgers lost four games to one.

In the second game, Robinson scored the only run of the contest after doubling off of the Yanks’ Vic Raschi. Over the course of the remaining four games, Jackie recorded only two other hits. Even though Yankee stars like Berra, Joe DiMaggio, and Phil Rizzuto also struggled, the strength of the Bombers’ rotation allowed them to outlast Brooklyn over the five-game set. “They beat us,” Robinson glumly declared at the end of the series. “They really knocked us down and stepped on us. But I still think we had the better team before the series started.”

Robinson, ever the fiery competitor, was disappointed by the loss, but ready to keep up the fight.

This program from the 1949 World Series can be found on the back wall of the Sports Gallery at the Jackie Robinson Museum. Courtesy of Stephen Wong

Bonus: 1951

Wait, what? You might be thinking: “Didn’t the Dodgers lose the 1951 National League pennant to the New York Giants in a heartbreaking three-game playoff ended by Bobby Thomson’s ‘Shot Heard ‘Round the World’ at the Polo Grounds?” If you are, you would be correct. But the hypothetical 1951 Dodgers-Yankees World Series still exists in our hearts…and on the pages of this never-issued program on display at the Jackie Robinson Museum.

1951 “shadow program” from a World Series that was never played. Courtesy of walteromalley.com

In 1951, Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers held a thirteen-game lead over the New York Giants in the middle of August as the teams were chasing the National League pennant. Then, the Giants began to surge. Led by Bobby Thomson, former Negro Leagues great Monte Irvin, and a largely unknown rookie by the name of Willie Mays, the crosstown rivals won 33 out of their last 40 games and worked themselves into a tie with the Dodgers. In the pre-expansion era, ties for the pennant were resolved in a three-game playoff, which the Giants won. The printer responsible for the programs made two sets: this one, and one for the actual Giants-Yankees series that was played. The unused programs that can be found are popular collector’s items from a past that never was.

1952

The Dodgers returned to the World Series in 1952, this time with home-field advantage. In the first game, they faced off against Yankees ace Allie Reynolds, a 20-game winner that year and runner-up in the American League MVP voting. In the bottom of the second inning, Jackie Robinson smacked a home run to left field, scoring the Dodgers’ first run in a 4-2 victory.

Their luck didn’t last. Despite a thrilling four-homer performance from Duke Snider and great contact hitting from Pee Wee Reese, the Dodgers eventually fell to the Yankees in seven games. Robinson was befuddled at the plate, striking out looking multiple times (later on, he asked Yankee backstop Yogi Berra if a strike he took in Game 6 was truly in the zone, to which Berra solemnly replied that it was). Indeed, Reynolds and Raschi again stymied the Dodger hitters, while Mickey Mantle recorded ten hits and two home runs against the Don Newcombe-less Dodger pitching staff, including the game-winning shot in the final game.

See if you can spot this baseball with signatures from the 1952 Dodgers—it’s located to the left of Pee Wee Reese’s jersey at the Jackie Robinson Museum!

Stay tuned for the second installment of Jackie’s World Series heroics as the present-day Yankees-Dodgers rivalry heads to the Bronx for Games 3, 4, and 5. The Jackie Robinson Museum will be open to the public on Tuesday, October 29 and Wednesday, October 30 as the Dodgers come to town for the Fall Classic!

Although Barry Goldwater’s wide margin of victory didn’t show it, the 1964 Republican National Convention was one of the most contentious and influential moments in modern American politics. It heralded the rise of the modern conservative movement, almost fully marginalized the liberal wing of the Republican Party and severed the last vestiges of Black support for the GOP. Jackie Robinson, a liberal and a special delegate of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, got a firsthand look at the changing face of the party from the convention floor. What he saw and experienced would change his political outlook for the remainder of his life.

Jackie Robinson speaks to reporters before the convention on July 10, 1964. Getty Images

By the time the party gathered in the sweltering heat of the Cow Palace, an arena near San Francisco, Jackie Robinson had been sounding alarm bells about Barry Goldwater, the presumptive nominee, for months. As far back as August 1963, Robinson warned of Goldwater’s ascendence within the party.¹ The Arizona senator was by all accounts a segregationist. He voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act and quickly became the choice of voters who wished to roll back gains on school integration and voting rights.² Certainly, this was by design. Goldwater and his supporters were fond of declaring that the Republican Party should “go hunting where the ducks are,” courting the votes of those who had opposed the civil rights advancements made under the Kennedy administration.³ For delegates like Robinson, the nomination of Goldwater was unconscionable. It had to be averted at all costs, lest the GOP become, as Robinson bluntly put it in a 1963 Saturday Evening Post article, “for white men only.”⁴

In 1964, Nelson Rockefeller hired Robinson as a special assistant for community affairs. Here, Robinson joins him at an election night party in 1966, at which Rockefeller was elected to a third term as Governor of New York. Getty Images

Robinson’s ardent opposition to Goldwater had pushed him towards Nelson Rockefeller’s camp over the course of the campaign cycle. Rockefeller, midway through his second term as New York governor, represented the liberal wing of the Republican Party, and had earned Robinson’s favor early in the race. Throughout most of his life, Robinson had identified as a Republican. This in itself was not unusual. For most of the previous three decades, both major U.S. parties had been held together by unusual coalitions, often with wide ideological gulfs between them. The Democrats comprised an alliance between New Deal populists and Southern segregationists, while the Republicans were supported by a diverse range of northern liberals and pro-business conservatives. As a result, Black voters were often torn between two poles, neither of which could be fully trusted to push for racial and economic equality.

