Jackie Robinson did more for African-Americans than open a door.
Although the simple act of stepping onto a ball field the afternoon of April 15, 1947, immortalized him as the first black man to play modern major-league baseball, his commitment to the fight for civil rights -- and the efforts he made until his death in 1972 -- made him more than just a symbol, according to a new book, "Great Time Coming: The Life of Jackie Robinson from Baseball to Birmingham."
He raised money to rebuild churches burned down by racists in Alabama. He went to bat for Black Panthers jailed in New York. He helped start a bank and fought to ensure that most of its money was poured into the black community.
And while his penchant for supporting Republican political candidates during the 1960s may have made him seem irrelevant to a black population that was becoming increasingly Democratic, says David Falkner, the author of "Baseball to Birmingham," his dedication and importance to the cause of equality should never be minimized.
"Robinson was really the first great civil rights leader we had in that era before Martin Luther King," says Mr. Falkner, who was in Washington earlier this month to speak at the National Archives along with Negro League veterans Wylmer Fields and James Cohen. "For a period of five years, Robinson was the most prominent civil rights figure in the country -- from 1956 until 1960, when he announced his support for Nixon, which sort of exploded his reputation.
"I think that he was pretty much shoved aside [after that] and was seen as something of an old-timer, an Uncle Tom. The tumult of the '60s really left Robinson looking like a cautious conservative sort who no longer spoke the language of the civil rights movement, who was no longer really as fiercely committed to the struggle as he had been when he was out there by himself as a baseball player."
The author of a half-dozen other sports books, Mr. Falkner says he decided early on to focus on Robinson's life after baseball. His subject's role as the spark plug behind the great Brooklyn Dodgers teams of the late 1940s and early 1950s had been so amply documented, Mr. Falkner believes, that it eclipsed Robinson's later efforts to see that equality spread beyond the diamond.
"I felt that he had become a postage-stamp monument," says Mr. Falkner, 59, a native New Yorker who grew up rooting for Robinson and the Dodgers. "In some ways, what he accomplished was distorted, so that his accomplishment on a baseball field kind of represented what he did. I think that his life was really more committed [to the civil rights struggle] than that."
In fact, Mr. Falkner sees the guiding hand of Dr. King behind much of Robinson's civil rights legacy, particularly his commitment to Republican party politics and the presidential campaigns of Nixon in 1960 and Nelson Rockefeller in 1964 and 1968.
King, who was just starting to come into prominence when Robinson retired from baseball after the 1956 season, was known early on for avoiding partisan politics, Mr. Falkner says. But he wanted the nonviolent movement he was spearheading to have support in both parties.
Mr. Falkner does not believe King ever approached Robinson directly about siding with the GOP. But he says he's "90 percent certain" King sent one of his closest associates to deliver the message.
"Gardner Taylor was really a person who spoke for Martin Luther King," Mr. Falkner says. "I think it was a conscious effort on the part of the civil rights movement, through Robinson, to get a place in the Republican party."
But Taylor Branch, author of "Parting the Waters," a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the civil rights movement and King biography, is not so sure Robinson needed convincing.
"The whole premise is based in a misreading of the politics of the time," says Mr. Branch, who lives in Baltimore. "Most black leaders endorsed Nixon in 1960. . . . It came naturally for Jackie Robinson to be a Republican. If you look at politicians in New York state when he lived in the 1950s and 1960s, the most liberal with regard to race relations were Jacob Javits, John Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller, all Republicans."
But, Mr. Falkner counters, Robinson stood by the GOP even after presidential candidate John F. Kennedy was instrumental in getting King released from jail -- a pivotal event in permanently shifting black allegiance from the Republican to Democratic parties.
Robinson was not without his faults, Mr. Falkner admits. He rarely bothered to weigh what he was saying -- a propensity for shooting from the hip that would lead to a falling out with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, on whose board he had long served. And he was, like many other figures of his time, compromised by the anti-Communist witch hunt of the 1940s and 1950s. During testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1949, Robinson criticized actor Paul Robeson for being sympathetic to communism. His comments, widely reported and praised in the mainstream press, helped destroy Robeson's career.
It also probably saved Robinson's. For had he not testified, Mr. Falkner believes, the FBI would have gone after him.
"He was in a position that many other people were put in at that time, and I think his response was similar," Mr. Falkner says. "The only difference was, where other people were basically scared out of their commitments forever, Robinson was never scared out of his commitments, he stayed with them until the day he died."
BLACK HISTORY MONTH
If you're looking for information about black history and the personalities and events that helped shape it, you might find what you're looking for in one of the stories now available from the Sun On Demand information service of The Baltimore Sun.
Each story, which has appeared in The Baltimore Sun, is $2.95 (plus tax) or all 15 for $19.95 (plus tax). Order by calling Sun on Demand at (410) 332-6800 and asking for the article by its four-digit code.
Benjamin Banneker, 6726
A Black Congregation, 6729
Black History Tour, 6724
A Black Legend, 6748
Books on Black Baseball, 6746
Ebenezer AME Church, 6733
Great Blacks in Wax Museum, 6744
History of a Lynching, 6731
Rev. John Wesley Holland, 6725
Negro League, 6747
Negro Mountain, 6723
Wilma Rudolph, 6732
Sankofa Dance Theatre, 6722
Slave Letters, 6730
Words to Live By, 6728