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- Herausgeber: Gemma Open Door for Literacy
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
The year was 1947. A talented young minor-league baseball player was called up to the majors to join the Brooklyn Dodgers. But this was no ordinary man, nor any simple achievement. This was Jackie Robinson: an all-around star athlete, a U.S. Army veteran--and a black man. Until that year, baseball's shameful color line had kept African Americans out of the big leagues. Overcoming prejudice, exclusion, and even hatred, Jackie Robinson broke that line and became one of the game's best players. He was recognized in the Hall of Fame, and he inspired many young people to fight segregation and ignorance for the chance to follow their dreams. Through both his career and his character, Jackie Robinson became one of America's greatest heroes. This is his story.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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Joe Schuster
Jackie Robinson
Joe Schuster’s short fiction has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, and The Missouri Review, among others, and his articles have been published in USA Today, St. Louis Post Dispatch, and the revered, retired Sport. The New York Times Book Review describes his novel The Might Have Been as a “meticulously peopled tale of opportunities lost.” Publishers Weekly says “Schuster examines, without succumbing to sentiment or an easy resolution, the cost of chasing a dream.”
Jackie Robinson is Joe’s second book in the Gemma Open Door Series, following the success of One Season in the Sun.
First published by GemmaMedia in 2018.
GemmaMedia230 Commercial StreetBoston, MA 02109 USA
www.gemmamedia.com
©2018 by Joe Schuster
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
978-1-936846-71-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Schuster, Joseph M., author.
Title: Jackie Robinson / Joe Schuster.
Description: Boston MA : GemmaMedia, 2018. | Series: Gemma open door
Identifiers: LCCN 2018040591 | ISBN 9781936846719
Subjects: LCSH: Robinson, Jackie, 1919-1972. | Baseball players--United States--Biography. | African American baseball players--Biography.
Classification: LCC GV865.R6 S354 2018 | DDC 796.357092 [B] --dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018040591
Cover by Laura Shaw DesignCover image: Bettman/Getty Images.
Gemma’s Open Doors provide fresh stories, new ideas, and essential resources for young people and adults as they embrace the power of reading and the written word.
Brian BouldreySeries Editor
Open Door
For Kathy and my family, especially Joe V and Mila
1.
Against the Klan
Jackie Robinson was in a fight with the Ku Klux Klan almost three months before his best baseball season ever. The Klan was angry because Jackie’s team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, agreed to play three exhibition games in Georgia against the Atlanta Crackers.
Klan leader Samuel Green said Jackie and his teammate Roy Campanella could not play in the games because they were African Americans. He said it was illegal for black players and white players to appear on the field together in Georgia. Green said he would make sure that Jackie and Campanella were not in the games.
This kind of reaction to Jackie was not new to him during his career. He broke baseball’s color line when the Dodgers signed him to a contract three years before. The color line kept all but white ballplayers from playing in the major leagues for many years.
After they signed Jackie, the Dodgers sent him to play for their minor league team in Montreal in 1946 to teach him how to compete in professional baseball. They made this decision because there was less bias against black people in Canada than in the United States. But the Montreal Royals held spring training in Florida. There, Jackie faced great prejudice.
On his trip to Florida from his home in California with his wife, Rachel, he had to change planes in New Orleans. There the Robinsons saw the effect of Jim Crow laws that states in the American South enforced. Jim Crow was a character created by a white singer more than 100 years before Jackie joined the Dodgers. The singer painted his face black and made fun of the language and songs of slaves to entertain white audiences. After the United States outlawed slavery, some states passed laws to keep African Americans as second-class citizens. They named those laws after Jim Crow.
Once the Robinsons were in the South, they were not allowed to eat in the airport coffee shop. They saw signs for whites-only bathrooms and drinking fountains. The airline sold too many tickets for their flight to Florida and gave the Robinsons’ seats to white passengers. Jackie took a sixteen hour bus ride for the last part of his trip. Because of Jim Crow laws, the Robinsons sat in uncomfortable seats at the back of the bus even though there were comfortable empty seats in the white section.
When Jackie arrived at spring training, he could not stay in the nice hotel with his white teammates. He boarded with black families in the city. He could not change into his uniform in the team clubhouse with the other players. Instead, he changed at home.
The bias against Jackie even affected him on the field. When it was time for the Royals’ first exhibition game in Jacksonville that spring, the city said that “Negroes and whites cannot compete against each other on a city-owned playground.” His team canceled the game. When they tried to play another one, the city canceled it. Other cities in Florida decided to keep the team from playing games if Jackie was on the field.
Even though he faced this bias Jackie had a good season with Montreal. He was the best hitter in the league. The next year, the Dodgers decided that he was good enough to play in the major leagues. The team trained in Cuba and Panama, where they were safe from Jim Crow laws. In 1948, they trained in the Dominican Republic for the same reason. Then the team bought land in Vero Beach, Florida, so that the team could train and play exhibition games but not have to follow most Jim Crow laws.
Because other major league teams trained in Florida cities that still opposed black players competing with white players, the Dodgers played most of their exhibition games in other states.