In 1960, this ground was shifting. Democratic nominee John F. Kennedy commanded a decisive majority of Black voters, even as Robinson himself supported Republican Richard Nixon, whom he deemed more trustworthy on the issue of civil rights. While many organizers often bemoaned the slow pace of change even after Kennedy was elected, he proved to be more receptive to the demands of the movement than his predecessor had been. By the time he was assassinated at the end of 1963, Kennedy had earned the support and sympathy of much of the Black electorate. A poll conducted shortly after the assassination revealed that eighty percent of Black voters surveyed compared the president’s death to the passing of a close relative. Others feared the assassination would derail civil rights progress.⁵

Robinson shakes hands with Richard Nixon at a campaign event in 1960. Even by 1963, Robinson had grown wary of Nixon’s changing stances on civil rights.⁶ “I began to suspect,” Robinson later lamented, “that personal ambition was the dominant drive behind this man.”⁷ Associated Press

As Robinson entered the Cow Palace in 1964, he remained hopeful that the Republican Party would avoid nominating Goldwater and preserve at least some of its commitments to the still-growing movement. On the floor of the convention, however, his fears quickly materialized. On the second day, Robinson and the other Rockefeller supporters attempted to add a plank to the party platform condemning the extremism of the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society.⁸ The motion failed, to the raucous applause of a majority of the delegates. As Rockefeller’s bid for the nomination likewise went down in flames, Robinson and his other supporters rallied around the candidacy of Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton. This attempt quickly collapsed as well. Goldwater won the nomination handily on the first ballot.

Delegates fill the Cow Palace on July 13, 1964. Wikimedia Commons

Late in the evening, Nelson Rockefeller was finally given a chance to speak. He again denounced the extremism of Goldwater and was drowned out by boos from an agitated crowd.⁹ Robinson, almost entirely alone in his support, shouted his praise of Rockefeller from the floor. When he did, a nearby delegate rose to confront him. Had it not been for the delegate’s wife holding him back, Robinson later said, they might have come to blows. The other Black delegates, who amounted to just fifteen out of well over a thousand, were similarly mistreated.¹⁰

During the convention, churches and labor groups sponsored a civil rights march through San Francisco. Marchers, many carrying anti-Goldwater signs, protested the reactionary politics of the nominee. Library of Congress

Goldwater would go on to lose to Democrat Lyndon Johnson in a landslide that November. For Robinson, the disaster of the convention essentially marked the end of his association with the Republican Party at the national level. Robinson thought he and Black voters had a seat at the table, but they were quickly silenced by a tide of reaction that swept through the convention in 1964. Robinson believed that the Goldwater nomination would signal the permanent demise of the Republicans. Four years later, he would be proven wrong: Richard Nixon, hardened in his opposition to the growing militancy of the Civil Rights Movement, won the presidency four years later with a strategy similar to Goldwater’s.

It was a crushing defeat for Robinson’s political worldview. In the early 1960s, Robinson believed that civil rights victories could be won at the administrative level by ensuring that both major parties would need to compete with each other for Black voters.¹¹ But by the middle of the decade, it became clear that the Republican Party had no interest in winning back the groups whose support had shifted.¹² Though Robinson’s belief in the functionality of the two-party system was shaken, he continued to be civically engaged for the rest of his life, fighting to support the candidates he believed would join him in demanding racial and economic justice in the United States.

Click to view this July 10, 1964 interview with CBS 8 reporter Harold Keen.

Robinson strove to be a part of the political process through whatever means were available to him. Whether he was operating inside the system as a convention delegate or campaign surrogate, or outside of it as a protestor or columnist, Robinson understood that the fight didn’t end after the first Tuesday in November. Even so, he never failed to stress the importance of voting rights and political participation to his allies and supporters across the country. As he left San Francisco in 1964, Robinson understood that his defeat at the convention was the beginning of a new era. Robinson’s beliefs had not changed—rather, the shifting alliances of electoral politics were pushing him in new and unexpected directions. As the tumult of the sixties produced both victories and defeats, Jackie continued to rise to the challenge to demand first-class citizenship for all.

The Jackie Robinson Museum remains committed to voting rights across the United States. If you aren’t registered to vote, please visit vote.gov to register prior to Election Day on November 5, 2024 (deadlines vary by state). Visitors to the Museum can access this site from a kiosk located near the lobby, immediately behind the elevator.

References

[1] Jackie Robinson, “Jackie Robinson Says: Has Goldwater Taken Over For the GOP?,” Michigan Chronicle, August 10, 1963, sec. Editorial Page.
[2] Leah M. Wright, “Conscience of a Black Conservative: The 1964 Election and the Rise of the National Negro Republican Assembly,” Federal History 1 (2009): 32.
[3] Stewart Alsop, “Can Goldwater Win in 64?,” Saturday Evening Post, August 8, 1963.
[4] Jackie Robinson, “The G.O.P.: For White Men Only?” Saturday Evening Post, August 10-August 17, 1963
[5] Sharron Wilkins Conrad, “More Upset Than Most: Measuring and Understanding African American Responses to the Kennedy Assassination,” American Quarterly 75, no. 2 (2023): 279–307.
[6] Jackie Robinson, “An Open Letter To Dick Nixon,” New York Amsterdam News, May 4, 1963.
[7] Jackie Robinson, “Did Goldwater Promise Nixon?,” New York Amsterdam News, November 21, 1964.
[8] “In The High Drama Of Its 1964 Convention, GOP Hung A Right Turn,” All Things Considered (NPR, July 10, 2014), https://www.npr.org/2014/07/10/330496199/in-the-high-drama-of-its-1964-convention-gop-hung-a-right-turn.
[9] Jackie Robinson and Alfred Duckett, I Never Had It Made (New York, Putnam, 1972),
http://archive.org/details/ineverhaditmade00robi.
[10] Wright 2009, 35
[11] Jackie Robinson, “Negroes Know Their Enemies,” New York Amsterdam News, February 24, 1962, see also “Baseball Great Jackie Robinson Talks about Politics in San Diego in the 1960s” (CBS, July 10, 1964), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaRk0-OEUKg.
[12] Alsop, “Can Goldwater Win in 64?”

What can a bank mean to a neighborhood? To its depositors and borrowers, Freedom National Bank was a local financial institution not unlike thousands of others across the United States. But to many Black residents in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant, it was also a source of immense pride. From 1964 to its closure in 1990, Freedom National stood at the center of 125th Street in Harlem, providing access to banking services that many residents had previously been denied their entire lives. Jackie Robinson, who was the first chairman of its board of directors, worked tirelessly to ensure that its operations were not only a financial success, but that it was expanding access to loans and other services for Black communities across the city. Although the bank caused him incredible worry and many nights of lost sleep, it was a poignant example of his decades-long struggle for Black America’s economic progress and independence.

Main branch of Freedom National Bank on 125th Street in Harlem, 1970. Getty Images

In 1963, Dunbar McLaurin, a Black Harlem businessman, had begun to lay the groundwork for opening a bank in Harlem. He had dreamed of doing so for many years, but only by the peak of the Civil Rights Movement were his plans coming to fruition. It was a needed resource: African Americans had long struggled against banks refusing to loan to them due to economic dispossession as well as racist perceptions of Black borrowers as untrustworthy, inequities that continue to exist today. While means of discrimination have become more complex and technologized in the years since, McLaurin was confronting an issue that economists and activists are yet dealing with in the present: keeping money in New York’s Black communities.

Jackie Robinson was the ideal man to help McLaurin with the task. Robinson was a public figure with wide appeal and had developed significant business experience. Appreciating the importance of having a more equitable bank in Harlem, Robinson agreed to serve as chairman, if reluctantly. With regard to McLaurin’s role, Robinson and the other board members came to doubt his ability to run the bank and McLaurin’s bid to become the bank’s first president was rejected. McLaurin unsuccessfully sued the board, adding to delays in opening the bank.

Raising funds was likewise a challenge. When Robinson and his board made the first offering of 60,000 shares of stock available to the Harlem community, he was disappointed by the low level of interest, which he admitted was due to lack of trust. In search of a new president and dogged by the lawsuit, Freedom National Bank was not able to open until December 1964, with William Hudgins, an experienced banker from Carver Savings and Loan (another Black financial institution), as the new president.

The next January, Robinson celebrated the opening of the bank in his weekly column in the New York Amsterdam News. “It is…the only bank in Harlem that is controlled mainly by Negroes,” he declared. At the grand opening, he noted how people coming and going from the ceremonies referred to it as “our bank,” reflecting residents’ recognition of its capabilities. Within a year, the bank had a capitalization of over $9 million. Hudgins took pride in his hands-on and meticulous approach to lending which allowed him and his staff to provide loans to businesses and homebuyers that might not even get in the door at other banks. Business boomed, and Freedom National was able to open a second branch on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn in 1967, reflecting the growth of Black political and economic power there.

Freedom National Bank opened a branch office in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in 1967. Jackie Robinson Museum

Even so, the bank attracted criticism. Lack of financial stability and opportunities for employment for many of Harlem’s residents meant that many of the loans the bank made went to ventures outside of Harlem. Looking to attract more depositors, Hudgins often exaggerated the long-term impact of the bank on Harlem’s business environment. Despite these challenges, Robinson worked hard to make sure the bank could serve as many of its neighbors as possible. Rachel Robinson recalled how Freedom National occupied Robinson’s time and energy for years. “He agonized over that bank,” she noted in a later interview. “Anything that he thought was going wrong worried him because it was important for them to succeed.”

Indeed, the bank was an incredible source of stress for Jackie Robinson. Though he was in poor health for most of the late 1960s, he invested countless hours working to ensure its stability. When employees and regulators warned him about the possibility of the bank collapsing in 1971, he again stepped in to reorganize its leadership, replacing Hudgins as president while keeping him on the board. Eventually, the bank returned to stability and was able to continue its mission.

Mayor John Lindsay (right) speaks with Jackie Robinson at Freedom National Bank. Courtesy of the estate of Morris Warman

Robinson died in 1972, but the bank continued its operations for almost 18 years afterward. In 1982, booming business led Travers Bell, the leader of a Black-owned Wall Street brokerage, to purchase a large stake in Freedom. Despite Freedom National’s almost two decades of dutifully serving Black communities in Harlem and Brooklyn, Bell and his group pushed a strategy of rapid growth. The consequences were disastrous. Poorly collateralized loans made to larger and larger businesses, most of which were far afield of Harlem, led to massive losses as the tactics of the new leadership backfired. On November 9th, 1990, regulators shut Freedom down.

The loss of the bank hit Harlem hard. Residents bemoaned its demise and reflected on what it had meant to the community for years. Even more concerning than its closure, however, was the fact that many depositors were not compensated in full. In 1990, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a New Deal-agency designed to protect consumers from bank failures, insured deposits of up to $100,000. While few individuals had accounts of this size at Freedom, a wide range of nonprofits and community organizations had large accounts there as a show of support for the bank’s mission. These depositors were only paid 50 cents on the dollar for money above the FDIC limit.

Ordinarily, this would not be unexpected. The limit, however, had rarely been observed in recent memory. Most failed banks were either taken over by nearby financial institutions or deemed “too big to fail” by regulators, who then bailed out all depositors regardless of the size of their accounts. For Freedom National, neither option was a possibility. Harlem residents were aghast at the FDIC’s inaction, and New York Congressional Representatives Chuck Schumer, Charles Rangel, and Major Owens held an emergency hearing decrying the unequal treatment of Freedom’s depositors. After the Representatives each delivered statements, community members echoed their condemnation of the FDIC’s capricious decision. Despite lengthy investigations into the matter, it does not appear that any of these organizations were made whole. A small bank in the middle of Harlem was not deemed important enough to receive the same treatment as a majority of other banks in that time period.

Throughout its existence, Freedom National Bank brought services to Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant that had previously been denied to Black communities for decades. As Jackie Robinson often noted, “the ballot and the buck” were key to securing equality for Black America. Jackie had no experience in the world of finance but wanted to use his fame to support the fight for equality any way he could. He learned from others in the business, worked tirelessly to preserve the integrity of the bank, and collaborated with the employees to serve Harlem and Bed-Stuy. Though it lasted only a little over a quarter century, Freedom National Bank is still remembered today as a source of pride both during and after the years it stood on 125th street.

The revolutionary year of 1968 opened new fronts for political struggle in the United States and around the world. Protestors, many of them students, rallied for women’s rights, racial and economic equality, and an end to the escalating Vietnam War. Black athletes joined the struggle by seeking new ways to leverage their fame and political capital to demand global change. As the Olympic Games in Mexico City neared, many athletes began to discuss the possibility of boycotting them to protest racial injustice in the U.S. and in South Africa.

(l to r) Peter Norman, Tommie Smith, and John Carlos stand on the podium after the 200m finals at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, Getty Images

Jackie Robinson took the bold stance to support the athletes in their fight. He published columns, sent letters, and circulated protest materials on the athletes’ behalf. Although the boycott itself did not come to fruition, it was nonetheless successful in achieving one of its most important goals: keeping apartheid South Africa off of the international stage. The boycott revealed deep political and tactical divides between generations in a changing movement, many of which have echoes to the present day.

Button for the Olympic Project for Human Rights owned by Tommie Smith, National Museum for African American History and Culture

The plan to boycott the Olympics was hatched in late 1967 by Dr. Harry Edwards and a handful of Black athletes on the West Coast.[1] In October, they chartered the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) to coordinate their activities. Word spread rapidly. As more athletes expressed interest, a set of demands began to coalesce by December. First, OPHR demanded that Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight title and right to box be restored (they were both stripped in retaliation for his refusal to be drafted in the Vietnam War). Next, they called for the firing of Avery Brundage, the notoriously racist president of the International Olympic Committee. Third, they demanded that Black coaches and administrators be added to the U.S. Olympic apparatus. Fourth, they demanded the exclusion of South Africa from the 1968 games. Finally, the athletes called for a boycott of the New York Athletic Club on account of its racist and exploitative policies.

Avery Brundage served as president of the International Olympic Committee from 1952 to 1972. Wikimedia Commons

A pamphlet by the American Committee on Africa, 1960

In 1960, Jackie Robinson served as the honorary chairman of the American Committee on Africa’s Emergency Conference after the Sharpeville Massacre, in which South African police killed dozens of protestors demonstrating against apartheid.

Robinson also saw an Olympic boycott as a tool to fight against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Over a century after the Southern Cape’s colonization by Dutch and British settlers, native Africans still lived under deplorable economic conditions and lacked political representation. Knowing that putting the spotlight on South Africa could also serve to highlight racial injustice at home, Robinson worked to marginalize the country’s all-white government on the global stage. Robinson had been involved in organized anti-apartheid work since 1959, and had delivered speeches supporting economic and cultural boycotts of South Africa for years.[7]  Banned from the 1964 games, South Africa had been reinstated for 1968 after ostensibly easing some of the segregation policies on its teams. For Robinson and the OPRR, the change was woefully insufficient, and the boycott threat began to spread to African nations.[8]

In May of 1968, Avery Brundage announced that the South African team would be banned. Jackie celebrated the news in his May 11 Amsterdam News column, noting that the work of Black athletes—both in the United States and in Africa—made this possible.[9]  He spared no ink in his condemnation of Brundage, whom he accused of “ignoring…apartheid as vigorously as he was attacking” those who threatened to boycott. For Robinson, this was a major victory. It showed that Black athletes still had the power to withhold their labor and fight for equality on a global scale. South Africa would not again participate in the Olympic Games until 1992.

Olympic Project for Human Rights poster designed by Bozé and signed at bottom left by Harry Edwards, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

Even though only one of the demands was met, the boycott did not go through as planned. Athletes were almost equally split on whether to go forward with the protest, short of the two-thirds required by a previous vote of the OPHR.[10]  The NYAC remained segregated, Muhammad Ali was still regarded as a public enemy, and Avery Brundage would remain IOC president until his retirement in 1972. Even so, the Olympics produced powerful moments of protest. Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave Black power salutes on the podium after medaling in the 200 meters, resulting in a brutal crackdown on political statements from Avery Brundage and the International Olympic Committee.

For Robinson, the boycott was a chance for athletes around the world to show solidarity with victims of apartheid in South Africa and call out the hypocrisy of the New York Athletic Club. For Edwards and the Olympic athletes, the movement they built was an opportunity to test out new, radical strategies at the dawn of a more militant phase of the Civil Rights Movement. In an era in which the “old guard” was often criticized for rejecting the ideologies and tactics of the movement’s youth wing, Jackie stood up for his principles and his belief in the role of athletics as a site of political struggle. He organized allies, built connections, and lent his support to the athletes willing to risk their careers to demand global change.

 

[1] Harry Edwards, Revolt of the Black Athlete, 50th anniversary edition, Sport and Society (Urbana Chicago Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2018).

[2] Jackie Robinson, “Mixed Emotions Over Boycott Of Olympics,” New York Amsterdam News (1962-), December 16, 1967.

[3] Jackie Robinson, “Some Resolutions For The New Year,” New York Amsterdam News (1962-), January 6, 1968.

[4] Dave Zirin, “The Explosive 1968 Olympics,” International Socialist Review, September 2008, https://isreview.org/issue/61/explosive-1968-olympics/index.html.

[5] Jackie Robinson, “Negro Athletes Running Backward,” New York Amsterdam News (1962-), March 3, 1962.

[6] Jackie Robinson, “Down With Jim Crow At Infamous NYAC,” New York Amsterdam News (1962-), February 10, 1968.

[7] American Committee on Africa, “Minutes of the Executive Board Meeting of the American Committee on Africa, June 29, 1959” (New York, N.Y., United States, June 29, 1959), Michigan State University African Activist Archive, https://africanactivist.msu.edu/record/210-849-24792/.

[8] Robert Ross, “Jackie Robinson, Pioneer of BDS,” The Nation, April 15, 2022, https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/jackie-robinson-baseball-bds/.

[9] Jackie Robinson, “Victory Won In Olympic Boycott,” New York Amsterdam News (1962-), May 11, 1968.

[10] (Edwards 1969)

Growing up in Pasadena, California, Jackie Robinson looked up to his older brother Mack, who was blazing trails in track and field long before Jackie became a household name. Mack Robinson was born in Cairo, Georgia, in 1914, five years before Jackie. While Mack participated in a wide range of track events over his career, he was chiefly a sprinter, and his skill in the 200 meters earned him honors at Pasadena Junior College, the University of Oregon, and perhaps most famously, the 1936 Olympics.

Mack Robinson training for the Berlin Olympics, 1936

The 1936 Summer Olympics, the planning for which began in 1931, were held in Berlin in the heart of Hitler’s Germany. The completion of the Nazi takeover in 1933 transformed the planned games into a celebration of Aryan supremacy, with Hitler himself opening the festivities to roaring applause. Like many state-sponsored emblems of Nazi culture, the Olympics were an opportunity for the country to showcase the prowess of German athletes, and by extension, the physical might of a militarily resurgent nation.

Adolf Hitler and other officials salute spectators at the Olympiastadion in Berlin, Wikimedia Commons.

For Mack Robinson, even getting to the Olympics was a challenge. Lacking the funds to make the trip to New York City for the Olympic Trials at Randall’s Island, a group of local Pasadena businessmen raised $150 for his train fare. At the trials he had no coach and he qualified for Berlin wearing a pair of threadbare spikes he had worn during the previous college track season.

Black Olympians aboard the USS Lusitania, on its voyage to the games in Berlin, June 15, 1936. (l to r) Dave Albritton, Cornelius Johnson, Tidye Pickett, John Terry, Ralph Metcalfe, Jim Clark, John Brooks, Matthew (Mack) Robinson. Bettmann Archive, Getty Images.

It was into this crucible that Robinson and seventeen other African American Olympians were thrown. Despite the racist attitudes of both the German and American press, Mack and his compatriots excelled, winning 14 medals, a quarter of the United States’ 57 medals at the games. Robinson competed in the 200-meter dash, his only event. Robinson won all three heats in which he competed. In the third, he finished in 21.1 seconds, tying an Olympic record. In the final, Mack faced Jesse Owens, who was already renowned as “the world’s fastest man.” Still wearing the same battered cleats, he finished second behind Owens, crossing the line four-tenths of a second after the gold medalist.

Other Black athletes found success, as well. Sprinters John Woodruff and Ralph Metcalfe both won gold in the 800 meters and the 4×100 relay respectively. Cornelius Johnson and David Albritton took gold and silver in the high jump, another high-profile event. For Hitler and the Nazi Party, these victories were a humiliation. Although Germany found success on the medal table, losing to Black athletes specifically was a blow to the nation’s white supremacist ideals. Even so, the logics of racial superiority are more durable than any singular athletic event. According to Albert Speer, a high-ranking Nazi administrator (and later Nuremberg detainee), the victories of Owens and the other athletes compelled Hitler’s declaration that Black athletes should be banned from future competitions, due to their “natural” athletic ability.

Jesse Owens (center) and Ralph Metcalfe (right) stand on the podium after taking gold and silver in the 100 meters at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Cornell University Special Collections.

The Black Olympians’ return home was likewise reprehensible. None of the eighteen athletes were invited to the White House; President Franklin Roosevelt only welcomed the white Olympians. Even Jesse Owens, who was invited to participate in a celebratory ticker-tape parade down Fifth Avenue in New York City and a dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in his honor, was forced to ride the freight elevator to his own reception.

Outside of Owens, the laurels heaped upon the Black athletes in Berlin did not translate to personal success once they returned home. Mack returned to Pasadena to find only three people came to greet him at the train station. No ticker-tape parades, long-term coaching jobs, or professional athletic success awaited him. Although he attended the University of Oregon, where he continued to excel in track, he left to support his family before he could complete his degree. When he left the university, he returned to Pasadena and became a street cleaner, often wearing his Olympic jacket as he walked from block to block.

During his lifetime, Mack Robinson’s contributions on the international stage and to the athletic culture of the United States went largely unacknowledged in his hometown. Moreover, the racist treatment that the Robinsons encountered as children continued well into Mack’s adulthood. After Pasadena was forced to desegregate its public pools, Mack and other Black employees were fired from their municipal jobs in retaliation. For the rest of his life, Mack agitated for change in his city. In addition to standing up for the rights of underprivileged youth, he consistently criticized the city for refusing to acknowledge or memorialize his brother Jackie’s accomplishments. Only in 1997, fewer than three years before Mack’s death, did Pasadena unveil a memorial to the brothers across the street from City Hall.

Jackie (left) and Mack Robinson (right) are rendered in bronze outside of Pasadena’s city hall. Public Domain.

After striking a cultural blow against Nazism that resonated around the world, Mack returned to a country that exploited and mistreated him, as it had done before his Olympic triumph. Though he remained disappointed in the slow progress occurring in Pasadena and around the country, he grew into a respected civic leader, standing up for his community when others would not. Far beyond merely being an inspiration for his younger brother Jackie, Mack stood resolute as he demanded a better Pasadena, and a better world.

In 1947, when Jackie Robinson signed his contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers, he told the waiting press, “I fully realize what it means – my being given this opportunity – not only for me, but for my race and baseball.” Throughout his life, he would insist that being the first Black person in a given vocation didn’t matter unless there were a second, third, fourth, or more to follow through the door he had opened. For Robinson, that meant supporting Black athletes across all sports—not just the men who followed him into the major leagues. One such collaboration was with trailblazing tennis star Althea Gibson, with whom Jackie Robinson worked closely during the 1950s and 1960s, as she strove to break down barriers in women’s tennis and golf.

Jackie Robinson presents Althea Gibson the 1950 Sports Achievement Award from the Harlem Branch of the YMCA at its annual Century Club dinner. Executive Director Rudolph J. Thomas smiles in approval. Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries

 

Althea Gibson won multiple singles, doubles, and mixed doubles Grand Slam titles across her amateur tennis career in the 1950s. After tennis, she turned to golf, becoming the first Black player on the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour in 1964. Throughout her life, Gibson was confronted with Jim Crow barriers in both sports. In the early phases of her tennis career, even getting on the court was a challenge. To qualify for larger tournaments, players needed access to the highly segregated world of private tennis clubs, from which African Americans were frozen out entirely. Gibson was skilled—the entire tennis world knew it—but she did not receive an invitation to compete in the 1950 U.S. National Championships until a retired white player, Alice Marble, fomented public support for her inclusion. Over the decade, her legend grew—she won back-to-back Wimbledon singles titles in 1957 and 1958 and amassed three doubles titles there as well.

Althea Gibson shows Jackie Robinson her racquet grip at the American National Theatre Academy tennis tournament at the 7th Regiment Armory on February 16, 1951. Everett Collection, Bridgeman Images

 

In 1951, Althea Gibson joined Jackie Robinson in a celebrity tennis tournament to support the American National Theatre Academy. While the event might have featured more goofs and gimmicks than actual tennis competition, it was a chance for Robinson to support a rising star in a white-dominated field. Robinson himself was a competent tennis player. In 1936, he won a junior singles title at the Pacific Coast Negro Tennis Tournament, and he was victorious in both men’s singles and doubles in the Black Western Federation of Tennis Clubs tournament in 1939, even though he only played when not busy with other sports.

Althea Gibson receives a ticker-tape parade in New York on July 11, 1957. The Detroit Tribune

 

Prior to the Open Era in tennis, major tournaments such as Wimbledon were restricted to amateur players, who were not permitted to accept prize money. As a result, Gibson struggled to make ends meet, despite holding multiple Grand Slam titles and being honored with a ticker-tape parade in 1957. She turned pro in 1958 but found opportunities there to be equally lacking. Businesses were uninterested in sponsoring a Black player, and the prize money from tournaments was still small. “I saw that white tennis players, some of whom I had thrashed on the court, were picking up offers and invitations,” she later wrote in 1968. “Suddenly, it dawned on me that my triumphs had not destroyed the racial barriers definitively…Or, if I did destroy them, they had been erected behind me again.”2 Like Robinson, she tried to supplement her income with other ventures. She tried her hand at singing and acting, participated in exhibition tours, and published an autobiography. Nonetheless, commercial success eluded her.

Jackie Robinson and Althea Gibson examine a scorecard at the North-South tournament in February 1962. Bettmann Archive, Getty Images

 

Gibson hoped that more opportunities awaited her in golf. As she sought to enter the top ranks of a new sport, she received even more brutal Jim Crow treatment than she had in her tennis career. She competed at country clubs at which she could not use the dressing room or eat in the restaurant. Adding to her personal struggles, golf didn’t pay the bills. Nonetheless, she took joy in the game and participated in celebrity tournaments. In 1962, Gibson competed in the North-South golf tournament in Miami, alongside Jackie Robinson and retired boxer Joe Louis. Robinson and Gibson won the men’s and women’s tournaments, respectively. That summer, the pair teamed up against Louis and Ann Gregory, another top Black golfer, at a celebrity match held just outside of Chicago. Again, Robinson and Gibson emerged victorious, showing both players’ strengths as multi-sport athletes. Gibson went on to earn her LPGA tour card in 1964, making her the first Black golfer to do so.

Althea Gibson appears in the May 1953 issue of Our Sports. Edited by Jackie Robinson, Our Sports was a magazine that highlighted Black competitors – including women – in a wide variety of sports alongside professional ballplayers. Jackie Robinson Museum Collection

 

Althea Gibson’s renown as a barrier breaker—in two sports—often went unheralded in the press, let alone in her pocketbook. Still, she was an inspiration to Black athletes, especially women, in an era when the Civil Rights Movement was still in its infancy. Both Althea Gibson and Jackie Robinson used their status to promote desegregation in American sport. Unlike Robinson, Gibson was much less outspoken about the growing fight for civil rights. As she was racking up accolades, she often struggled to talk about how her triumphs and misfortunes were reflected in the broader American society. She was criticized often in the Black media for her lack of public participation in the movement, especially as later Black tennis stars, such as Arthur Ashe, were more outspoken. Even so, the power of Gibson’s legacy is undeniable; Black women tennis stars, such as Venus Williams, Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, and Coco Gauff, dominate on the global stage today, made possible by Gibbs’ pioneering efforts in the 1950s and 1960s.

In the early 1960s, Jackie Robinson aided Martin Luther King, Jr., and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement as they fought for desegregation and economic equality across the American South. Robinson—not a trained organizer, minister, or labor leader, but a renowned and outspoken athlete—added his voice to the struggle wherever and whenever he was asked. In May 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, was the epicenter of the Civil Rights Movement. From May 2 to May 10, over 1000 children marched in the streets to end segregation, in what later became known as Birmingham’s Children’s Crusade. White supremacists responded to the protests by bombing two locations where movement leaders gathered on May 11.

As these events were unfolding, Robinson was spearheading the “Back Our Brothers,” fundraising campaign that sought to channel desperately needed resources from donors in the North to movement leaders on the ground in the South.  He would host an organizing luncheon on May 7 in New York City that raised $8000 to directly support the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Birmingham. At the luncheon Robinson read a telegram he sent to President John F. Kennedy, advising, “The revolution that is taking place in this country cannot be squelched by police dogs or high-powered hoses.”

That week, as images of police violence were broadcast on televisions across the county, Robinson watched in horror. Close to eight hundred youth protestors were arrested by the Birmingham Police Department in an attempt to stop the marches. On the second day of the protest, the police blasted the children with fire hoses and attacked them with dogs, injuring many. This reinforced Robinson’s resolve to join the marchers in Birmingham and he began to plan his visit.

“Ex-Baseball Star to Join Big Protest,” May 8, 1963. The Associated Press Wire

On May 11, two days before Robinson went to Birmingham, white supremacists bombed the home of A.D. King, the brother of Martin Luther King, Jr., while the family sat in their living room. Like his brother, A.D. King was a politically active minister, which made him a target for the Ku Klux Klan and the local police. Later that night, another bomb was detonated at the A.G. Gaston Motel, where many civil rights leaders stayed when they visited Birmingham, causing widespread destruction.

In the midst of these aggressions, incremental progress was being made: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was nearing a desegregation agreement with Birmingham’s white civic leaders and businessmen, and the child protesters were being released from jail, where many had languished for over a week.

Jackie Robinson, Wyatt T. Walker, and Floyd Patterson at the Birmingham airport on their arrival late May 13, 1963. Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images

On the evening of May 13, Robinson and boxer Floyd Patterson arrived in Birmingham to lend their assistance. They immediately drove to the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church where they were joined by Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and other Birmingham Civil Rights leaders and over 2000 people gathered to hear them speak. In his speech, Robinson condemned President Kennedy for not sending troops to quell the police violence and ensured the people of Birmingham, especially the youth, that the eyes of the world were on their city. He also spoke positively of the business leaders who had worked with Dr. King on the plan for desegregation. “The only thing we are asking,” he declared, “is that we be allowed to move ahead just like any other American.”

When the first rally was over, they departed to Pilgrim Baptist Church for a rally attended by hundreds of the youth protestors. Robinson focused his speech on how the children helped “awaken the conscience” of the United States as they marched and bravely took arrest. Patterson and Robinson would end the evening inspecting the damage to the Gaston Motel, where they would spend the night in an intact section of the motel.

Floyd Patterson and Jackie Robinson inspect bomb damage to the A. G. Gaston Motel, May 14, 1963. AP Images

Robinson and Patterson completed their trip to Birmingham with a visit to A.D. King’s home before returning to New York to participate in a rally held by the NAACP in Harlem.

For Robinson and the marchers, the Children’s Crusade was a major turning point in what many feared to be a stagnating Civil Rights Movement. In Birmingham, conditions began to improve. Jim Crow laws were repealed, albeit slowly, and Bull Connor, the police commissioner who led his department’s reign of terror, was swept out of office. Even so, the painful work of civil rights continued, both in Birmingham and around the country. For these children, many of whom are still alive and sharing their stories today, it was a moment of activation. They organized, stood together, and refused to back down, putting their own safety on the line to win desegregation in Alabama.

You would be forgiven if you thought the first Jackie Robinson Day was held on April 15, 2004, when Major League Baseball formally established the practice of honoring Jackie at ballparks across the country. Turns out, tap dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson inaugurated the celebration almost 77 years ago.

On September 23, 1947, at the end of Jackie Robinson’s debut season, Bill Robinson led the Ebbets Field faithful in an on-field celebration of baseball’s first Black superstar. Using donations solicited through the New York Amsterdam News, a local Black newspaper, Bojangles presented Jackie a new car, a television set, a gold watch, and even a fur coat for Rachel. For fans celebrating in the stands, in Brooklyn, and Harlem, the first Jackie Robinson Day was a way for New York’s Black communities to show their support for Robinson and the desegregation of Major League Baseball.

Jackie and Rachel Robinson are honored on the field in a pre-game ceremony on September 23, 1947. Jackie Robinson Museum Collection

Fifty years later, National League president Leonard S. Coleman, Jr. had the idea to permanently retire Robinson’s number from baseball, and on April 15, 1997, Major League Baseball honored the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers.  Acting Commissioner Bud Selig, President Bill Clinton, and Rachel Robinson strode onto the field at Shea Stadium in the middle of the fifth inning of a game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Mets. In an unprecedented move, the Commissioner announced that Jackie Robinson’s number 42 would be retired throughout the game of baseball.

Robinson’s number now appears at every stadium alongside each team’s retired numbers. Coleman and many players around the majors wanted to find a way to continue to honor Robinson every year. In 2004, baseball made the Robinson celebration permanent by establishing Jackie Robinson Day on April 15. It was not until 2007 that players themselves began to push for many of the traditions we see today. It began with Ken Griffey Jr., who called Rachel Robinson and Commissioner Selig to ask if the number 42 could be temporarily reinstated so he could wear it that day to celebrate Robinson’s achievements. Soon after, other players made the request as well. Over 100 players, including four entire teams, took the field wearing number 42. A year later in 2008, the number of players increased to over 300.

The Chicago Cubs’ Derrek Lee (left) stands beside Ken Griffey Jr. (right) of the Cincinnati Reds on Jackie Robinson Day, 2007. AP Images

 

By 2009, the tradition of all players, managers, coaches, and umpires wearing Robinson’s 42 for Jackie Robinson Day became firmly established. As players line up on the foul lines at the beginning of each game at ballparks around the country, it is impossible not to notice the significance of Jackie Robinson and his impact on the game.

Ballplayers (and the United States as a whole) have come a long way since the eighties and nineties when many players had little idea of who Jackie Robinson was and what he accomplished. When Robinson was honored in 1997, African American players, both current and former, took it upon themselves to talk to the media, fans, and other players about the importance of Jackie Robinson. On Jackie Robinson Day, fans continue to show up to recognize Robinson’s importance to the fight for racial equality in the United States, just as the Flatbush Faithful filled Ebbets Field all those years ago.

The New York Mets celebrate a walk-off home run to win the game during the second game of a doubleheader against the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium on August 28, 2020. The day honoring Jackie Robinson, traditionally held on April 15, was rescheduled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sarah Stier, Getty Images 

 

As we celebrate Jackie Robinson Day this year, it is important to remember that Robinson is being honored not merely because he was the first Black major leaguer in the modern era, but because he was a lifelong fighter for civil rights and economic justice. His life and work transcend baseball, both in our time and in his.